The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 20 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.
Democrats appear to have flipped a state legislative district in western Pennsylvania that Donald Trump won less than two years ago by eighteen points. This has big implications for the midterms, and for hidden reasons, it’s really a reason for optimism. It’s no accident that this comes as Trump has hit yet another series of new lows in polling, and we have a bunch of new data that strongly suggests things are starting to trend in the Democrats’ direction in a new way.
We’re going to work through all of it with Michael Cohen, who has a good piece on his Substack, Truth and Consequences, arguing that the big story of this moment is GOP extremism. Michael, good to have you on.
Michael Cohen: Great to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me.
Sargent: So in this Pennsylvania state legislative district north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, Democrat Brandon Dukes is slightly ahead of Republican Scott Tempko. This district backed Trump by 18 in 2024. It’s voted reliably Republican for decades.
Note of caution here—the AP has not yet called the race, but either way, the fact that this district moved by this much is a big story for Democrats. Michael, your thoughts on that?
Cohen: It’s actually a continuation of a good story for Democrats, which is that in the vast majority of special elections since Trump took office in 2025, Democrats have dominated, and often by double digits. This is yet one more place where Democrats are overperforming. And look, the reality is that this kind of overperformance in special elections is usually a pretty good indication of where things are headed in the midterm elections.
You saw this in 2018—Democrats doing very well in special elections and then winning a House majority in November. I mean, that’s kind of where these things are leading. However, I gotta say that the level of overperformance is actually greater than we’ve seen before. I mean, again, you mentioned 19 points yesterday in Pennsylvania. This keeps happening, and it should tell us something about where the electorate is right now.
Sargent: Absolutely. And there’s actually an example from 2018 that applies very well. Recall that before the 2018 midterms, Democrat Conor Lamb won a House special election in southwestern Pennsylvania. Trump had carried that district two years earlier, in 2016, by like 20 points. And so this was a big shift, and it was a harbinger of the midterm blowout in 2018 that was to come.
Now, I think for a bunch of reasons, this midterm probably won’t match the huge pickup Dems made in House seats in 2018. But still, I think we should note that at least three very competitive House races are in Pennsylvania. And I see this as good news. Again, even though it hasn’t been called, the shift itself is good news, in a state that’s going to really help decide control of the House, right?
Cohen: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. You make a great observation, that you know, Democrats are unlikely to do as well as in 2018 just because there are fewer seats that are competitive. But when you look at the raw numbers and you look at where they are in the generic ballot, I actually think they might be in a better position, just with fewer seats that are available for them to win.
However, if the trend lines continue where they’re going, and Trump’s approval rating remains where it is, which is in the mid-30s at this point, you know, you could see a situation in which the bottom just falls out for Republicans, and you see a huge shift toward Democrats, which means that a lot of places we haven’t thought are competitive could be competitive.
Sargent: I will point out that the Fifty Plus One site has the generic House ballot matchup right now at Democrats plus six. That’s still not quite where we need it to be for Democrats to win the Senate. But it seems to be moving right now. It seems like Democrats are gaining in this generic House ballot matchup. And I think it’s worth focusing on this too. The electorate in midterms is different from the electorate in presidential years.
A new YouGov poll really gets at that. It has Dems up by seven points in the generic House ballot matchup, which is perfectly consistent with the averages showing it at six that we just mentioned. But the YouGov poll has Democrats leading by 23 points among those who are extremely enthusiastic about voting.
As you know, being a veteran of following politics, Michael, midterm election electorates tend to be highly educated, engaged voters. And so there are lots and lots of signs that Republicans could kind of sit out this election, especially without Trump on the ballot. Can you talk about that dynamic?
Cohen: I think that’s the biggest issue that we should be looking at between now and election day—these voters, Republican voters, who are not happy with Trump, but who are, as of now, still voting Republican. There’s this group, I guess called double haters, in which they don’t like the Democratic Party, but they’re not happy with Trump. And if those voters shift against the GOP, that’s when you see a real bloodbath.
But I mean, I think it’s important to point this out, that it’s still very hard for Democrats to do this. We’re still talking about a place like—take Alaska, right? Trump’s won all three of his elections there by double digits. Now you’re looking at a situation in which Democrats could potentially win a Senate seat. Right now they look like they’re pretty well positioned to do that. That’s a pretty crazy outcome.
In Texas, Democrats have generally done, you know, OK—I mean, OK at least in a red state. They haven’t lost by as big a margin as they’ve lost elsewhere. So you could see that begin to shift. But it’s really hard for any party, in so many places where they have done poorly, to all of a sudden overperform. And that’s what Democrats need to do. But again, the trend lines seem to be moving in that direction.
Sargent: You brought up the Alaska Senate race, so I will point out that in the nonpartisan primary that was just held in Alaska, the Democrat Mary Peltola got forty-eight percent of the vote. The leading Republican, Dan Sullivan, got forty-two percent of the vote. And so, God, that is a reason for optimism right there.
I mean, she’s beating the Republican right at this moment. Now, I don’t want to get too optimistic, but if you’re looking at Alaska really being in play, and now it looks like it’s really within reach for Democrats, you can start to see a path to the majority.
And so, I agree with you that Michigan heavily complicates the picture, but that is a real cause for optimism—Peltola being up.
Cohen: And it’s not just Peltola being up, it’s also Sullivan being, you know, in the low forties. An incumbent running for reelection—that’s usually a pretty bright red light that suggests you’re in serious trouble to win reelection. The thing with Peltola is that she’s won statewide before, right? She did this in, what, 2018, I believe—she won statewide, and she won again in 2020, and then she lost in 2022, in a bad environment for Democrats.
So I just think that she has a track record in Alaska. Sullivan appears to be an unpopular incumbent. The national environment is just terrible for Republicans. So yeah. And she’s leading every poll. So it does seem like she’s got a chance. But again, like I said a second ago, you have to remember, these are red states. And for Democrats—I mean, you could see Democrats win two or three Senate seats in red states.
I mean, I think we have to step back here and just realize for a second how unusual a situation we’re in right now, where you have this many Republican seats—places where Trump, again, won by double digits in many cases—competitive. This is just very unusual in our modern political environment. Keep in mind, right now, for example, there’s not a single Democratic senator in a state that Trump won three straight elections, right?
There’s one Republican senator in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, and that would be Maine, and that’s Susan Collins, and she looks like she might might lose. So, for Democrats to be competitive in Iowa, in Ohio, in Alaska, in Texas—states that again went for Trump all three times—is really unusual. And I think it speaks to just how deeply unpopular he is as president, and how much his unpopularity has hurt the Republican brand.
Sargent: Well, that brings us to Trump’s numbers. We had a new Reuters poll this week that has Trump’s approval rating down to a dismal 33 percent, 64 percent disapprove. Now, it’s possible that Donald Trump’s approval isn’t down at 33 percent. It isn’t quite that low, possibly.
But note this: Trump has just hit his lowest point ever in The New York Times average of polls, which has him at 37 percent approving, with 59 percent disapproving. The Times average is kind of conservative. It has a lot of data in it. For him to be twenty-two points underwater by those averages suggests maybe that the 33 percent that Reuters has might not be far from where he really is now. What do you think?
Cohen: I mean, it’s hard with polling these days, because you have a lot of lousy polling out there. I mean, if you look at, when the Times breaks it down to the select pollsters and their other pollsters—amongst the good pollsters, he’s doing rather poorly. What I think is most interesting about his numbers is, it’s not just that he is unpopular. It’s that he’s really unpopular.
You look at, like, his strong disapproval, it’s generally flirting around 50 percent, with the somewhat-disapprove, like, in the single digits. And people who don’t like Trump really don’t like Trump. And that, I think, is a little bit unusual. I mean, look, George Bush at the end of his second term was this unpopular—he was actually more unpopular, it was in the 20s, right?
But that was not before a midterm election. It was before a presidential election, 2008, in which Democrats did exceptionally well. So you know, I do think that the Trump factor here is what is driving all of this.
Sargent: But one other thing—I want to pick up on what you said about the strong disapproval of Trump, because I think people miss the importance of this. It’s not that unusual to see a poll in which 50 percent of the country strongly disapproves of Donald Trump. That is unbelievable.
And again, if you think about that in the context of the midterm electorate, then it becomes even more meaningful. Midterm electorates tend to favor the out party. They’re made up of more engaged voters. The voters who come out in a presidential race, maybe for a Donald Trump, don’t come out as much. And so the strong disapproval drives the turnout for the out party in a big way. I think those two things together, they really have synergy, and could mean a lot.
Cohen: You raise a really interesting point here, I think, that people won’t comment on, which is that when Trump’s not on the ballot, Republican candidates tend to underperform. So it’s not just that he’s unpopular. It’s that without him on the ballot, all those Trump voters who turn out for him are not going to turn out. I mean, traditionally they haven’t turned out.
And so if that happens again, it makes the Republican challenge that much greater.
Sargent: Maybe this is how we should think about it. To the people who approve of Trump, at least—you know, whoever’s left that still approves of him—Trump’s not on the ballot, right? But to the people who disapprove of Trump, Trump is on the ballot.
Cohen: Right. That’s right.
Sargent: They’re going out to vote against Donald Trump. He is on the ballot. They see this election as an opportunity to, A, register their profound disapproval of the president and their profound disapproval with the direction of the country, and B, put a check on Donald Trump. So you put all that together, and it starts to look like even more of a perfect storm, I think.
Cohen: I agree. I think it’s exactly right. I mean, look, I would have said to you a year ago that I thought this would be a bad midterm, because look, midterms are always bad for the party in power. Historically, they always lose seats. And you could say it would be worse for Republicans because Trump’s not on the ballot, you don’t have those occasional Trump voters.
So this was always going to be a rough cycle for Republicans. I think what’s made it potentially an historically bad cycle is just how unpopular Trump has become. And frankly, that Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot with some of these really lousy nominees.
Sargent: Yeah. And just allowing for the point you raised earlier—which is that things could start shifting the other way if Republican voters come home, you know, that’s all very possible. There’s still a long way to go here. Anything can happen. But there are a lot of things falling into place right now.
CNN’s Harry Enten caught something really interesting, which is that Trump is absolutely bleeding Hispanic men. Enten pointed out that Trump won that demographic, Hispanic men, by ten points in 2024. But now, in CNN polling, his net approval among them is minus 41 points. And so I think this is significant, because it’s like another way in which the Trump coalition is falling apart.
Hispanic men were the big success story for the GOP in 2024. Reams and reams of punditry were produced that said that this shows that there was a major realignment underway. It’s all gone now. Hispanic men, according to Enten, favored the Democrats by twenty points, and Enten thinks this will have a, quote-unquote, “massive impact” on the midterms. In fact, he called the numbers bonkers, and they are bonkers. I mean, that’s just crazy stuff.
Cohen: No, they are. And if you look at—I mean, you could go back to last year, the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, some of the biggest overperformance by Democrats was in Hispanic districts, Hispanic areas, right? The drop-off in Hispanic support for Trump has been extraordinary.
And to your point—I mean, you said this Trump coalition. It was a coalition of convenience, right? The 2024 coalition that Trump won with, it was people who were upset with Biden, upset with Harris, upset with the state of the country. But those Hispanic voters have just, I think, more than any other demographic group, abandoned the Republican Party. And frankly, one of the reasons why I think Texas is—why I think Talarico has a good chance of winning—is because the drop-off in support among Hispanics in Texas has been extraordinary. And they’re a huge part of the electorate there. And that alone could be enough for Talarico to win.
So I agree with you. I mean, I think that is an underappreciated part of this. Look, Hispanic voters are localized in just a few states—Florida, California, Texas. But in the places where they are, where they vote in big numbers, they can make a big difference. And I think Texas is the most interesting place to see how much that bleeding of Hispanic support really hurts the Republican Party.
Sargent: Yes. And I think we should point out here as well that the successes that Republicans had in some of those South Texas counties that are very Hispanic-heavy were kind of seen as the locus of this realignment for Trump and Republicans.
And so for those Texas Hispanics to now be shifting back toward Democrats once again shows how absurd it was to read Trump’s one-point-five-point victory in 2024 as a major realignment moment, right?
Cohen: Don’t get me started on this topic. I mean, it just makes me crazy. All of the punditry about 2024, I think, just kind of missed the mark to a large extent. This was a 1.5-point victory, as you said—one of the lowest margins of victory in a presidential election in recent memory. And, it was really a backlash against the party in power.
And look, we’ve been going through this cycle every two years, right? 2016, you could say it was a backlash to Democrats. 2018, a backlash to Trump. 2020, a backlash against Trump again. 2022, backlash against Biden. 2024, backlash against Biden. 2026, a backlash against Trump. This is how these cycles go.
We were living in a period of extreme anti-incumbency, of anti-system politics. And, you know, it was not reasonable to believe that Trump would be able to hold this coalition—also because he’s, you know, he doesn’t seem to care about politics. He cares about going after his political enemies, and he cares about his little pet projects. He is not a politician who seems interested at all in growing the Republican Party, in helping it prosper. I don’t even think he cares. I really don’t think he cares at all.
And that is a problem for the party. And he has pushed them, the Republicans in the House and the Senate, to follow through on an agenda that is unpopular. And he has overreached, right? He acted as though he had this huge mandate, and that led him to pursue this policy on immigration enforcement that has created enormous backlash, not just among Hispanics, but among a whole host of Americans. He went forward with the tariff thinking that had broad support. Guess what? That’s creating a huge backlash.
And in a place like Iowa, it could actually cost Republicans the governorship, the Senate, and a couple of House seats. So I do think that, you know, we really do need to go back and look to 2024 and recognize that this was a response, a backlash, to Trump, to Harris, and to Biden. But it was not creating a new coalition, not by any means.
Sargent: So just to review all this very quickly: there’s been a huge shift in a Pennsylvania state legislative district toward Dems. Mary Peltola is looking very good in Alaska. Hispanics are abandoning Trump in enormous numbers. Trump’s approval is down at 33 percent in a new poll and down at 37 percent in the New York Times averages. And Democrats are plus six or plus seven in the generic ballot, and are winning by double digits among very, very engaged voters.
Those pieces all together, they paint a pretty good picture, I think, Michael.
Cohen: They do. I mean, look, again, we have two months to go until the election, and it’s easy, I think, for Democrats to get really excited about where things are going. But I think, as it stands, the trend lines point in one direction, and that is for Democrats to do well. I mean, at this point, I think—the chance Democrats take the House—I would be stunned if they did not end up taking the House. And the Senate, again, that it’s in play really says a lot about the direction American politics has gone.
But I think Democrats need to understand something, which is that if they do well in the midterms, it is not because they have convinced Americans they have the best plan for fixing the economy, or they have the best plan for health care, or they’re better on immigration. They will have won because they’re not Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That is the source of their success over the past year or so, and will, I believe, likely be the source of their success in November. But I think we have to be very clear as to what’s happening here. This is an anti-incumbent wave, OK? It’s not a pro-Democratic wave.
Sargent: Well, you know how politics is, man. The second things go your way, you think that it’s a realignment, just like they did.
Cohen: Right. Exactly. That’s exactly it. And I think both parties get into huge danger when they overanalyze or over-determine what happens in an election, right? I mean, a lot of what happens in November is going to have nothing to do with the campaigns Democrats won, right? I mean, some of it will. But it’ll have a lot more to do with the fact that Republicans are unpopular. That’s the biggest thing. And I think Democrats need to understand that.
And they need to have a plan for that when they go into 2028—to understand that, like, they haven’t made the case to Americans. Although, having said that, because, you know, how unpopular Trump is—this whole cycle feels like 2006, 2008 to me. 2006, Democrats had a huge victory in the second midterm for W. Then you go into ‘08, you have the Great Recession, you have the war, people are upset about that, Democrats got an even bigger victory in 2008. I think that’s kind of where things are going. But as you remember, in 2010, what happened to the Democrats? They got their butts kicked. So be careful. That’s what I said.
Sargent: All extremely well said. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Michael Cohen’s Substack, Truth and Consequences. Michael, awesome to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Cohen: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Greg.