The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 8 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’s tailspinning continues. A striking analysis from CNN shows Trump’s approval is lower right now than many previous presidents’ numbers were just before the midterms. Meanwhile, new leaks are exposing fresh GOP panic about Trump’s unpopularity, and we’re also learning that Trump world itself seems to be bracing for a big loss. All of which raises a question: Are conventional midterm patterns reasserting themselves, even at a time when Trump has upended our politics so dramatically?
We’re really lucky to be talking about it all with veteran political handicapper Charlie Cook, who has a new piece on his Substack on why the GOP is in such a tough position this cycle. Charlie, thanks so much for coming on.
Charlie Cook: Thanks for having me on, Greg.
Sargent: Let’s start with this CNN analysis. Using an average of polls and CNN’s own polls, it finds Trump’s approval right now at 35 percent. By contrast, Biden was at 41 percent before the 2022 midterms, Obama was at 43 percent in 2014 and at 50 percent in 2010, and George W. Bush was at 41 percent in 2006 and 66 percent in 2002, which was just after 9/11. By this metric, Trump’s the lowest of this millennium, Charlie. What do you make of all that?
Cook: Well, my guess is he’s more like 37, 38, 39, 40. But still, your point’s still valid. Midterm election dynamics happen for a reason, and that is, you get two years into a presidency, and people in the president’s party are generally lethargic. They may be satisfied, but obviously sometimes they’re just not terribly motivated. The other side’s on fire, particularly in this era of hyperpartisanship. And the pure independents are really, really fickle, and tend to get buyer’s remorse. So that’s sort of the normal stuff.
You look at what Bill Clinton had done prior to ‘94, what George W. Bush had done prior to 2006, what Barack Obama had done prior to 2010—you could take all that combined and not quite get the level of sort of radioactivity that you see with many of the things that President Trump has done. And so it shouldn’t be surprising.
Sargent: Yes, it’s a whole bunch of structural factors plus Donald Trump, basically. I think that’s the size of it, right?
Cook: Yeah. I mean, you take Iran—after promising no more wars and all that—but fuel, fertilizer, no more wars, you take tariffs, and all this goes to the heart of his base, of, you know, small-town, rural, farm, all of that. Redecorating the White House in Washington, self-aggrandizement, alienating allies, depleting military stockpiles. I mean, it’s just, like, all coming together. But it’s manifesting itself in places that you wouldn’t have expected.
Sargent: So Politico reports that Republicans are really nervous about how badly Trump is dragging them down, and they’re leaking word that they’re in a bind. They can’t get distanced from Trump without risking alienating Trump and MAGA voters, who they already need to be more energized this fall, but they can’t get too close to Trump because he’s too toxic. And a lot of those MAGA voters, as you alluded to, are already very discouraged.
You had a good line in your piece: a critical mass of factors. Men and MAGA—a lot of men, men not wanting to pay big bucks for gas for their big vehicles, rural voters hurt by fertilizer costs, and so forth. It all piles on top of each other. Charlie, I think the basic point here is Republicans can’t count on their base this time, which makes it even harder to talk to the middle. Can you explain all this?
Cook: Yeah. I mean, bases, as I talked about a little while ago, bases are always hard. But to have the people that are generally the most enthusiastic for you uniquely hurt—now, that’s new territory. And previous presidents have sort of given some degree of license to their members, that if you need to put some distance between us, go ahead. And that’s just not Donald Trump’s MO.
But President Trump is basically radioactive with independent voters, with pure independents. And because so few of the congressional districts are in competitive places, and so few of the Senate races were in even states that ought to be competitive at all, that seemed likely to limit the potential damage for Republicans.
But we’re looking at extraordinary numbers, like in Alaska and Iowa and Ohio and Texas. And meanwhile, where Democrats seem to be struggling, it’s largely self-inflicted injuries, like Maine and Michigan. So it’s a fascinating situation to see. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
Sargent: Right. And just to bear down on your point a little, I think what you were gesturing at is that Trump’s numbers are just absolutely terrible with independents. I don’t think we’ve seen a president do this badly with independents in some time. A
nd the result of that is that where Trump won by double digits in a number of different states, all of a sudden there’s a double whammy facing the Republican candidates in those states, which is: one, the base voters have been uniquely hurt by Trump’s policies, and two, he has a unique level of toxicity with independents. Is that more or less the kind of toxic brew we’re talking about here?
Cook: Yes, I think so. But I mean—and I tend to be a poll snob, and in terms of state-level polling, I sort of disregard most of the garbage that’s out there, or all the garbage that’s out there. But for state-level polling, the stuff that The New York Times is doing is fabulous. The Fox News—you can like Fox, not like Fox, but their polling is very, very good, and with a bipartisan team. As does the AARP, and they’ve released surveys in four of these key states.
So just looking at those, President Trump’s approval ratings are running six to fourteen points below his showing in 2024 in these key states. It averages about 10. That’s a heck of an underperformance that’s there.
And it means, practically—when it translates into candidates, when you look at the matchups, in every case the Democrat’s doing better among Democrats than the Republican is among Republicans. The Democrats are doing far better among independents. Democrats are doing better among women than Republicans are with men.
I mean, sort of category after category, it just kind of mounts up. And it’s creating something that really is kind of unlike anything I’ve seen in the, you know, fifty-odd years I’ve been around this business.
Sargent: Yes, he’s double digits behind his 2024 totals in a number of these really important states. That’s the undertow that Republicans are dealing with. The Washington Post had some amazing reporting on how Republicans now fear, additionally, on top of all this, that Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is not going to spend much of its $400 million on the congressional races. In fact, Trump is now running ads about his own accomplishments, and running them nationally.
On top of all this, a source leaked to the Post that Trump and his team think their fundraising ability will take a huge hit after the midterms. And that, of course, gives Trump a reason not to spend much of it now on Republicans, who he doesn’t seem to care at all about. Charlie, I mean, I think that means Trump and his team are pretty nervous about losing in the midterms and think that’s a likely outcome, right?
Cook: Well, I mean, I think it’s not a news flash that Donald Trump cares more about himself and his own feelings than he cares about his party. I mean, that just goes without saying. Now, this is where I break with most of my traditional journalistic brethren. I think money is so overrated as an influence.
The system is awash in money. Each side, in competitive races—saturation point, it’s already occurred. I mean, I live in Maine now. It’s been wall to wall for months and months and months. And all money’s not equal—candidate money goes farther, in terms of the lowest unit rate with the FCC that broadcasters can charge, and all that. So the money part—that doesn’t drive my feelings whatsoever.
But what is much more—for anyone who voted for President Trump, they’ve got to wonder, is this what I voted for? This is not what I had in mind in September and October and November of 2024. And this isn’t the cruise they signed up for. And they’re reacting the way somebody might when they’ve been the victim of bait and switch.
Sargent: Yeah, absolutely. I just think it’s pretty interesting that Trump’s own team seems to think he’s going to lose the midterms, which is why they don’t want to spend the money now. They’re worried that they’re going to take a fundraising hit if they lose, and won’t be able to raise as much later.
Cook: Well, I think—I’m originally from the South, and the old saying, trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I think they’re faced with a situation, and now they’re having to rationalize it or explain it. But if he opened the spigot up today, they would be ecstatic about spending the money before sundown, you know? So I think there’s a certain amount of trying to soft-pedal the impact of this.
Sargent: So in your piece, you laid out three scenarios for the GOP. The bad one is a loss of fifteen to twenty-five House seats and a loss of two or three in the Senate, which would allow Republicans to keep one chamber, the upper chamber. The really bad one, as you described it, would cost Republicans twenty-six to thirty-five House seats and four or five seats in the Senate—that would lose them both chambers. And then there’s the horrible one, which costs them even more House seats and six to eight Senate seats.
You said in your piece that the really bad one is the most likely. Why is that?
Cook: Well, first—even the really bad one, if I read what I wrote six months ago, I would have thought I’d been on some kind of mushrooms or something. I mean, it just didn’t seem possible, didn’t seem realistic. But we’re seeing what we’re seeing. And because Republicans are so underperforming in places that should be gimme-putt states—we have to, in districts, kind of sit back and recalibrate, that the normal rules, even for midterm elections, don’t seem to be applying here. It’s just that much more. And I sure as hell never expected to see this situation happen.
Sargent: Well, in two out of three of your scenarios, you have Democrats winning the Senate. Can I ask what makes you conclude that, maybe in a little more detail? And also, how seriously do you take Kansas, where a Democrat is making it unexpectedly competitive, and Nebraska, where an independent is making it a real race?
I tend not to think that those types of things come through. But I will say, if there’s an environment in which you’re going to get surprises, it’s this one. So what’s your overall take on all that?
Cook: No, actually, we’re in the same place. To me—close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And you’re going to see Democrats do better than they have in generations, but in some of these cases it’s going to still be short of a majority, or short of what they need to win. But they’ll be beating the point spread, no question about it.
But I mean—and I was as skeptical, more skeptical than almost anybody else, about Mary Peltola in Alaska. Because, to me, come on, you know, yeah, you won a special election and one House general election, but you had Sarah Palin and Nick Begich—Mark Begich—one of the Begiches on the ballot about the same time. That was underwhelming. And you look at—you kind of go case after case after case, and you look at Paxton, where, how can a Republican lose?
And actually, there’s one other point here, and that is: think about where it would be if Joe or Jane, generic Republican, were in the White House, or a Democrat was in the White House. Number one, would Thom Tillis be running for reelection in North Carolina? Probably. Which means Roy Cooper probably wouldn’t be running.
Would Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, be running for the Senate? Good chance. And would have an excellent chance of beating Jon Ossoff. Would John Cornyn be the Republican nominee in Texas today, and cruise into an easy win? Yes.
And so there’s sort of the electoral impact, and then there’s all the fights he’s picked with sort of more normie Republicans, who say, I don’t need this, I don’t want any part of this—or, in the case of Cornyn, tried to hang on and couldn’t.
So it’s sort of lots of different things coming together in, like, a perfect storm for Republicans. And, you know, Republican consultant types, they’ve got to be beside themselves—that, you know, they’ve seen disasters, but not like this one.
Sargent: So yeah, just to sort of wrap up what you’re saying there, you’re essentially saying that if you didn’t have Donald Trump in the White House, all these little pieces wouldn’t be falling into place, but now they are. And then on top of that, if I understand you correctly, all of a sudden you look at James Talarico in Texas, and it’s actually possible. And you look at Mary Peltola in Alaska, and it’s actually possible. And you look at Sherrod Brown in Ohio, which Trump has turned, let’s face it, into a red state—you look at that and you say, Sherrod Brown is possible.
All of a sudden all the pieces are there, right? That’s the essence of what you’re saying. And it’s all because of Donald Trump, more or less, right?
Cook: Yes. But the—using the word “possible,” I think it kind of underrates a bunch of races that are more or less 50-50, which I find unfathomable. You look at some of these, where—Alaska, the last time a Democrat won presidential was Lyndon Johnson in ‘64. The last Democrat to win a Senate seat was 2008, a governorship in 2002. You look at Iowa. Harkin was the last, in 2014, to hold a Senate seat—hadn’t won a governor’s race since 2006.
You kind of go through, it’s like this—we’re looking at things that hadn’t happened. And I think a lot of it, or most of it, is Trump. But some of it is just Republicans having been in for so long that when people are really, really, really unhappy, it tends to permeate, and it spreads way beyond where you might think.
In the South, we say, yeah, when Mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Well, these voters aren’t happy at all, and they’re taking it out in ways that we had not seen in a really long time.
Sargent: Well, just to wrap this all up—I started this out by saying that, you know, maybe conventional patterns in midterms are reasserting themselves, which is a bit of a surprise given how Donald Trump has made everything topsy-turvy. But I think maybe, after talking to you, it’s a bit of a different story, which is: you’ve got the conventional patterns in a sense reasserting themselves, in the sense that the out party is hyper-energized and the in party is very discouraged.
But you layer on top of that this Donald Trump factor, which just supercharges everything. He’s actually supercharging the conventional patterns, in the sense—he’s really unpopular, he’s really hated by Democrats, and he’s fucking his own base in every which way. So he’s really making them discouraged. I think that might be the big story.
Cook: Yeah. I mean, my base case for the last year and a half has been that the patterns would reassert themselves—OK?—which would translate into Republicans losing a couple Senate seats, and losing, you know, less than normal because of the map this year, that they’d lose, you know, a dozen, two dozen House races. That was my base case. But we’ve now left far beyond that. I mean, I made fun—in my mind, when I heard people six months ago saying stuff like this—but the data didn’t support it then. And right now, the data does support that Republicans are just underperforming in places that have just been gimme putts, as I said earlier. It’s astonishing what’s happened here.
Sargent: It really is. The Donald Trump factor, folks. Charlie Cook, really, really awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on with us.
Cook: Thank you, Greg.