BILL KRISTOL:
Hi, I’m Bill Kristol. Welcome back to Conversations. I’m very pleased to be joined again today by my friend Ron Brownstein, senior political analyst at CNN and Bloomberg opinion commentator. Has written many books, articles, important pieces over the year. I think really our leading student, but I’ll just be polite to our friends around, and say one of our leading students of elections and politics in general, of course, but particularly of elections. We had a conversation at the very end of December. I think it was the day before New Year’s Eve, December 30th or something. And I looked back at it recently and it stands up very well. You predicted I think more or less where we might be now or what the variables would be. I think you said the economy is important, and I guess it turned out the gas… People aren’t in love with having gas prices go up and inflation go up.
But anyway, but we really want to get your wisdom today on where we stand halfway through this election year basically, what the big picture is, what we should be looking at, and particularly in terms of what’s going to happen this November, especially in the Senate and the House, the federal elections, but also maybe some governor’s races if you want to weigh in on those. So first of all, thanks for joining me, and people need to read you…
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Thanks for having me again. We got to stop meeting like this.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, exactly. Well, I’d like to get you on camera in between your attending all the Springsteen concerts.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
Wrote that excellent book on rock music and all that. And you are a genuine Bruce Springsteen fan, right?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
I am a genuine fan. I am at 99 shows lifetime. So I’m trying to debate. I’m hoping the number 100 is going to be in a suitably wonderful place.
BILL KRISTOL:
It could be in exile. It could be like—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, truly. Truly.
BILL KRISTOL:
… In Canada after the next…
RON BROWNSTEIN:
You could find your visa revoked or passport.
BILL KRISTOL:
Okay. So big picture, where are we halfway through 2026?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, I think basically that we are where we were last December with each side of the equation even more intensified now than it was then. I have felt for a while that this election, this midterm election, leaving aside, which we should come back to, the questions of interference in the election, but assuming it’s a relatively free and fair election, it looks like the classic collision between the irresistible force and the immovable object. The irresistible force is the elevated share of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s performance as President, which has increased since last December, and is now running consistently around 60% of voters or adults, depending on the poll, say they disapprove of Trump’s performance as President. His ratings on the economy are even lower than that. And historically, that has meant a really bad election for the party in the White House.
And you could say you can kind of track that Trump disapproval as the motor or the engine propelling a wave that in many ways looks to be growing bigger for Democrats. The other side of the equation though is the immovable object. And that is that this election in both the House and the Senate is going to be fought out primarily on Republican leaning terrain. That’s the seawall for Republicans. And that seawall, they have been making the seawall even bigger than it was last fall, through all of the gerrymanders in the House, and I think through some of the developments in the Senate, particularly the Democratic choice of Graham Platner as their nominee in Maine. So you’ve got simultaneously, I think, a lot of reasons to believe that the wave that is developing even with one caveat looks even bigger than it did last December, but the seawall that Republicans are constructing looks even higher. And the question is can the wave get over the wall?
BILL KRISTOL:
No, that’s a very helpful metaphor. And I think unlike all metaphors, actually a helpful one in the sense of a truthful one. One just quick question on the approval rating stuff. Am I right? I’m struck at how high Trump’s strong disapproval is.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, it’s [inaudible].
BILL KRISTOL:
It’s around 50%, and then his strong approval 21%, 22%-ish, I think usually. So then he has another 15% weak somewhat approvers and another 10% somewhat disapprovers roughly. Am I right just to assume that that matters a little more than, you can imagine those somewhat approving, somewhat disapproving types, switching a little bit over the next four or five months. But if you’re strong disapproval at 50% and strong approval at only 22% or something, that’s pretty low, right? Just historically.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, no. And there are two kind of things that flow out of that. First, people look at the differential between strong approval and strong disapproval as an indicator of turnout. But it’s not only an indicator of turnout, and it’s also an indicator of vote intention. Historically, we’ve seen in midterm elections, generally speaking, as we’ve talked about before, the assessment of the sitting President’s performance has become the single most important factor in midterm elections. North of 85% of people who disapprove of the President, almost always vote—again in the 21st century particularly—almost always vote against his party in the midterm election, and north of 85% of people who approve of him vote for his party. But the relationship, as you might expect, is even more lopsided among the strong approvers and disapprovers. And one of the reasons that the Republicans fare so poorly among voters who disapprove of Trump is that so many of them strongly disapprove.
I think it was in both of his, in both 2018 and 2020, something like 95% of voters who strongly disapproved of Trump voted Democratic for the House. And among somewhat disapprovers, you can get more variation, like Biden did surprisingly. Democrats did surprisingly well in ’22 among voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden. That was one of the ways they held down their overall losses. But there really is no way out among people who strongly disapprove. It is highly likely that somewhere around 95% of the strong Trump disapprovers are going to vote Democratic in the midterm. And as a result, if half of the electorate is in November strongly disapproved of Trump, you can do the math. That takes you right up around to 50% of the national popular vote by itself, before you even get to the somewhat disapprovers. And usually the party out of the White House gets at least a few of the somewhat approvers.
So if Trump’s disapproval is at 58% or 60% overall, man, I would kind of say maybe 57% on election day, you do the math. That is a substantial popular vote loss shaping up.
BILL KRISTOL:
And one thing you’ve stressed in the past, and I think it’s really worth walking through a bit though, is of course these elections are held in states—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, right.
BILL KRISTOL:
…Or in congressional districts. And so how much do we know? Can one sort of figure out therefore where Trump would be? If you don’t have actual polling state by state often, always, you do sometimes actually, but certainly not by congressional district, again, you do sometimes, of Trump’s approval and disapproval. But is it sort of predictable given the general tilt of these districts? If it’s a Republican-ish state, his disapproval won’t be 58%, it’ll be 49%. How does that work?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
And that’s really going to matter. Yeah, I think you can kind of extrapolate in two ways. One is states have a kind of consistent and natural relationship to what political strategists sometimes call the waterline. The waterline is Trump’s national approval rating. And states exist in a predictable, they align, line up in a predictable order next to that. So yeah, if he’s at 39%, 40% nationally, he’s going to be higher than that in Ohio than Texas, but not as high as he would be in Wyoming and maybe West Virginia. And people have done this. I saw one of the political data websites yesterday doing an analysis of where they put Trump in all the states actually. And right now, if he is really at 38%, 39% nationally, which is I think where he is now, if he is really a 38%, 39% nationally, I think it’s highly likely he’s going to be below 50% in probably all of the Senate states that both sides are seriously contesting. And where exactly he is on that continuum is really important.
Whether he’s just above 50% or just below 50% in places like Ohio, Texas, Alaska, and Iowa, really matter a lot. Because in his first term, as we’ve talked about before, in Trump’s first term in 2018 and 2020, Susan Collins was the only Republican Senate incumbent or challenger who won in a state where more voters disapproved than approved of his job performance. The only one. There were Democrats who won, particularly in 2018 in states where democrats, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin, they won in 2018 in states where Trump’s net approval was positive, but no Republican except for Susan Collins in his first term won in a state where his net approval was negative. And I suppose it is possible that in Texas maybe, Trump could be one point negative and there’s enough residual resistance to Democrats that Paxton could still win.
Maybe in Ohio, Trump could be won, two points negative. But there are not a lot of Republicans who are going to win anywhere, I think, where Trump is more than two points negative in his job approval. So exactly where he falls out in these states on election day is going to be really critical to the outcome.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, that’s so interesting. And is there some history of… His approval’s been drifting down, not drifting down, moving down, I would say. Not cascading down, but kind of a point a month, but that adds up, right? Or even two thirds or three quarters of a point a month. Do we have any sense historically whether that usually stabilizes in the summer and the fall of an off-year election year, or does it just the trend continue, or it’s just unpredictable? It depends on events.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Historically, the generic ballot, which is the other big measure in a midterm, moves against the party in the White House between the spring and the fall. That is kind of the historic relationship. Trump’s approval in 2018 in the exit poll was 45%. 68% of voters in the 2018 exit poll described the economy as excellent or good.
BILL KRISTOL:
Wow.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
It’s possible it will be the reverse this time. It could be 68% of voters describing the economy in negative terms, and Trump’s approval seems to me very unlikely to get back to 45%. Now, I don’t think it will be as low as it is today, especially if the war ends and gas prices come down a little. In this polarized modern environment, for a President to be at 35% or 39% or even 35% in some of these polls, that is really, really low. So it would not shock me if Trump was slightly north of 40% on election day in the exit poll, but I think it is unlikely that he is going to get all the way back to 45%.
And if you go back to 2018, say, look at 2018, the 45% national translated into 49%- 49% in Texas. And Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke because Ted Cruz won slightly more of the Trump approvers than Beto won of the Trump disapprovers. But overall, going back to this Susan Collins experience, throughout Trump’s entire first term, Bill, she is the only Republican Senator or Senate challenger who won more than 8% of people who disapproved of Trump, according to the exit polls. No one else won more than 8%. She won 23%. And this is continuing. If you look at the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races last year in the exit poll, again, partly because of what you said, because so many people disapproved strongly of Trump, Sherrill and Spanberger both won around 93% of Trump disapprovers. Even Jay Jones, the Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia who had kind of problems. He had a few problems texting about killing political rivals. He won 89% of Trump disapprovers.
And again, that is the number. In Trump’s first term, every Democratic Senate candidate or incumbent, won at least 89% of people who disapproved Trump. We saw that again in the ’25 results. Now, what could be different this time? Well, a couple things that could be different that could move that number down a little is that you have a reasonable number now of Republicans. More Republicans now disapprove of Trump than in his first term. And I suppose you can create a, in your mind, it’s not hard to imagine that, so therefore there might be more people who say they disapprove of Trump, but still vote Republican. I could see that happen. The other thing that’s different than 2018 is that we had the Biden presidency in the interim. And as a result, images of the Democratic Party are more negative now than they were then.
So you could imagine maybe that way, somewhat more Trump disapprovers, especially the somewhat disapprovers might say, “Yeah, but I don’t like the alternative.” But overall, it’s going to be something very close to 90% of people who disapprove of Trump voting Democratic, both for the House and in the key statewide races if history is any kind of guide. And that means every point of his approval and disapproval is going to be absolutely crucial to the outcome.
BILL KRISTOL:
After our last conversation, a friend who is pretty knowledgeable, said, “You guys are maybe too obsessed with the Trump approval and disapproval. These are candidates. They matter.” And I said, yes, but my sense is if, and I think this is what you were saying in the data show, especially if the p arty that controls the White House also has control of Congress for two years. And especially if that party has had an aggressive agenda and a polarizing agenda, and on top of all the polarization of the last 25 years and sorting of the last 25 years. It’s not irrational… Put it this way, it would be predictable in a way that the approval of the President of that party, when his party in Congress is yoked to him as the Republicans have chosen to do, especially, is going to drive the agenda, because it’s going to drive the vote, and it’s not irrational of voters either. Then my friends said, “Well, voters are being so simple-minded, don’t they care about the individual candidates?” But you know what? But what matters the most—I feel this way as a voter—what matters the most, what matters the most is, does Donald Trump get his agenda ratified, his appointments, his Supreme Court nominations, his cabinet selections, his tax bills, his immigration policy, his ballroom, whatever you want, does he get all this stuff semi-automatically? Not in the ballroom, I guess, gets ratified or does it get blocked? And after two years of everything getting…You know, Republicans very loyal to Trump, I just don’t think… I think voters… don’t know, I thought I’d say this because I thought it’d help to explain to my friend at least. Voters aren’t being like idiots.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
No.
BILL KRISTOL:
They’re not being like these simple-minded, “Oh, I don’t like Trump. Therefore, I don’t like Republicans.” They’re making a kind of rational calculation of where they want the country to go over the next two years or not go.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
A very rational calculation. Congress is behaving in a more parliamentary manner than it used to be. You basically have, particularly in the House, them ceding control of the country’s agenda to the President. And they are voting, party line voting is at all time highs. The Republicans in the House in particular have basically said just, “Thank you. Can I please have another, sir?” And it is not irrational in that world for voters to treat voters also, to treat these as fundamentally parliamentary elections. I have said for years that the name on the back of the jersey no longer matters as much as the color on the front of the jersey. And to your friend’s point, if you look at the landscape today, there are 25 states that have voted for Trump in all three of his presidential runs. Republicans now have all 50 of their Senate seats. There are 19 states that have voted against Trump all three times. Democrats have 37 of their 38 with Susan Collins as the only exception. That isn’t all because of candidate quality. That isn’t because Republicans are consistently running better candidates in all these states. It’s because people are aligning how they feel about the president with how they vote for the House and Senate. When Reagan was reelected—I think the number was in ’84—there were 192 House members in districts that voted the other way for president. Almost all of them rural and Southern Democrats in places that voted for Reagan. What do we have now? Before the redistricting, I think we had 19, one tenth as many. Three House Democrats and 16 House Republicans in districts that voted the other way for president.
Congress is behaving as a more parliamentary institution and voters rationally are treating their vote as a more parliamentary vote on which side they want to set the nation’s course. Now, there are, at the margins, exceptions. There could be extreme exceptions, like Collins and Platner. And then there are the candidates, as I said, who may be able… through the strength of their personal kind of relationship with voters, they can survive an environment slightly tilted against them. Roy Cooper, I think could win if Trump was 50, 49 approval in North Carolina. Sherrod Brown might be able to win if Trump is 50, 49 in Ohio.
But once you start getting beyond that, I think the party effect outweighs the candidate effect. And it will be very hard for candidates on either side. Like I said, when we come back after election day, I’ll be interested in how many Republicans win in a state where 52% or more disapprove of Trump and how many Democrats win in a state where 52% or more approve of Trump. I would be shocked if that list is very long on either side.
BILL KRISTOL:
And you’d say the same basically about House races?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, I would. Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Interesting. Well, that really is key. And so, it’s such a change from when we got into this business.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
- Democratic—
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, in the Senate, if I could just… When I got to Washington… I might have this number off by one or two, but to Washington, I think in a majority of the states, 26 in [inaudible], half the states had one Senator from each party. And so, by definition, if you think about it—Reagan won 49 states in 1984—half of the states Reagan won had a Democratic Senator, which is kind of… There were states that had two of each, but they were not the—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
And in fact many of them, Bill, many of them had two Democratic senators.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, that’s true too.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
The 25 states Trump won three times is the most that either party has won in three consecutive elections since Reagan, Reagan-Bush, ’80, ’84, ’88. At the end of that sequence in the ’80s, in 1989, Democrats had a majority of the Senate seats in the states that voted three times for Reagan and Bush. And I’m pretty sure, in my memory, that they had a majority of the House seats as well in those states. And right now, as I said, Democrats have exactly zero of the 50 Senate seats in the states that voted three times for Trump. So, it is a very different world. Voters did look at the name on the back of the Jersey then. And honestly, the Democratic numbers were inflated because of the South at that point, where they still wouldn’t vote Republican down ballot even after they were voting for Nixon and Reagan for president.
But today, I think the whole thing just moves in a much more parliamentary fashion. These states, as we said, have an intrinsic relation to the waterline. The other thing that’s worth noting though, is the demography of Trump’s decline also matters. Because one thing that is really true, and we’ll talk more about the seawall, even before the gerrymandering, the seawall for Republicans is that both the House and the Senate is being fought out more than in 2018 in Trump country. In 2018, Democrats really won 30 of the 41 or 42 House seats. Three quarters of the House seats they won in 2018 had more white college graduates than the national average. They swept out almost all of the last Republicans who have been holding on in a kind of reverse of the Blue Dog Democrats, in places that have been voting Democratic or president for a long time.
But the result of that is that they don’t really have that many more of those targets left in ’26. They have the Tom Kean seat in New Jersey. They have the Don Bacon seat in Nebraska. Mike Lawler in New York. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania. But they really don’t have that many more seats that they can contest with a lot of the white college graduates who have moved away from the GOP under Trump and who fill the subscription lists of the bullpen, right?
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, right.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
So, what do they have? I mean, a disproportionate share of the House seats the Democrats are contesting in ’26, have a higher than the national average share of whites without a college degree. If you look at the Senate, eight of the 10 states that both sides consider more competitive have more whites without a college degree than the national average. Now, historically, obviously that’s why Republicans have been winning those places. I mean, Trump won two-thirds of whites without a college degree in each of his three races. They had their indisputable core of his coalition, the core of the modern Republican coalition. But look at what’s happened in 2026. There are now at least a dozen polls, national polls that show his approval rating among whites without a college degree down to right about 50/50, sometimes just below 50/50, sometimes just above 50/50. But in either case, way below his numbers with them in 2024. And that is what opens the door for Democrats to these heavily blue collar districts that they will be contesting in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania. And in the Senate, it’s what makes possible for Democrats to contest places like Iowa and Ohio, where there are a lot of blue collar whites. If Trump’s approval among blue collar whites in Ohio and Iowa is at 50/50 or below in November, Democrats can win that race. If it’s in the high fifties, it’s really hard for them. But if it is where it is nationally… And by the way, even this 50/50 national Trump approval among non-college whites overstates his standing in the places that matter, to your point before, because that 50/50 national includes white evangelicals, most of whom are non-college also. And in Ohio, there aren’t as many as those white evangelical non-college whites. And in Iowa, there are a bunch of them, but in Ohio there aren’t. I hate to get a little wonky here. Let’s see the NENCWs, as some Democrats call them. NENCWs, non-evangelical non-college whites, Trump’s approval is now well below 50%. And that is the number in a place like Ohio or Michigan, that could give Democrats a very strong position. Put Democrats in a very strong position.
BILL KRISTOL:
And so, I suppose the non-evangelical non-college are less likely to be moved by the culture issues and more likely to be moved simply by… not simply, moved by the economy, by inflation; is that right?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, right, absolutely. And they’re pretty culturally conservative, too, especially on immigration and crime. The NENCWs, I love saying that because it’s so absurd.
BILL KRISTOL:
You need to get a better nickname or something for them that people can use.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
I mean, I think of Mike Podhorzer, our former political director of the AFL-CIO, who always used to bang on me when I would write about the Republican strength among blue collar whites. He says, “Separate out the evangelicals,” because basically trying to make the case that labor isn’t as weak among their own members. There is some evidence that Trump, by the way, in 2024, Trump won a clear majority of non-college whites who are in labor unions. So, I mean, it isn’t like the Republican strength in blue collar white America is only among the evangelicals, but it’s less pronounced among those non-evangelical blue collar whites. And if you’re talking about Pennsylvania and those three House races, blue collar House races, Democrats are contesting, talking about Wisconsin, you’re talking about Michigan, talking about Ohio, all of those House races, that is a really big deal.
Iowa, there are more evangelicals again, and that’s why it’s just tougher for Democrats than even Ohio is. But again, if Trump’s approval is under 50 in those states, I think Democrats have a totally legitimate shot at winning any of them, including Texas.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. That’ll be a expensive race on both sides. But yeah, there’s a reputable poll out yesterday. We’re speaking here on what? June 10th? I mean, New York Times, Siena, I think with Talarico up two or three over Paxton.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah. I was confused by that. I saw the release with him up two or three, and then in the crosstabs, they have them as even. Look, I mean, the last few points are really hard for a Democrat in Texas. I mean, that was a 46/46 poll. And you have to say it’s easier for a Republican to get those last few points. But again, who are the Republicans? Think about the components of Trump disapproval or potential crossover vote. Trump is really… among Harris voters, he’s at like, 97-zero in Trump approval. Almost all of them strongly disapprove. That is going to be a marker of high turnout. Independents, Trump is way underwater, particularly on the economy. It is likely that even in a state like Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska, Democrats are going to win independents by a pretty good margin. So, the question is… But even big Democratic turnout on winning independents probably isn’t enough anymore to win those four states, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas. You have to get either some Republican crossover or Republicans leaving the Senate line blank or Republicans staying home.
And again, Democrats are in position where all of those things could happen. They’re not guaranteed that they will happen. But they are in position where there is enough disaffection from Trump, particularly among traditional Republicans, that it’s possible in any of those states that you could see people leave the Senate race blank or stay home, or even a few of them more than usual crossover to vote for Democrats. So, I think that’s the least likely of the three.
BILL KRISTOL:
Two questions about what we’ve seen this year, that I want to talk about what we could see and what you’re looking for, the key variables out there in the world, and in the economy, and possible political events that might change things and move things one direction or another. It just takes a few points, as you say, to really change the numbers pretty dramatically in terms of the outcome. So, the two that you mentioned, the firewall and the gerrymandering. I mean, is there an approximate number to put on that? What is the Republican advantage going in compared to what the actual composition of the House is now?
And second, the other thing we’ve observed in addition to the other fact on the ground, so to speak, one is gerrymandering. The other is actual… We’ve had a majority of the primaries now, I think. And presumably, are there lessons to be drawn from turnout? I mean, that’s, I think, traditionally with something people have looked at a little bit to see which party has more enthusiasm and whose voters want to come out and vote. It’s a little distorted by whether they’re competitive races, but presumably that can wash out over the… if you have enough states, you’re accumulating. So, gerrymandering and—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, let’s see. So, on the turnout, all of the evidence from the special elections and the primaries is that Democrats are really energized and more energized than Republican partisans. I mean, you look at a state like Texas or Georgia, in 2018, in each case, there were more Republican than Democratic votes in the primary. This time it was the reverse. North Carolina, there was a big differential with many more Democratic than Republican votes in the primary. Other places, like Ohio, I think there were still more Republican votes. Iowa, there were still more Republican votes, but the gap was smaller than it has been in the past. And I mean, I think that, like we talked about before, you look at the Trump strong approved, strong disapprove numbers, all of these kinds of things point you toward the likelihood that there’s going to be a turnout edge for Democrats in ’26.
The wildcards that could push back against that are the extent to which Trump can mobilize his voters by focusing on Democrats and whether Alito or Thomas decide to retire on October 1st in the same way that the Kavanaugh nomination gave Republicans something of a turnout boost in 2018. I think we were taping one of these the day Kennedy announced he was retiring. I’m pretty sure I remember that. We were in a basement somewhere in D.C.
BILL KRISTOL:
I believe that’s called a studio. An elegant studio. It happened to be dark because that’s what studios are. But anyway, yes.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Back in those days.
BILL KRISTOL:
We were in a basement in D.C. though. You’re right.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
And back in the day when people were… pre-pandemic.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
When people were together and they were in studios and all of that. The net redistricting is going to help the Republicans. They probably added somewhere between six or eight or maybe even nine seats out of this. They start with three, that puts them up somewhere between 10 and 12. Democrats won 40 plus in 2018, when they won the popular vote by eight and a half. They’re probably not on track to do that again because there are fewer vulnerable Republican seats than there were then. In 2018, there were two dozen Republicans in districts that Clinton won in 2016. Now, before the redistricting, there were only three.
There are only four Republicans overall in districts where Trump won less than 45% of the vote in 2024, according to our friends at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia. So, that limits it, but there are still 29 Republicans right now in districts where Trump won somewhere between 46 and 54% of the vote, leaves Democrats enough to overcome the redistricting, although the ceiling on their potential majority I think is clearly smaller than it would’ve been without the regime. I will say that if you look at… Again, I look at the world a lot through this prism of the states that voted three times for Trump and the states that voted three times against Trump.
People would be surprised that they have the same number of House seats or about 192, I think, or 195. I should walk over to my credenza and look at the exact number, but roughly 190 House seats in each of them. And Republicans have definitely moved faster and more aggressively to gerrymander their seats. But the result is that if Democrats win any majority in the House in 2026, which I still think they’re strongly favored to do, they probably have more moves left to make in ’27, ’28, in terms of further gerrymandering than Republicans do. And there was a lot of resistance in blue states to doing this in this cycle.
There are more hurdles for Democrats doing it, like they’ve set up independent commissions and things like that. They have to go through constitutional amendments. But once it moved from a purely partisan play to a post-Callais Supreme Court decision, Republican moved to systematically erase Black congressional representation in the South. I think that has erased all hesitation among Democrats. And I think Democrats believe with good reason that every state where they can gerrymander in ’27 and ’28 will do so. Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, if they get unified control of government. Illinois. It becomes something of a… I think Democrats, again, for good reason, feel morally offended by what’s happening in the South. I went back and I looked, Bill, the loss of Black congressional representation in this election is likely to be greater than in any single election, even during the violent dismantling of reconstruction during the late 19th century. It is likely that this election will see more lack members of Congress eliminated than any single election in American history. And with that as the backdrop, I think you can be fairly confident that New York, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, again, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, if the Democrats win enough in the state legislature to make it possible, I think all of those states are going to act and you could see 15 Republican held House seats in the blue states eliminated before 2030. This is not a good thing for the country. In the end, it’s going to be minimal partisan advantage, maximal civic cost. But the job for Democrats in ’26, I think because of the gerrymandering has changed. I mean, their job is not to build a stable majority this year. It’s to get any majority and then try to reinforce it with their own gerrymandering in ’27 and ’28.
BILL KRISTOL:
Interesting. Okay. And then the other side of it was the turnout.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
You said it’s been consistently good for them.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, turnout’s been very high for Democrats. It’s been high in some places for Republicans and not so high in others. The special elections, the primary turnout, the polling, the Trump disapproval, they all point towards a differential.
BILL KRISTOL:
They all fit in the same.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, they all point in the same direction, towards a Democratic turnout advantage in ’26. And Trump is good at mobilizing Republican voters, especially in red states. So some of that advantage may dissipate by election day, but I do think you’re going to have what the political scientists call a partisan differential turnout all the way through the election. Again, that by itself is not enough necessarily to win in all the places Democrats have to win. Even winning independents may not be enough to win, although it could be in some of those House races, less so in those Senate contests. The key is going to be, do some of the Republican voters, particularly those new voters who moved toward Trump in ’24, young voters, non-white voters, blue collar non-white voters, do they switch? Do they skip the Senate race? Do they stay home? And the amount of that is going to determine whether Democrats get over the top. I mean, look at it again, from my prism in the 19 states that voted three times against Trump, Republicans are down to one Senator, Susan Collins. Democrats really have to beat her and we should talk about it because I think Graham Platner makes it a lot more complicated than it should be. But ultimately in the long run, if you look at the 25 states that voted three times against Trump, Democrats can’t cede all 50 of those Senate seats.
BILL KRISTOL:
For Trump, for Trump.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
For Trump, excuse me. The 25 states voted three times for Trump. Democrats, if you’re ceding all 50 of those Senate seats at the starting gun, you’ve got to win everything else, including all 12 in the six states that have flipped between voting for Trump and voting for a Democrat, and all 38 and the 19 anti-Trump states, and you’ve got to have the White House. So obviously for long-run competitiveness, Democrats have to break back into some of those three times Trump state, as recently as December 2017, they had eight of those 50 Senate seats and Trump has effectively eliminated them. So how do you rank them? Well, North Carolina is one of them and that’s obviously the best case, the strongest choice option for Democrats. I would say Alaska is next with Mary Peltola, who is a very strong candidate. Ohio after that was Sherrod Brown.
And then Iowa with Josh Turek and Texas with James Talarico probably are next for Democrats. Beyond that, you have the longer shots with independent candidates in Nebraska and Montana. You have a plausible Democrat in Kansas. Those are going to be very hard places for Democrats to win in this kind of modern polarized era. But if you can take Maine and add three, add North Carolina, which Trump only won narrowly, you would have to win two states that Trump won by double digits in ’24. If you can’t win Maine, you got to win three states in the Senate that Trump won by double digits in ’24, and that is asking a lot even in a wave year. So the Platner situation I think really complicates things.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, let’s talk about both Platner and also Michigan.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
And that’s before you get to… Democrats have to defend a couple of those switcher states.
BILL KRISTOL:
Well, that’s what I’m saying. So Michigan seems to be the other kind of question [inaudible]. Presumably they’ll be okay in Georgia. Ossoff looks strong. So the only other close state they have to defend, really close, I think is Michigan. So those are the two. And the Senate, the House, it is more a matter of numbers. You get one bad candidate somewhere, you lose one district out of 435. The Senate’s so narrow that each one matters. So say a word just analytically about what you think the situation is and could be in Maine and in where it’s a Republican seat in a Democratic state and Michigan where it has been a Democratic seat in a state that Trump has won two out of three times.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Right. Just to level us out real quick again, 25 states voted three times for Trump — 50-0 Republican in the Senate. Nineteen states voted three times against Trump — 37-1 Democrat in the Senate. Six states have flipped at any point in Trump’s reelections. Democrats now hold 10 of their 12 Senate seats. Democrats are defending two in the switcher states this time. And you noted John Ossoff looks to be in very strong position in Georgia. Michigan, Trump’s disapproval will be higher today than it was in 2018 and Democrats should be able to win that comfortably. And then they probably will if they nominate either of the women, Hailey Stevens in the House, Mallory McMorrow from the State Senate, Abdul-El Sayed, a Bernie candidate, it could get dicey. I said to you before that Susan Collins was the only Republican Senate candidate during Trump’s first term who held their Democratic opponent to less than 89% of Trump disapprovers.
I could see Mike Rogers doing that as well, the Republican candidate in Michigan, especially against El Sayed. I think that will be a tossup at best for Democrats, which is kind of where we are in Maine. Maine should not be difficult this time. Collins is weaker than she was in 2020. She stood on the Senate floor and basically promised that Brett Kavanaugh would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and he did. Donald Trump’s disapproval rating in Maine is now over 60%. It was 58% in the 2020 exit poll. And the state has been changed. The electorate has been changed by post COVID urban fleers from blue places to Portland and environs. So for all those reasons, Maine should be easier for Democrats than it was in 2020, but Platner is a real wildcard. I mean, Platner has real vulnerabilities. And I think the problem for Democrats is that his strengths are not particularly relevant to Maine and his weaknesses are extremely relevant to Maine.
So what do I mean by that? If Platner is good at anything, it should be at mobilizing younger non-voters in a kind of Bernie-esque way. There aren’t that many younger non-voters in Maine. It is one of the oldest states in the country. I mean, it’s not Wisconsin or Georgia where you have a lot of young people theoretically that you could bring into the process. And Collins won in 2020, most of all, because older white women who don’t like Trump stuck with her. If you look at either the exit polls or the AP VoteCast, Collins ran 15 points ahead of the Democratic nominee, Sara Gideon, among women 45 and older. When you and I started doing this, people did that. Nobody does that anymore. There’s no 15 point delta between the presidential vote and a Senate vote among a big demographic group anywhere anymore. So older white women who don’t like Trump but still vote for Collins is the core problem Democrats have to solve in Maine.
How well do you think Graham Platner is suited for that? Again, maybe Kavanaugh, Trump, it’s enough. But if you think about, if you draw in your mind the picture of a voter who is most likely to be unnerved and put off by all of the revelations about Platner and just kind of the picture of him as a human being that is emerging, I would say those older white women fit pretty close to the bullseye. So his vulnerabilities and Collins’ strength dangerously overlap. Maybe any Democrat can win in this environment, but I still think that Democrats have until July 13th for Platner to voluntarily withdraw. They would then have until July 27th to pick another candidate. And if you look at the governor race, you’ve got four candidates who are essentially tied in the low 20s, one slightly had the more centrist one, but you’ve got three candidates of the left, widely acceptable on the left.
Troy Jackson, Hannah Pingree and Shenna Bellows who are all showing broad support in the party over 20%. They would bring many of the assets that Platner does without the vulnerabilities. Democrats have until July 13th to think about whether they want to reconsider this. Can I say one last thing about this, Bill, real quick? I’d love to get your thought on it. I feel like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Ro Khanna are all so committed to proving that their model is the way back for Democrats. Their model of nominating intensely populist, lefty, anti-corporate, blue collar outsiders. They are so determined to prove that they are right, that they are ignoring the question of whether Platner is really still a viable vehicle to test that or Maine is the right place to test that. And as long as they stand behind him, he’s not going anywhere.
If he doesn’t win, Democrats don’t win the Senate, Trump confirms replacements for Alito and Thomas in ’27 and ’28. I think Sanders and Warren are going to have an awful lot to answer for.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. What was the formulation? I think you used this, I’ve seen you use this, that Sanders and Warren seemed to want to—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Beat Schumer.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, say it again. Beat Schumer.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
I think Sanders and Warren are more focused on beating Schumer in the primaries than they are in beating Collins in the general election.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. And I suppose Michigan, you could say the same, right, because [inaudible]? Same thing. Same thing in Michigan. So one thing you should recommend… that you’re recommending that people look for in terms of what could affect things is just these precise, these little deadlines, not little, these deadlines in Maine in the next month. And then I think the Michigan primary is the very beginning of August.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
August fourth, I think.
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah. Somewhere in August. Yeah. So those
RON BROWNSTEIN:
We made [inaudible] reservations the other day, so I should remember.
BILL KRISTOL:
Those two are things that will happen. What about in the broader world? Things that could happen. You mentioned the Supreme Court in passing. Let’s come back to that. But also I want to just put on the table, we’ve got confirmation fights with Todd Blanche, might bring the Epstein issue back. We’ve got a war going on. We’ve got gas prices wildly elevated and that’s related to the war obviously, but we have the economy in general, both inflation in particular, but also just the economy. Probably have other things I haven’t thought of. And of course, there are always some things that emerge out of nowhere. I guess I’ll put this question in two ways. How variable do you think things are and how much is sort of baked in, and then which of these things could or would you expect to be biggest? I said, if I could give you one fact on October 15th, what would you want that fact to be?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
So first of all, I think we’re mostly baked in and I think there are two things that have a significantly greater potential impact than anything else. I mean, one, the biggest one is the economy. Does Trump get the war over and do gas prices go down very much?
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah, they may not.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
They may not go down quickly. He said, again, they’re going to drop like a rock. I don’t think many economists think that, but I think the single most important thing for Republicans would be if Trump can get the war over, gas prices down a little, and his approval rating lift into the terrible but not catastrophic category of somewhere above 40%. Because as I said before, I don’t think he’s getting back to where he was in 2018 when Democrats again won the national popular vote by eight and a half points, and he’s going to be below that this time. The only other thing I think could be in that magnitude is a Supreme Court nomination, Supreme Court vacancy. And I don’t even think that would be in the same magnitude as the war and the ability to generate Republican turnout in the red state, again, especially in the Senate.
The Senate is being fought out in what have become red states. Democrats have let that get away from them. As I said, as recently as 2017, they held eight of the Senate seats in the 25 states that ultimately voted three times for Trump. Trump systematically, I think effectively, purged those Democrats, Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill, and Joe Donnelly, and all of the others and now they have zero. So they have to restore a beachhead in those states. And those are places, apart from North Carolina, every other one that they are seriously contesting, Trump won by double digits. I looked at this about a year ago. He won over 60% of white voters in all of those places. So they ultimately have to be able to contest there. And I do think that a Supreme Court nomination might not lift Republicans very much in Maine. It would hurt her in Maine actually, or Michigan. But in Ohio, Iowa, Texas, maybe even North Carolina, would it help them? Yeah. Yes, it would.
BILL KRISTOL:
You think even post Dobbs. I mean, I’ve heard people argue that that was… Republicans pretty clearly dominated Supreme Court fights for a couple of decades. They can mobilize their people for their various conservative causes overturning Roe being maybe the most important. But now the shoe’s kind of on the other foot and they’ve achieved a lot of their conservative events and conservative wishes. And we have the Callais decision on race and we have Dobbs, obviously. And I don’t know, is it possible Democrats could be as motivated if voters are reminded of how important the Senate is to confirming or not confirming Supreme Court justices?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah, but I think that will matter more in purple and blue states. I mean, I think the problem Democrats have in red states is that there’s no question there are cracks in Trump’s armor, and he probably today is net negative in approval in all of the places that Democrats have to win. All the red states Democrats have to win in the Senate. But Democrats are probably weaker today as well than they were in 2018 in all of those places after the Biden presidency. I mean, you served in the Reagan administration, and he dined out on Jimmy Carter for a while. You don’t shake off something like that too fast.
BILL KRISTOL:
Do you think it’s more Biden or more, I don’t know, wokeness, riots, etc, etc?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
I think it’s probably both. But I think it’s more among the voters that are gettable for them, I think it’s more the feeling that Democrats didn’t govern well and went overboard that they kind of reinforce, particularly because the border is kind of the intersection of both. They were kind of crazy woke, but they also couldn’t effectively manage it.
BILL KRISTOL:
And obviously inflation [inaudible].
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Look, in 2022, obviously in states like Arizona and Michigan and Georgia, Dobbs helped Democrats. And I think in places like that, again, purplish places, I think you’re right. I think it’s not a slam dunk for Republicans, but in Ohio, Texas, Iowa, certainly Nebraska, Montana, I think it’s more… And even in North Carolina, I think, I don’t know, I shouldn’t express an opinion about North Carolina. Alaska less so. Alaska’s so different. I can’t imagine that being as important. I mean, it is Republican, but it’s not MAGA Republican necessarily. There aren’t a lot of blue collar whites there. There certainly aren’t a lot of evangelicals there. So I’m not sure it would be as important there, but everywhere, everywhere, Trump needs gas pricing. I mean, think about the progression in what we’re talking about. He was elected in ’24 above all, by far, because people thought Biden mismanaged the economy and their cost of living was unacceptable, unsustainable, and that Trump would do better. One year into his presidency before anything happened in Iran, a majority of voters felt things were not better, they felt that he was not focusing enough on the problem, and to the extent that he was, his policies, particularly, the tariffs and the federal healthcare cuts were making it worse.
And then he goes and launches a war without any effort to explain it to the public that exacerbates the very problem that people already felt he was not doing enough to confront and exacerbates it a lot.
And so, here we are five months from the election where he has an approval rating on inflation that is in the twenties that I saw my colleague Harry Enten at CNN saying was lower than even Biden’s ever was on inflation.
He is not going to get that back to 50-50, but if he gets the war over and gas prices come down a little, maybe it improves somewhat. This is not lost on Iran either, by the way. As Trump keeps trumpeting that a deal is imminent and it doesn’t come, they know that he is in a vise of his own device.
BILL KRISTOL:
Two just wildcard questions as we—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… conclude, and these going maybe beyond ’26 to ’28, but that’s okay—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… two things lurking out there that we haven’t really discussed, Epstein seemed like it was really genuinely a big issue, and I think did a fair amount of damage to Trump when the economy seemed okay. I was wondering if you think why did Trump fade down even in the fall of 2025? And so, it was already inflation wasn’t down as much as it should have been, et cetera.
So, I’m just curious whether you think Epstein has legs or as an issue … Well, both not just a Trump issue, though, but it’s a general—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… condemnation of elites issue, which there’s some legitimacy to I would say, and, secondly, AI. Several people I’ve talked to who are looking closely at polling, but, especially, at focus groups … And that may be a little distorted, because Virginia is the center, the epicenter of a lot of AI stuff here right now in terms of fighting about the servers and all that, the warehouses.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
But I’m curious do you agree that that has real buy … Could it have much to do with the ’26 results? Could it be a very big issue by ’27, ’28? So, whatever thoughts you have on those two.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
I think your point about Epstein is the right way to frame it. I think Epstein, per se, matters probably more to voters at the fringe of the electoral system who tend to see vast conspiracies, but I think Epstein is a really powerful symbol of a broader point that is more relevant for Trump in ’26. But I think Democrats are not immune to at all in ’28, which is that, basically, you know… The Democratic argument is that, “You elected Trump to solve your problems and all he’s doing is enriching himself, his family, his friends, and protecting his buddies.”
Epstein, that was a really powerful symbol of that, as was the East Wing. Tearing down the East Wing I think became a really important moment in the Trump presidency that really crystallized the idea that he’s focused on his own grievances and grandiosity and not really looking out for you.
But I do think in ’28 the Epstein class idea, which I guess Ossoff has popularized more than anybody is something that can apply to everybody. I don’t think Republicans are going to talk about it in those terms as much because of the Trump connection.
But I do think this idea that elites are feathering their own … Taking care of themselves, enriching themselves, protecting each other, doing horrible things, yeah, I think that has a lot of legs. Mostly, because—
BILL KRISTOL:
Within both parties maybe.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Within both parties, because people don’t feel like they’re getting ahead, and then AI I think … The overall sentiment in the economy is really negative, because people feel like they can’t afford their lives and they’re worried about opportunity for themselves and their kids. That’s been true for a while. We started seeing … I remember writing a piece in 1988 about polling starting to show for the first time that a substantial portion of Americans think their kids will not match their own standard of living, but AI I think really creates a lot … And people are more worried … People are more likely to see threats to their economic future from AI than opportunities, and I think it contributes to that overall fog of negativism about the economy that drives what we should say is a macro trend of American politics, which is that neither side can sustain an advantage for more than, like, an hour and a half. Right?
If Trump loses the House, this will be the sixth consecutive time going back to Carter in the ’70s that a president went into a midterm election with unified control of government and voters revoked it. No one’s defended unified control of governance from a midterm since Jimmy Carter in 1978.
And, virtually, I think the only two elections—Doug Sosnik keeps track of this—the only two elections in the 21st Century where something didn’t change hands, either the House, the Senate, or the White House, were the ’04 and ’12 presidential reelections.
So, there’s a reason for that. And I think the principal reason for that is that people don’t feel like they’re getting ahead and they don’t feel like either party has really delivered a sustained response to that problem. So, they ricochet back and forth between them.
If Trump’s approval stays where it is now or, roughly, this ballpark, sub 45%, I would not be surprised if Democrats win the House and maybe the Senate or get to 50-50 in the Senate in ’26. And if it stays this low, you’d have to say Democrats are strongly favored to win the White House in ’28 and maybe the Senate, and likely the Senate.
But is there anything that gives us any confidence that the wheel will stop spinning and that what we saw in ’08 and ’10 or ’16 and ’18 or ’04 and ’06 will not continue? And Democrats would lose … Even if they get unified control of ’29, that they would lose, at least, one, if not both chambers in ’30.
We are in just a very unstable political environment that I think is grounded in this sense among voters that neither side have an answer to their biggest fundamental complaint, which is they don’t feel themselves getting ahead as fast as their parents did.
BILL KRISTOL:
And I guess we’ll close with this thought and curious what your reaction … It is a paradoxical situation, in a way. On the one hand, there’s all the polarization and this you’ve said several times now very well—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… how central that is to our current political situation and to this 2026 election. So, ’26, to some degree, a lot of it baked in, very much fighting on the margins, makes a big difference whether Trump’s at 46 or 48 or 50. So, that’s a—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Right. [inaudible].
BILL KRISTOL:
… one model, which is true I think. The other model is you think of ’28, it feels, to me, like, wide open, very unpredictable in both parties, many factions in both parties that very hard to know ahead of time who’s going to be stronger, or weaker, or who’s going to … How are they going to split on some way? Especially try and say in MAGA world, and Democrats have their more stable progressives versus centrists. But even there I think there are a lot of cross-cutting cleavages now on a bunch of issues ranging from Israel to foreign pol— Really, a lot of issues. And then you throw in some wildcards like AI and—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
I just feel like … And younger candidates in both parties. The generational shift finally after Clinton, Biden, sort of, Biden on the Democratic side, and Trump, Trump, Trump on the Republican side. Are we actually going to get candidates who are younger than us instead of older than us? That would be good.
So, I don’t know. I feel like it’s a weird situation, on the one hand, of a certain kind of ossification, if you want, or I don’t know—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Right.
BILL KRISTOL:
… what the right word is, a—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Well, the political scientists call it calcification.
BILL KRISTOL:
Calcification is better. Yeah. Of the system. And on the other hand total… I guess that would go together in a way, when calcification breaks open—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Well—
BILL KRISTOL:
Go ahead.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Well, so, okay. I’m going to respond to each of those. Anybody’s who’s gotten this far listening to both of us probably feel that … And they’re right, that I am an extreme structuralist and I probably am an over-structuralist.
But I will point out that through American history a popular president who is leaving office is no guarantee of their party winning the election to succeed them. If you’re popular, it is no guarantee that your party wins the election. Eisenhower leaving office in ’60, Democrats won. Clinton leave office in 2000, Republicans won. Obama leaving office in 2016, Republicans won.
But I think the opposite is really well-entrenched. If you are unpopular leaving office, it is really hard for your party to win even if you are not on the ballot. Biden in ’24, Bush in ’08, LBJ in ’68, Truman in ’52, Woodrow Wilson in 1920. There are not a lot of examples of an outgoing president, who is deeply unpopular and his party winning the election to succeed him. Maybe the one example you could come up with is Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, and the Republicans had to steal that election—
BILL KRISTOL:
Yeah.
RON BROWNSTEIN:
… after losing the popular vote, and which, who knows? Could be a relevant precedent. So, I would say that, even though, there is a lot of uncertainty and candidates matter and you can, certainly, nominate an unelectable candidate, I would say if Trump is under 45 I would put more chips on the Democrats winning in ’28 than on Republicans winning in ’28. Just going back through that history, what is the counter-example of an outgoing president being unpopular and his party … Like I said, Rutherford B. Hayes, and they stole that. They had to steal that.
Okay. The other points actually do go together, Bill, and maybe this is a good place to end. Because of the calcification, the vast majority of the electorate is locked in for one side or the other. And that means that neither side can get really far out ahead of the other.
In eight of the last 10 Congresses during the 20th Century, so, from 1980 to 2000, eight of those 10 sessions one party or the other had, at least, 55 Senate seats. This century, one party or the other in the entire 21st Century has gotten to 55 Senate seats only three times. Okay?
In the House, the last three House majorities have been 10 seats or less. That has never happened in American history. We’ve never had three consecutive sessions where the majority is 10 seats or less.
Because so much is calcified—in the words of the authors of Identity Crisis, highly recommend, John Sides and his colleagues—because so much is calcified, the few voters who are up for grabs have enormous influence in tilting things back and forth. And they tend to be voters, I think, who are more motivated by immediate circumstances than by this larger ideological and cultural war between the party.
And as we were talking about, every two years they seem to be more frustrated than not about the degree to which the party in power has been able to improve their immediate circumstances. So, they pinball back and forth between the two sides looking for something that neither side has really been able to deliver.
I suspect that a lot of those voters who moved toward Trump in ’24 are either going to stay home or vote Democratic in ’26. You get to ’28, it will be more of a jump ball for them, but, again, if people are this negative on Trump, which almost by definition means they are negative on the economy, I think Democrats are going to have an advantage with them. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to stick with Democrats once they get into power.
So, we are in a period where … I believe we are in the longest period in American history where neither side has been able to establish a durable advantage over the other. I think ’26 is more likely to reinforce that story than change it. I think ’28 is more likely to reinforce that story than change it.
Until we see more Americans feel that they are on a positive trajectory, that there’s a positive trajectory for their kids, I think we’re going to be living through a very volatile political era, and one where the stakes are so disproportionate in that you have a Republican Party that has largely bought into, tolerated, even enabled Trump’s efforts to undermine American democracy.
And just the sheer back and forth guarantees that every couple years you’re going to see another crisis of democracy, because the backlash against the party in power means that this Republican Party is going to be back in power. Even if they lose it in ’28, they’re going to be back in power sooner than you think. And if they are willing to continue to challenge democracy in this way, we’re going to face some very difficult days over and over again.
BILL KRISTOL:
And, of course, who knows what will happen this year in terms of election interference—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… but we should have that conversation in a couple of months, but, Ron, thanks a lot. This was really terrific. And I think very, very helpful and very stimulating. And I hope everyone loves the details of politics as much as you and I do. And I think a lot of our viewers—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
Yeah.
BILL KRISTOL:
… and listeners do. You know?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
It’s always great to be with you, Bill. And I do have to give a shout-out to my dog Morris. We made it through, what? An hour and 20 minute conversation without ever once barking and interrupting us. So, high-five to Morris.
BILL KRISTOL:
Was he drugged?
RON BROWNSTEIN:
No. No. He’s just sleeping under the desk.
BILL KRISTOL:
I don’t want to ask [inaudible] substances you’re using with—
RON BROWNSTEIN:
He’s just happily sleeping under the desk.
BILL KRISTOL:
That’s good work, Morris. Ron, thanks so much. And thank you all for joining us for Conversations.
