The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 21 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Donald Trump is smashing his way to new record lows in the polls. A pair of new surveys shows Trump faring worse than his predecessors by several crucial metrics, especially among the independents who are absolutely key in midterm elections. As a new analysis from CNN concludes, his numbers are, quote, unquote, “horrible.”
And yet there are some signs this may not be translating into the advantage Democrats need in the midterm contests. In truth, the signs point in all directions right now. Trump’s travails are enormously important, but there are hidden structural factors here that could work against that. So today we’re trying to get to the bottom of what we know and what we don’t with Christina Reynolds, a veteran Democratic strategist who’s worked on a lot of midterm elections. Christina, good to see you.
Christina Reynolds: Good to see you too, Greg. Happy to chat.
Sargent: So we just had this new Washington Post poll that finds Trump’s overall job approval at 37 percent among Americans, with 61 percent disapproving. That’s 24 points underwater. Meanwhile, a new CNBC poll has Trump 19 points underwater. Average those together and you get around negative 22 points, which is pretty terrible. Christina, how important are presidential approval numbers in midterms, and why? Can you just lay that out for us?
Reynolds: Sure. I think they’re incredibly important, particularly with this party and this president, because this is a party that is driven—a lot of the turnout is driven—by people being excited about Donald Trump. That’s why we’ve seen wins in past cycles, and they’re not going to have that. This is a historically low, epically low number.
What’s particularly important here? I mean, Bush had low numbers in 2006 when Democrats took back the House. Obama had low numbers in 2010, largely because of Obamacare, when Republicans took back the House. Both of those were rationally political actors who understood what it meant to deal with those low approval ratings, who tried to keep the focus on things that mattered to voters, who maybe didn’t go out and campaign in the way you might have. And that’s not what we’re dealing with here.
We have a president with terrible numbers who doesn’t believe it, and does things like goes into Derrick Van Orden’s very at-risk district and does an event where he talks about the beautification of Washington and the ballroom that he’s building, in a district that could not give two you-know-whats.
So I think this is an important point—that Donald Trump is someone who is incredibly underwater and completely unaware that he is not on land. And that’s something that’s going to be a struggle for Republicans who are on the ballot this cycle to deal with.
Sargent: So you talked about George Bush and Barack Obama, and Trump faring worse than them in many ways. And so did CNN analyst Harry Enten. He had a long discussion of this on CNN and it was pretty fascinating. He talked in particular about Trump being an average of 22 points underwater in these two new polls. Listen.
Harry Enten (voiceover): Yeah, just how horrible are these numbers. It’s the worst this century for a president at this point in the second term when you look at an average of the CNBC and Washington Post polls. We’re talking about right here the average of CNBC and Washington Post, minus 22 points. Barack Obama was underwater, but not anywhere near this level. He was at minus eight. And George W. Bush, in the middle of the Iraq War, when that was going south, he was at minus 20 points. So at this point, Donald John Trump is in fact holding the record for the lowest net approval rating for a president in a second term at this point in the second term of any president in the twenty-first century.
Sargent: Just to recap, Trump is underwater by 22 points. Barack Obama was eight points down at around the same time in his second term, and George W. Bush was 20 points underwater. Let’s remind everyone, as you just did, that Democrats suffered huge midterm losses under both those presidents—in 2014 under Obama, and the GOP suffered pretty badly under Bush in 2006. Trump is in a worse place than either were. Your thoughts on all that?
Reynolds: Yeah, I think this is the thing that works to Democrats’ advantage right now, one of the major things. We have the right direction of the country—all of the indicators that we would look at and say, boy, this doesn’t look good for the party in power—don’t look good for the party in power, which is the Republicans. And so you have Democrats running a bit with the wind at their backs, simply because Donald Trump is taking those Republicans off a cliff.
I’m using so many different analogies here, but you get the point, which is I would rather be us than them when you’re looking at these numbers, because we can point to what Donald Trump has done to drive us in the wrong direction. And we can point to failure of doing anything he said he was going to do, the wrong priorities, which matter to voters.
Voters are paying attention every time he talks about the ballroom instead of how to make their lives better. And that’s something that permeates and will either get his voters to stay home or potentially turn some of them into Democratic voters.
Sargent: Well, as you mentioned, here’s a case where voters can really directly connect Trump’s policy decisions to their own personal lives in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen before. And by the way, I should float these numbers as well. The Post poll has 33 percent of Americans overall approving of his handling of the economy. That’s one in three. That’s pretty bad. And it has 29 percent approving of his handling of the war with Iran.
And yet now he’s continuing the war in a major way, escalating it. And the war, of course, is one of the big reasons people are so sour on the economy—that and the tariffs. So not only is Donald Trump talking about his ballroom and so forth, he’s hailing this as the greatest economy in human history and saying that we’re going to continue this war for as long as it has to continue. There’s a real clear example of him not really being at all in touch with his own political situation, I think, don’t you?
Reynolds: One hundred percent. I think the worst thing that a politician can do—and honestly, we saw this some in 2024. I would argue one of the biggest challenges that Biden-Harris faced was trying to sell Bidenomics, trying to tell people that even though inflation was bad, they were doing things to fix the economy, and many indicators were in good shape.
That may have been true, but voters don’t like to be told what they’re not feeling in their own bottom line. And Trump is trying to do that again, while also focusing on things that voters know are driving up prices.
Everyone buys gas, everyone buys groceries. And those are things that are directly impacted by fuel costs, which are directly impacted by the war in Iran. And so I think that what we see is very easy dots to be connected by voters. And they’re already doing that. And that’s why these numbers are in the place that they are.
Sargent: Well, let’s listen to a bit more of CNN’s Harry Enten. This time he’s talking about independents.
Enten (voiceover): And if you think this is bad, what is driving this number? It’s independents, baby. It’s independents. Look, all-time worst at this point in a second term, net approval rating among independents. Donald John Trump at minus 45 points among independents, even worse than Richard Milhous Nixon, who was about to leave office because of Watergate, who had previously held the record at minus 37 points. And the aforementioned George W. Bush at minus 31 points. Donald John Trump, the worst-ever net approval rating with independents at this point in a second term.
Sargent: So Trump is 45 points underwater with independents in the Washington Post poll. His approval rating among independents is 26 percent, which is just absolutely abysmal. And according to Harry Enten, he’s faring even worse than Nixon during Watergate. Christina, can you explain why independents in particular are so important in midterms, and what all this means?
Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, midterms are about two things. Who turns out—because not everyone does. Can you get your party excited to turn out? And then can you get those people in the middle? And honestly, more and more we are seeing voters declare themselves independent. They’re not in love with either party. We see that in almost every poll. And so that number’s getting bigger.
So winning that group of people is critical to winning, particularly in states where we already know the die is cast in a lot of districts, right? The lines are set up so that the partisan makeup is tough. You’ve got to appeal to independents. And Trump is pushing them away in a pretty massive way, right?
Sargent: Yeah, that’s a critical point. And just to add to it, the independents are going to be really important in places like Texas, where there’s a pretty competitive Senate race, amazingly. That’s going to be a place where this whole thing is decided as well. It’s precisely because a lot of this map is being fought out in places that are somewhat friendly to Republicans—in part because of the Senate map being what it is, and in part because of Republican gerrymandering horrors being somewhat successful, unfortunately. And so given that Dems are fighting it out in somewhat less friendly territory, you really need the independents, right?
Reynolds: Absolutely. You see that in my home state of North Carolina—there’s a growing number of independents or unaffiliated voters. You see it in places like Alaska, which is a Senate seat, I believe, that is within reach. And you see it in places like Ohio. There’s a ton of races in those areas that move into competitive territory if you can move those independent voters. And it sure looks like they’re movable.
Sargent: I mean, Trump is at 26 percent among independents, which is pretty terrible. But here’s the harder part, Christina. The Post poll has Dems only three points ahead in the generic House ballot matchup. The CNBC poll finds them only four points ahead.
Now, some of the polling averages have it a bit bigger, at around five points. But it really does look as if—and Ron Brownstein’s been good on this—Democrats aren’t quite running where Trump’s approval numbers suggest they should be. Why do you think that’s happening?
Reynolds: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s happening for a couple of reasons. I think the first thing is, there’s kind of a pox on politics in general right now. Everything has felt so negative. I don’t think people are in love—they’re certainly not in love with either party. You don’t have to read many polls to see that Democrats’ numbers are not that much better than Trump’s. And that’s one of the challenges in a generic ballot—you’re asking people to compare Democrats writ large, not popular, versus Republicans and Trump, not popular.
The biggest challenge that Democrats face right now is getting an agenda to break through. Voters want more than just “you’re not Trump.” Voters want more than “I won’t be them.” And while voters want change, they want to see you actually take action, and they want to know that you have their best interests in mind. And I believe that to be true—it’s why I’m a Democrat, it’s why I’ve worked for Democrats for years. But that is not breaking through right now.
I think one of the reasons is we spend a lot of time talking about the outrage of Donald Trump, and there’s a lot of outrage to go around. And one of the reasons is right now we’re spending a lot of time fighting amongst ourselves, and talking more about party and process and who’s the establishment and who’s not and all of that. And I’m, by the way, not crediting one side of that fight more than the other. Everybody’s doing it.
But when we are talking about party and process, we are not telling voters what we’ll do for them. And fundamentally, that may win you points on the internet, but it does not win you votes. We also run the risk of continuing to turn off voters who we need to win. You know, we need to encourage them to come out and vote. And in a midterm, that’s not easy. And we’re not doing a great job of that right now.
Sargent: Well, let me ask you this. What do you make of the argument in some quarters—mostly centrists are making it—that the party brand is so damaged that that’s why the party is not performing in the generic matchup quite where it should?
I want to stress, by the way, that Democrats are still quite favored to take the House and miraculously have a real shot at the Senate. It’s just that they’re not quite where I think we need them to be. What’s your take on the argument that the brand overall is badly damaged, and that the party needs to moderate in response to that?
Reynolds: Well, those are two separate questions. Do I think the party brand is damaged? Sure, I do. But I think that we have some strong candidates, and I am less concerned about that than some people. I don’t love it, but I think we can get beyond it if we start talking about our values, because we do share many of the same values there. But I don’t think that necessarily means we have to moderate.
I think that means we need to run good candidates who understand their districts and are speaking to what voters’ concerns are in those districts. And I think we are seeing that with some great candidates. And we are seeing that across ideologies within the big tent of the Democratic Party. But I don’t think it’s about, you know, putting the big D on your chest and running with that.
And I certainly don’t think it’s about how do we take over the Democratic Party, or how do we make sure that our wing of the Democratic Party is the one that comes out ahead. I don’t think most voters care. And I think the more we fight about that, the more we are turning off the people who we need to turn out.
Sargent: Yeah, and I just want to underscore your point there, which is, I think that a lot of these Democratic candidates in some of these tough House districts are really pretty independent. They have relationships with the district. They know what the district requires. It’s not as if they’re flaming leftists running in some of these House seats in Pennsylvania and in North Carolina and California and New York—some of the tougher districts, in those bluer states, the last two.
And so that’s where it breaks down for me a little, that the Democratic brand is the issue. The Democratic brand didn’t seem to hold back Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, and it didn’t hold back Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, both of whom are quite independent.
Now, I think some people would say, well, they’re pretty moderate. I think that’s sort of true, but it’s also more complicated than that. They essentially ran as pro-democracy candidates, as well as running on the economy. They ran as patriots, as Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg puts it. They’re not exactly just pure milquetoast moderates in any sense.
They have strong identities, they know how to talk to the people of their states. And I think these candidates—also a lot of them that we’re seeing in these House races—are similar. So I think that there’s probably a decent chance that the brand doesn’t really matter all that much in the end. Does that seem right to you?
Reynolds: It does. And I would say, you know, there’s other places where we can look for actual votes and actual proof, right? In the last year, one of those is that we have flipped 30 state legislative seats from Republicans since Trump took office for his second term. They have flipped zero. And those are candidates who run the gamut across our ideological spectrum as Democrats, but they’re candidates who got in, knew their districts, went in and did the work, and told good stories and convinced voters that it mattered that they were in office. That’s something that I think we’re seeing more and more of.
You don’t have to moderate for the sake of moderating. Get out there, tell a story, tell what you’re going to do for people, maybe get something done. You know, it’s interesting that we’re seeing things like, in both New Mexico and New York, where they’re trying to pass childcare. I think families care about that, right? That is something that is popular and shows action, and in very different areas, right?
I think that we’re seeing people actually try and get things done and actually offer arguments. You know, Paige Cognetti is a good example in Pennsylvania, where she’s running against corruption, because voters think that people in office are not for them. She’s showing that she is, right? I think it’s about understanding your districts, it’s about showing who you’re fighting for, and it’s about showing that you have a plan, more than just I’m not going to be them.
Sargent: Right. I guess what you’re saying is, if you’re running on childcare or if you’re running against Trumpian corruption, that’s not really either moderate or leftist. It just doesn’t really map onto this weirdly tidy ideological template that all these factional fighters in the party keep insisting that we have to like dance around all the time. It’s just sort of bullshit, really, isn’t it?
Reynolds: Amen, Greg. Yes, that is exactly what I was saying. And I think there are candidates across the country who break those rigid little norms, and we can learn something from all of them. And that’s what we should be doing. And we should be lifting those people up, instead of having some of these ridiculous interparty fights, or having some of these days where all we do is talk about Trump. Voters are ready to move on, clearly. We need to be too.
Sargent: It sounds like you’re kind of putting your finger on a bit of a paradox, which is: Trump’s madness, the nonstop lunacy, and just the profound incompetence and buffoonery of him on a daily basis, really has wrecked his approval ratings and driven them to real record lows.
But at the same time, it sort of sucks up all the oxygen in a way that makes it harder for Democrats to campaign on their own agenda, and that’s one of the reasons that they’re kind of held back. You’d like to see them be a little clearer on, here’s what I will do if I win—A, B, and C—both in terms of protecting democracy and fighting corruption, and on the economy, right?
Reynolds: That’s exactly right. I think Trump’s numbers are why Republicans will lose. We need to give them a reason why Democrats can win. And that’s how we pick up some of those seats that are bigger reaches. That’s how we flip the House, we flip the Senate, we flip some of these state legislatures, and we keep these governors’ mansions that are so important—and flip some of them. There are a number of them that we could take over. And the way we do that is, we do better than trying to make them lose. We try and win.
Sargent: And what’s your view on the odds of the House and Senate right now, more or less?
Reynolds: I think we talked about this last time. I’m not usually optimistic, but I kind of still am. I think we can do both. And I’m excited to see it. North Carolina’s going to do our part—we’re going to flip this Senate seat. But I feel pretty good about it. And I think we’re going to see some surprises down ballot as well. But we have to give voters a reason to turn out.
Sargent: All very well said. Christina Reynolds, thank you so much for all that. Thanks for coming on.
Reynolds: Thanks, Greg.