In short
How Democrats’ midterm prospects are shaped by primary results, voter ideology vs electability, polling surprises, and broader polarization; plus discussion of Trump’s priorities and AOC’s political signals.
Guests
E.J. Dionne (New York Times opinion contributing writer; regular participant). Kristen Soltis Anderson (conservative pollster; opinion-contributing writer).
Key claims
Democrats are broadly progressive but still nominate “electable” candidates; the “Tea Party moment” metaphor is delayed because voters want to win, not just fight. Polling “vibes” outpaced data due to high undecided shares and late campaign shifts. Extremes are more about norms than ideology; governing realities will matter more than campaign rhetoric. Border security and immigration enforcement are likely to divide Democrats; Medicare for All remains a litmus test.
Notable examples
Wisconsin GOP nominee Tom Tiffany (election denier). Wisconsin primary: Francesca Hong (DSA-linked) narrowly won; David Crowley won after chaotic field. Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won over Haley Stevens. Polling/prediction market debate. Trump building projects (arch, golf course, ballroom) and National Guard in DC. AOC “woke one” comment and egg-freezing as possible presidential prelude.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODemocratic Candidates in the Midwest
0:00 to 0:27
Discussion on the types of Democratic candidates emerging in the Midwest primaries.
“Betterment's Dan Egan talks about tax loss harvesting.”
Democratic Candidates in the Midwest
1:09 to 3:40
Discussion on the types of Democratic candidates emerging in the Midwest primaries.
“And we have much to talk about, starting in the upper Midwest, where Democrats picked a moderate to run for governor of Wisconsin, and Minnesotans chose a progressive to run for the U.S.”
Democratic Party Dynamics
3:43 to 5:39
Exploring the current dynamics and challenges within the Democratic Party.
“Kristen, you've looked at these primary results, and I think I'm paraphrasing you that you say the Democrats haven't escaped or missed their Tea Party moment, but it has been delayed.”
Comparing Democrats to the Tea Party
5:45 to 6:50
A comparison of current Democratic struggles to the historical Tea Party movement.
“were these fights about what do you do when you actually have to govern?”
Immigration Policy Discussion
6:55 to 12:21
Analyzing the Democratic Party's stance on immigration and border security.
“Rank and file moderate Democrats are running with much tougher messages on the economy, on inequality, on monopoly, on oligarchy, on kleptocracy.”
The Rise of Far Right Politics
12:24 to 14:04
Examining the potential rise of far-right political movements in America.
“Just earlier this week, you know, with Peggy Flanagan winning for her primary in Minnesota.”
The Rise of a Far Right Party in America
14:04 to 15:08
Discussion on the potential emergence of a far right party in the U.S.
“And we had something that looked a little bit more like a far right party over in Europe that you've seen, whether it's the AFD or, you know, the Reform Party in the UK.”
Trump's Influence on American Politics
15:10 to 15:24
Exploration of how Trump's presidency has shifted American politics towards European styles.
“And but I think that with the Republican Party under control of Trump and the Republican Senate and House being so reluctant to take him on, it is taking on more of the character of a European far right party.”
Analyzing Polling Discrepancies
15:24 to 16:30
Examining the strange polling results leading up to the recent elections.
“Well, we do have democratic socialism on the rise as well, TJ.”
Polling Errors and Undecided Voters
16:30 to 18:51
Insight into challenges faced by pollsters and the impact of undecided voters.
“So there are two features that I think stick out to me when I look at these data.”
Show all 18 chapters
Factors Affecting Voter Decision-Making
18:51 to 21:36
Discussion on how voter demographics and candidate momentum influence polling.
“And there was very little separation between the governor's race and the AG race.”
The Role of Prediction Markets in Elections
21:36 to 24:22
Exploring the significance of prediction markets as a complement to traditional polling.
“What really works is the predictions market, where I guess the smart money is deemed to be smarter than the pollsters.”
Trump's Current Focus and Political Strategy
24:22 to 28:00
Analysis of Trump's priorities and strategies as he prepares for the next election.
“Well, let's turn to a couple of big newsmakers.”
Trump's Second Term and Public Property
28:00 to 32:20
Discussing Trump's developments and changes in D.C. during his second term.
“But he does seem to be, at this point in his second term, very much involved with his past as a developer.”
AOC's Political Maneuvering
32:20 to 34:35
Analysis of AOC's recent actions and their implications for her political future.
“Let me move us on to our other political boldface name that I mentioned, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.”
Balancing Career and Motherhood
34:35 to 37:19
Exploring the challenges women face in high-pressure jobs while managing motherhood.
“and I suspect there were a lot of people out there, you know, heard that and said, yeah, we're struggling with that too.”
Finding Joy in Everyday Life
37:19 to 37:43
Sharing personal stories that bring joy from recent experiences.
“And I just think that's a very interesting—you might not think of those two things as being similar, but I actually think of them both.”
Closing Reflections
37:43 to 41:00
Hosts share final thoughts and reflections on the episode's discussion.
“What's something that's been joyful to you?”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00E.J. Dionne Jr.:This message comes from Betterment. Betterment's Dan Egan talks about tax loss harvesting. Tax loss harvesting is a tax management strategy. When you have a position that's gone down over time, we intentionally sell out of it to realize a loss, which we then say to the IRS, hey, we lost money. You get to use that to offset your ordinary income every year, decreasing your tax burden. Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. Betterment does not offer tax advice. TLH may not be suitable for all customers. Learn more at betterment.com slash TLH dash terms.
0:30Robert Siegel:What's wrong with the polls? Is it a feature of the primary season?
0:35Kristen Soltis Anderson:I just want to say I didn't poll in either of these races, so I don't have like raw data sets to sift through. I bet you're really happy about that.
0:46Robert Siegel:Hi, I'm Robert Siegel, and this is a conversation about politics with New York Times opinion contributing writer E.J. Dionne, who's our regular participant. Hello, E.J. Great to be with you. And returning to this conversation, opinion-contributing writer Kristen Soltis Anderson, who is also a conservative pollster. Welcome back. It's great to see you.
1:07E.J. Dionne Jr.:Thank you for having me. Great to have you here.
1:09Robert Siegel:And we have much to talk about, starting in the upper Midwest, where Democrats picked a moderate to run for governor of Wisconsin, and Minnesotans chose a progressive to run for the U.S. Senate. Put those together with last week's Michigan primary. And, E.J., what do you see?
1:25E.J. Dionne Jr.:Well, what you don't have, I think, is a party lurching to the far left, as some would have it. Nor, I think, do you have a party that's engaged in a French Revolution-style civil war. What you do have is a broadly progressive party, in the big sense of the word progressive, which is why Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, a progressive, soundly defeated a moderate, Angie Craig, a member of Congress in Minnesota, and why Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, won a narrow victory over Haley Stevens, a member of Congress, a moderate in Michigan. When you put these together, I think what you see is that Democrats are, broadly speaking, a moderate party that wants occasionally to express its view that it wants tougher candidates, people who will be tougher on the status quo, tougher on the past, tougher on Trump.
2:21E.J. Dionne Jr.:But you also have a party that desperately wants to win in the fall. And that's why Wisconsin was so, so interesting, because Francesco Hung, the progressive candidate, a member of DSA, was ahead in the polls all the way through. But she was ahead because the rest of the Democratic field was totally scattered in a turn of events that was really very much like the 2020 presidential primary. when Democrats realized that whatever doubts they had, Joe Biden, the moderate, was the candidate who could win the election against Trump, the more moderate candidate. And they rallied to him over a weekend.
3:01E.J. Dionne Jr.:And David Crowley dropped out of the race, came back in, and voters over a period of about a week realized that if they nominated Francesca Hong, she would probably lose the election. She did not help her cause when it, it did not help her cause when it came out that she called for canceling Thanksgiving. And I think that became a kind of rallying cry in an odd way for Democrats who said, look, she may be a nice person, we may be pretty progressive, but we really need to win here. And I think the reassertion of the Democratic primary electorate's desire to win is something that we really should pay attention to when we look back at all of these primaries, because mostly the Democrats nominated electable candidates.
3:46Robert Siegel:Kristen, you've looked at these primary results, and I think I'm paraphrasing you that you say the Democrats haven't escaped or missed their Tea Party moment, but it has been delayed.
3:59Kristen Soltis Anderson:Yes, the tea is still brewing, but the party invitations have not gone out quite yet. The Democratic Party right now is having a moment where its voter base wants the party to be more combative. It wants the party to fight harder. They are not interested in the establishment or the status quo. And there are a handful of issues on which they have moved a bit more to the left. They are not afraid of the word socialism. They are more openly saying we want things like Medicare for all. And candidates who embrace those positions are able to get through Democratic primaries. And the size of the portion of the party that is what I would consider the loyal left, the progressive on cultural as well as economic issues, in my data, has been growing over the last few years.
4:45Kristen Soltis Anderson:However, what Democrats have working in their favor is that the median Democratic primary voter is not a 25-year-old campus activist. It is a 55-year-old African-American woman who is quite eager to see the government do more to help, you know, the working class, but is not necessarily on board with canceling Thanksgiving or the more unusual out there positions that some in the Democratic activist space would like to see more prevalent throughout the party. And so Democrats have in some ways been saved by their own voters right now. I think the bigger challenge, though, is what happens once Democrats have what is likely to be a very good 2026 midterm?
5:29Kristen Soltis Anderson:What happens once you have a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, if that's where this ends up? And you then have fights over how do you keep the government open? Those are the sorts of things that led to the Republican Tea Party movement really accelerating and gaining steam. were these fights about what do you do when you actually have to govern? And the realities of governing are much more challenging than the sorts of things you can say in a campaign speech on a stump about we're going to fight.
5:56E.J. Dionne Jr.:See, and I just want to say the problem, I think, with the Tea Party metaphor for what's happening in Democratic Party is twofold. One, first of all, Democrats have been arguing with each other about the direction of their party for a long, long, long time. They split up over the Vietnam War in 1968. Secondly, there is a big difference between, I think, the progressive Democrats broadly taken, not just DSA, which is actually a small part of the broader progressive movement, Democrats and the Tea Party. Progressive Democrats really want to get stuff done. And when you had the Joe, when Joe Biden was in power, they didn't like all the concessions they had to make to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to get some good stuff from their point of view through, like the spending for green energy or infrastructure or the Chips and Science Act.
6:47E.J. Dionne Jr.:They didn't like all those concessions, but they voted for the bill. They want to govern. And I wrote a column this week that argued that the left and center actually can learn from each other and in a way are learning from each other. Rank and file moderate Democrats are running with much tougher messages on the economy, on inequality, on monopoly, on oligarchy, on kleptocracy. They are being much tougher and more populist than they were in the past, partly because the left of the party has made some progress, but partly because that's where a lot of voters are right now. So I don't think it goes to that.
7:25E.J. Dionne Jr.:I don't think those invitations will ever go out in quite the same way.
7:30Robert Siegel:We've been talking about Democrats. We shouldn't ignore the fact that the Republican nominee for governor of Wisconsin, Congressman Tom Tiffany, is a hardline election denier who campaigned against what he calls big government socialism. Kristen, are both parties moving to the extremes right now?
7:49Kristen Soltis Anderson:I think it's important to define extremes. If you are thinking about extremes in terms of adherence to norms, I think the answer is probably yes on that front. That for a lot of Republicans, they are much more willing to abide behavior that would have been condemned in the past. I think on the Democratic side as well, this growing, let's pack the court, let's get rid of the filibuster. There is just more of an interest in, I'd rather just see my side win, norms be damned.
8:20Robert Siegel:I think Francesca Hong said, let's get rid of the Senate.
8:23Kristen Soltis Anderson:Yes, which I would suggest is a quite extreme position, although granted she did not win her primary. But there's also the question of ideological extremism, which I think exists on a separate axis from this more temperamental or norms-based approach. And on that rating, I don't actually think Republicans have become more ideologically extreme. In the Trump era, it's actually been unusual. He has gotten Republicans to agree to things that are far less pro-free market, laissez-faire capitalist. I mean, the government now, don't we own pieces of companies? You've had tariffs. He's the socialist president.
9:05Kristen Soltis Anderson:And so I think the ideological assertion that Republicans have moved to the right, I think, falls apart upon contact with what the actual Trump agenda has looked like.
9:15Robert Siegel:You agree with that, E.J.? Not at all.
9:17E.J. Dionne Jr.:I do think that these are, you know, there is polarization in America, but it's asymmetric. But I want to make a point about this whole conversation we like to have on ideology. David Crowley, the man who won the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin for governor, he's a county executive, a very practical guy. And he gave a wonderful speech after he won the primary. And basically he said, you know, most voters aren't thinking about this left versus right, progressive versus centrist, insider, outsider. They're thinking about health care. They're thinking about housing. They're thinking about prices.
9:52E.J. Dionne Jr.:They're thinking about crime. And so I do think some of what we talk about here is imposed from the outside by analysts and people involved in these fights that have very little to do with how voters, most voters, not all voters, there are ideological voters, but most voters perceive what the election is actually about. And that's why I think by the time you get to Labor Day, the dissonance of the summer for Democrats is likely to give way. And if they're going to win the election, it better give way to more concrete conversations about the problems the country confronts and the country's deep dissatisfaction with President Trump.
10:33Robert Siegel:I'd like to hear from both of you one measure or maybe there are two measures of how extreme Democrats are. have Democrats accepted the notion that the security at the southern border is a success and one that they would continue to pursue rather than stand for an open border? And second, is the Democratic Party now the party of Medicare for all, of single-payer health insurance?
11:03E.J. Dionne Jr.:Those are good questions. First, the Democrats, most Democrats have never been for an open border, And what's happening at the southern border now actually started under President Biden. I think the problem is he started too late. He didn't respond to the anger over what looked like practically an open border. I think what you're seeing now is a much better chance that Democrats will say, look, we want border security, too, but we do not want this kind of lawless behavior toward immigrants and toward people who are legally here and toward citizens. And so I think that the net result of the loss of the 2024 election to Trump on the border and Trump's lawlessness has opened up real room in the political system for something like a comprehensive solution immigration because we know there are deep problems with this system.
12:04E.J. Dionne Jr.:We also know that the United States needs immigrants, but we want it done lawfully. And I think that what you're going to see in the Democratic Party is an effort to come up with practical ways of solving the immigration problem. And I think you're hearing that on the campaign trail.
12:21Kristen Soltis Anderson:I think this is an issue that really is going to divide Democrats in a serious way, especially if they have the opportunity to try to govern by taking one or both chambers of Congress. Just earlier this week, you know, with Peggy Flanagan winning for her primary in Minnesota. You know, Minnesota is obviously a state where the question of ICE's behavior on the ground is very, very fresh, very emotional, very tangible. But it's the sort of thing where, you know, I saw an interview where she was pressed on, do you support abolishing ICE? And she kind of hedged and said, I want to rip ICE apart, but couldn't get pinned down on, do you want to get rid of this agency?
12:59Kristen Soltis Anderson:or do you simply want to reform it significantly? And I think that's going to be one of those questions where you do have a Democratic base that is enraged about what they are seeing the Trump administration do, but it's running counter to the electoral realities that voters do not love what they are seeing ICE doing, but do believe we need to enforce our immigration laws. And I think it's one of those issues that Republicans are pretty united around, but I think this is one that will divide the Democratic base much more significantly.
13:28E.J. Dionne Jr.:The problem with the Republicans is, with some exceptions, they haven't spoken up against what are true outrageous murders, literally murders, in the enforcement of immigration. And what's ironic is that Trump has made Abolish ICE a much more moderate position than it was two years ago. Because when you say Abolish ICE now, people don't hear, I want to get rid of immigration enforcement. They hear, we can't have an agency that behaves like this. So, again, I don't see that as the divide that it might have been even two years ago.
14:03Kristen Soltis Anderson:One of the things that we've been doing at my polling firm is we've been tracking, asking Americans if we had five parties instead of just two. And we had something that looked a little bit more like a far right party over in Europe that you've seen, whether it's the AFD or, you know, the Reform Party in the UK. How many voters would gravitate toward that party versus something that's a little more conventional conservative center right? And for a few years during the Biden presidency, we saw interest in that sort of further right anti-immigration, seal the border, America first type party rising.
14:34Kristen Soltis Anderson:And as soon as 2025 comes along, the air starts getting let out of the balloon. And in some ways, it's as though the success at sealing the southern border and getting immigration under control has relieved the demand side for that kind of a politics and that kind of party. And so in my data, we see when you force Americans to make a choice, which would you rather prioritize, border security or doing something to promote safe but legal immigration? The pendulum has not swung all the way back to the left on this issue. America still remains leaning to the right, but it's not nearly as stark as it was just two years ago.
15:08E.J. Dionne Jr.:No, I agree with a lot of that. And but I think that with the Republican Party under control of Trump and the Republican Senate and House being so reluctant to take him on, it is taking on more of the character of a European far right party. I was in Denmark a couple of years ago, and this wonderful academic who studies and loves America said Trump has actually made American politics more European, which is not what you think the guy who promises to make America great again would like somebody saying. And yet I think that's true.
15:43Kristen Soltis Anderson:Well, we do have democratic socialism on the rise as well, TJ.
15:47Robert Siegel:Okay, well, let's move on. Kristen, this is a great week for us. Any week would be a great week for us to have you with us, but especially now because polling has been kind of strange in August. That's an understatement. Just before the election, Abdul El-Sayed had anywhere from about 10 to 19 points as a lead in the Michigan polls. In fact, his opponent, the more centrist representative Haley Stevens, came within 1 % of him. In Wisconsin, the Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong was leading in polling around 20 points ahead of David Crowley, and he eked out a win by just under half a percent. What's wrong with the polls?
16:32Robert Siegel:Is it a feature of the primary season? How do you explain it?
16:37Kristen Soltis Anderson:So there are two features that I think stick out to me when I look at these data. And I just want to say I didn't poll in either of these races, so I don't have like raw data sets to sift through. I bet you're really happy about that. But I understand that the polling industry as a whole, you know, an attack on one is an attack on all. I need to understand what went wrong there so that my polls don't make those same mistakes. Something that's fascinating in these results is actually both Abdul El-Sayed and Francesca Hong. The share of the ballot that they ultimately received is actually pretty close to what the polls showed.
17:12Kristen Soltis Anderson:And I don't say that as like a defense because there's no half credit. Oh, you got it half right. But what I think it does indicate is that, for instance, in the Wisconsin governor's race, you had an awful lot of voters in high quality polls like the Marquette University poll saying we're undecided. You have a third of your sample saying you're undecided. There's a lot of different ways that this can go. And so I feel like in some ways the vibes got out ahead of the data, that if you have polls showing that such a substantial portion of the electorate is undecided, in the end, it seems that all of them broke for Crowley.
17:48Kristen Soltis Anderson:And that makes a pollster's job very hard.
17:51Robert Siegel:So if you have a quarter of the people polled undecided and yet one of the other candidates as a 15 or 20 point lead over the other, would that be publicized as too close to call?
Read the full transcript
18:06Kristen Soltis Anderson:I wouldn't call it too close to call. I mean, I certainly think pollsters do not come out of this looking great, but I think that there's something interesting there in the how much certainty can you have when you see a number that has that many undecideds in it. And are there things that pollsters ought to be doing to better understand those undecideds? I mean, I can give you an example from my own firm of where we got a race half right, half wrong. In the Virginia governor's race last November, we did a poll in that state, found Abigail Spanberger was going to win. And by a large margin, we were one of the closest polls in that race.
18:37Kristen Soltis Anderson:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give yourself a gold star. But further down ballot, the very contentious race for attorney general, where the Democratic candidate had quite a lot of baggage, Republicans thought, hey, maybe Jason Miares can pull this off. We got that race wrong because all of the undecideds in our survey wound up breaking for Jones. And there was very little separation between the governor's race and the AG race. Yes, for the Democrat. And so, you know, even a pollster like me, who we're trying our hardest to get it right, when there's lots of voters who say they're undecided, things can go sideways.
19:07E.J. Dionne Jr.:First of all, I love your expression of old-fashioned solidarity that everybody has to stand together. I agree with a lot of what you said, actually. I think that one of the important things about Wisconsin is how wild that race was. as people dropping in, coming out, you know, Crowley dropped out of the race and kind of had to be dragged back into the race by Tony Evers, the governor. Mandela Barnes, who was a popular figure in large parts of the party, he ended up dropping out of the race. So it was like polling in a maelstrom. And the key thing, as Kristen said, is that what you clearly had were a whole of voters looking around to say, if I don't vote for her, whom do I vote for?
19:55E.J. Dionne Jr.:And they couldn't figure it out until the end when it really did come down more or less to a two-way race. In Michigan, I also think that Haley Stevens found her voice in the last week of the campaign to some degree when people started making fun of the way she talked. And she said, you know, doing this, they're making fun of Michigan. You know, the cool kids online, which I thought was a great attack for somebody in her position. Some of them might be the coastal elites making fun of how I talk. But let's be real. They're making fun of Michigan. They're thinking they're better than us. And what they don't know is I am your voice.
20:43E.J. Dionne Jr.:Having said all that, I think there is still, there are questions posters want to ask about whether the candidate who looks like they have momentum and has more organization, as both Hong did and El-Sayed did, they have people more eager to answer polls than the people who are undecided or lukewarm. I think that's one question. I think the age split in polls is a real complexity now because, you know, historically older people were more likely to vote than younger people. You have something going on now where A, the electorate is getting younger on the whole, and B, there is a lot of energy in the younger part of the electorate.
21:28E.J. Dionne Jr.:So I think there are some real systematic problems, but there were some very particular things about these races that led to this blow up.
21:35Robert Siegel:Some people claim that the polls are busted as a predictive tool. What really works is the predictions market, where I guess the smart money is deemed to be smarter than the pollsters. Does this make any sense to you?
21:51Kristen Soltis Anderson:So prediction markets, I think, are interesting. I don't think of them as a replacement of polls. I see them as actually downstream of polls. And that's partly why the prediction markets were so high on the likelihood that Abdul El-Sayed was going to win, which he ultimately did. But it was significantly closer than him having an 80, 90 percent chance to win would indicate. Francesca Hong, I mean, on election night, these prediction markets just ping ponged around like crazy with every little vote dump in a way that just didn't seem tethered to reality or rationality. So I'm not anti-prediction market for this sort of thing, because as you noted, EJ, a poll is a snapshot in time.
22:27Kristen Soltis Anderson:A poll tells you what things are now. But a prediction market can say, hey, actually, I have seen some other sign that I think means this candidate has momentum that's not being picked up. and I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I think that's interesting. But ultimately, you don't want to have the vibes overtake the data, even if the data itself is flawed. And in many ways, these prediction markets are just, you know, it's garbage in, garbage out. If the polls people are using to make their bets or trades or whatever we're calling it are based on data that is systematically underrepresenting working class voters, systematically overrepresenting.
23:03Robert Siegel:Do you check the prediction markets?
23:05Kristen Soltis Anderson:I don't very often. I will in a situation where polling is actually very hard to come by because you're looking for additional signals. But it's something where I look at it with a very significant grain of salt because when a poll comes out, I know who did that poll. I know what their incentives are. I know what their methodology is. And I can decide for myself if I think that that's credible or not. On a prediction market, I don't know who's on which side of the trade or what their incentives are. Yep.
23:35E.J. Dionne Jr.:Policy intervention. I think prediction markets should be regulated like gambling. And let's just face up to that. But I think the prediction markets depend significantly on the polling. And then people mix their own secret sauce in with how they bet their money. And also, I think prediction markets reflect the biases of people involved in them and that people tend to bet the team they want to win. And I don't think we figured out the impact of that. And a whole lot of smart people ruminating on all the data available can produce some sensible predictions. But I don't know what the prediction markets would do without polls.
24:17E.J. Dionne Jr.:And I think that's the question that defenders of the prediction markets have to answer.
24:22Robert Siegel:Well, let's turn to a couple of big newsmakers. In a moment, we'll ask you what you make of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is up to. But first, what President Trump is up to. The economic metrics are not so great. His efforts to get out of the war with Iran is not going swimmingly. And he doesn't seem to be overly preoccupied in policymaking with those problems. What do you think he is focused on right now?
24:51Kristen Soltis Anderson:He seems to be very focused on trying to convince America that he has been a better president than they think he has been. If we're not going to use the 2010 Tea Party election analogy anymore, then I think 2006 is actually a very instructive election when I think about what's happening politically right now. You had George W. Bush, who had been reelected, came in, said, I have a lot of political capital. I'm going to do things my way. We're taking the governor off and tried to do things like reform Social Security. You had some contentious Supreme Court battles.
25:25Robert Siegel:Reform meant partially privatized in that case.
25:27Kristen Soltis Anderson:Yes, yes. A very unpopular proposal. Yes, which again, wasn't a popular proposal, though I might add, if it had been done, where would we be fiscally now? A question worth pondering. I won't step on that third rail right now. But in that midterm election, you had Republicans feeling jubilant in much the same way that Donald Trump came back into the White House and Republicans thought we figured it out. Democrats are lost in the wilderness. And it turns out that after in that case, it was the Iraq war going quite poorly. It was the recovery from Hurricane Katrina that was viewed as disastrous. And so that wound up leading to Republicans going from feeling on top of the world to being thrown out and Speaker Nancy Pelosi coming into coming into Congress.
26:12Kristen Soltis Anderson:And this just feels very much like that. Republicans back, you know, 18 months ago feeling jubilant. We're going to doge everything. We're going to do all the stuff we didn't get to do the first time around, feeling on top of the world and feeling like Democrats. Look, their favorables are in the trash. Nobody will vote for them. They very well may vote for them if they conclude that the party that's in power has been doing a poor job.
26:33E.J. Dionne Jr.:But what is Trump doing about all this? Well, first of all, I hope you persuade every Republican candidate to run on privatizing Social Security. I think that will have a very interesting impact. That is not my political advice. I think that Trump refuses to understand that you can't just keep saying the same thing and getting away with it. He's gotten away with so much over such a long period of time. He has escaped accountability because he's often dodged one scandal with a new scandal that none of them ever stuck, that he's not accustomed to a circumstance in which everything is sticking to him now.
27:16E.J. Dionne Jr.:And everything is sticking to him now above all because of dissatisfaction about the economy. If you go back to Trump one, even with the pandemic, there was still a lot of feeling that Trump knew how to run the economy. His approval rating on the economy right before the pandemic hit was very high. And that helped him in 2024. The dissatisfaction with the economy is very bad. His obsession with all these building projects that have nothing to do with the lives of people in the Midwest or in any swing state in America. And he's trying to slough off affordability is just an invented idea. He's doing everything to deny what he ought to be dealing with.
28:04E.J. Dionne Jr.:And that's a real problem.
28:06Robert Siegel:But he does seem to be, at this point in his second term, very much involved with his past as a developer.
28:14E.J. Dionne Jr.:Yes.
28:15Robert Siegel:He's developing a ballroom and security facility where there used to be the East Wing of the White House. The East Wing of the White House, the remains of it, are a mound in a public golf course, which he also wants to turn into a PGA tournament quality, high caliber, much more expensive to play golf course. He has talked about building an arch near the Memorial Bridge, which connects Washington to Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac. That would be so huge. It would completely change what people see in Washington. He seems to be intent on making the monuments to the Trump era happen now, while we're still in the Trump era.
29:01Kristen Soltis Anderson:It's fascinating that during his first term, it felt like he spent a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago. You know, it was that he didn't seem very focused on D.C. as a town that he wanted to conquer. He would say, I want to drain the swamp, but did not really feel like it was a presidency of this town. He has now come back into his second term as I have conquered this town and I will make it my own. And you're right, has begun to be the person who he has been in the public eye for decades. I'm a developer. I'm going to make things look the way I want them to look. You know, if you drive across the Memorial Bridge here in D.C., which I drive across every time I go out to my office, there are these gold statues.
29:41Kristen Soltis Anderson:And they've always been, you know, statues of these horses. But now they are a vibrant shade of gold. It is unmistakable.
29:50Robert Siegel:Vibrant is understating. I will just say what that is. Yes, they are.
29:53Kristen Soltis Anderson:They are. It is clear whose aesthetic sensibility is behind this. And you can imagine that there are lots of folks in Washington who they do not share the president's politics. And they find a lot of this to be distasteful at best. However, one thing that he has done that was met with a lot of consternation at first was his deployment of the National Guard around town. And you will still see, you know, on that same drive where I'm going across the bridge, there is often a Humvee parked right there. You will see folks in the National Guard walking around town. It is true that crime in the District of Columbia has declined.
30:28Kristen Soltis Anderson:It has declined in cities across America. It's not unique to D.C.
30:31Robert Siegel:Including cities where there aren't federal troops.
30:33Kristen Soltis Anderson:Correct. But there has been just some great coverage this week of how it's actually starting to overwhelm the D.C. court system. The number of people who are being apprehended by the federal officials for things, you know, smoking marijuana. And then they go to the car and they find that actually there's a gun and a knife. And this is now beginning to overwhelm the court system here, but it is also leading to safer, cleaner streets.
30:58E.J. Dionne Jr.:I think the really disturbing thing about what Trump is doing with all of this building, some of it very ugly, is that he's treating public property as if it's his own property. I mean, at least when he was a builder in the old days, he may have stiffed the banks when he borrowed money from them, but at least it was private money going into a private project. He had no right to just knock down the ballroom unilaterally. And you go all the way around and say he's doing this as if he is a dictator. I mean, you know, I know that critics of Trump overuse the term dictator. But in this case, he's acting with no accountability.
31:35E.J. Dionne Jr.:And that arch, I've talked to people who have folks buried at Arlington, Secretary One Friend in particular, who made the point that there is something so awful about this enormous arch. When you look at those rows of headstones, they are all equal for them. And it's been the tradition for some decades that whether you were a corporal or a general, you had equal headstones. And we honor all of the people who served. And suddenly to spoil that vista and what we are remembering there with this self-involved arch is just such, such an ugly thing. And I hope to God there's a way to stop that from happening before he leaves office.
32:20Robert Siegel:Let me move us on to our other political boldface name that I mentioned, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. On a television interview recently, she dismissed some of the more extreme ideas of progressives during the COVID years as woke one. She quoted another progressive as saying woke one was crazy, implying that at least AOC has reached woke two or some higher level of woke.
32:43Kristen Soltis Anderson:I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.
32:51Robert Siegel:She's also been the subject of a great deal of scrutiny after publicly documenting on Instagram the process of freezing her eggs to keep motherhood a possibility. What is AOC up to? Is this the beginning of a run for president?
33:07Kristen Soltis Anderson:I certainly think it's a prelude to a run for president. I think that she has consistently been one of the savvier communicators on the Democratic side. Even in this political cycle, she endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, but she refrained from endorsing both Graham Plattner and Francesca Hong. So she has pretty good political instincts. I think she's always been a very good storyteller both about policy issues but also about her own life. She has shared about that extensively. And I think this conversation about freezing her eggs, she has invited people to observe her personally and that has become part of her brand, that she is an authentic person who is not just a political facade.
33:47Kristen Soltis Anderson:She is letting you see the good and the bad. And whether that is true or whether other things are still concealed, I don't know that any of us are ever fully ourselves in public. Maybe you, E.J., maybe. But I think that I think of her as a very savvy political operator. And I think her trying to distance herself from woke one is part of what EJ mentioned earlier, which is that I do think Democrats are still a party that has has leftward leanings. But I think understands that in many cases they need to keep it locked down because it's not where the median voter is. I think she's smart enough to get that.
34:18Kristen Soltis Anderson:The question is, I don't know that you can just say woke one. That was crazy. Let's all forget that Republicans will not allow Democrats to just.
34:26Robert Siegel:Does the egg freezing episode, EJ, is this a risk of too much information or is that my advanced age speaking? I don't know.
34:36E.J. Dionne Jr.:I, you know, I'm, I'm a guy, so I'm not sure I'm the best person to speak on this, but I'll risk saying something, which is, I think she was talking about struggles that women face about how to balance their desire to have families and their careers. and I suspect there were a lot of people out there, you know, heard that and said, yeah, we're struggling with that too. And the fact also that she was saying, as Kristen made the great point that she's a person and not just a politician, and she's thinking about things other than politics. I think that works more in her favor, but I don't know about that, but she's definitely running for higher office, whether the Senate or the presidency.
35:20E.J. Dionne Jr.:And I think, you know, a lot of people came down on her for her woke one comment. And I think what she was saying, and she was pretty clear about this, is, you know, there were a lot of extreme things said. No one's saying defund the police anymore. You really got to search far and wide. You're not seeing it in any political campaign this year. You're seeing a lot of progressive Democrats, mayors like Michelle Wu in Boston bragging about how they brought murder rates down and other forms of crime down. And so I think Democrats are trying to figure out how can you have a more politically sustainable way of talking about marginalized people that doesn't use language that other people either don't understand or don't get or find difficult to take.
36:11E.J. Dionne Jr.:And I think This is about don't give up the commitment to the marginalized, but boy, did we express things back then in ways that really did hurt us politically. That's what she's saying, I think.
36:23Kristen Soltis Anderson:I think the only other thing I'd add on the AOC egg freezing conversation as the somewhat youngish woman at the table is I can't help but think of this in conversation with the announcement this week that Caroline Levitt is stepping down as White House press secretary. She had a baby very recently, her second child. She's a mother of two very young children pretty much immediately after having her first return to the campaign trail with Donald Trump in 2024. And she has announced that she is going to be stepping away from that role because she'd like to spend more time with her young children.
36:58Kristen Soltis Anderson:I do think that for a lot of young women, Caroline Leavitt and AOC are quite different in many ways, but they are both women who are very much in the public eye, in very high-pressure jobs, very openly and publicly grappling with the tensions between being someone who is a high-achieving woman in a career and how do you handle the realities of motherhood. And I just think that's a very interesting—you might not think of those two things as being similar, but I actually think of them both. I wish both of those women well on their journeys because these are very, very hard challenges that young women face.
37:31Kristen Soltis Anderson:Amen.
37:31Robert Siegel:Amen. Well, we've come to the end of our conversation, which we always conclude with something that's brought us joy in recent days or weeks. And EJ, let's start with you. What's something that's been joyful to you?
37:47E.J. Dionne Jr.:So a couple of weeks ago, I walked into a wonderful book sale. And I want to praise the joy that book sales for public institutions can bring to people. It was at a high school for a public library. And I found so many wonderful books there. The book I quoted in my column this week by Edward Ayers, the great historian of the South, was a book I picked up at this book fair. and you see books you never knew existed. You see books you had always wanted to buy. And so I want to praise all the people who read their own book collections and give the books away, both to bring joy to others, and this book fair brought joy to me, and to support great public institutions.
38:33E.J. Dionne Jr.:And it reminded me that I got to do that myself. Kristen?
38:37Kristen Soltis Anderson:So I am the mother of a four-year-old and a two-year-old. And the four-year-old in the last couple of weeks has begun to develop her own taste in a way that is somewhat reflective of her parents' taste. So, for example, this past week, we were out and about, and a song by Queen was playing in a store, and it was Another One Bites the Dust, and she asked for it to be added to her playlist in the car. So now my four-year-old has begun liking songs by Queen, and then my husband bought the graphic novel of The Hobbit and has begun reading her portions of that at night before she goes to bed. And she's begun asking about the Hobbit story.
39:15Kristen Soltis Anderson:And so it's just fun to watch this little mind suddenly become old enough to where you're going beyond. Look, Daniel, Tiger, and Bluey are phenomenal. But where she's beginning to express interest in things that my husband and I also like, that's just been an enormous source of joy.
39:31Robert Siegel:It's the greatest. Thanks for that. There's a lot of joy from books this week. For me, it was after a year of reading Thomas Mann that a friend had suggested. I wanted something a lot lighter than that and found on my Kindle Washington Irving's History of New York, which is a very funny book. It's a send-up of histories in which he begins with the solar system and the Earth and the continents. And finally, eventually, he gets the Dutch going to New Amsterdam. It was originally published under a pseudonym, Diedrich Knickerbocker. Yes. It became fabulously popular. He is, Washington Irving was responsible for the use of Gotham to describe New York City, the phrase the almighty dollar, and mostly popularizing Knickerbockers, who survived to this day in the form of the New York Knicks.
40:26Robert Siegel:It's one of the last usages of Knickerbocker in New York City. It's a delightful book. Anyway, it's great. You should look at it. EJ and Kristen, it's terrific to see you both again. Great to be with you both.
40:38Kristen Soltis Anderson:Thank you for having us.
40:40Robert Siegel:Take care.
41:00Thank you.
From the publisher
With the midterm elections less than three months away, surprising primary results and polling misses are raising questions about the direction of American politics. Are Democrats moving left or becoming more focused on winning? Are both parties growing more extreme? The conservative pollster and Opinion contributing writer Kristen Soltis Anderson joins the Opinion contributors E.J. Dionne Jr. and Robert Siegel to discuss the week in politics.
Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Rochelle Widdowson. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Daniel Ramirez. Video editing by Arpita Aneja. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Cinematography by Marina King, Nathan Taylor and Valeria Verastegui. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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