The Working Class Is Fleeing Trump

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0:30Jamelle Bouie:I saw this headline that Trump wants to impose 100 percent tariffs on generic drugs, which, as I say it out loud, is the craziest thing I've ever heard. And my first thought was, does he know who his voters are? Does he know who who voted for him and his party?

0:51Robert Siegel:Hi, I'm Robert Siegel, and this is a conversation about politics with New York Times opinion contributor and regular panelist here, E.J. Dionne. Great to see you, Robert. Good to see you. And joining us for the first time, Times opinion columnist, Jamel Bowie. Hi. Welcome. Hello there. Good to see you.

1:08E.J. Dionne Jr.:Sorry to be with you.

1:09Robert Siegel:Yeah, looking forward to it. We're coming to the end of a season of primaries, and I want to start by asking you what we've learned in this season about this country, particularly about the Democratic primaries. Jamel, what do we know about ourselves today that perhaps wasn't so clear a few months ago?

1:27Jamelle Bouie:I think for some of us who are professional political observers, what has happened is clear. But maybe for establishment Democrats, they have learned something, which is that their voters are so much angrier than I think they realize. And so angry, in fact, that seemingly the currency for success in primaries, it's just whether you can credibly present yourself to be a full-blown opponent of Trump and willing to sort of reflect back at those voters the level of anger and discontent that they feel. When I look at the relative success of progressive candidates and the defeats of more moderate or centrist candidates, I actually don't see a big ideological battle as much as I see a big battle about like affect and attitude and one's orientation towards the administration and willingness to say fight.

2:21Jamelle Bouie:And what's interesting to me is that because this is so much of a fight or not fight divide, it's entirely possible to have like moderate or establishment Democrats who can embody that. And they haven't. And that to me really speaks to maybe a Democratic establishment class that's a bit out of touch with where their voters are and maybe where a large part of the country is given the president's sinking approval ratings.

2:49Robert Siegel:Maybe a little old, too. Right. Could be part of the problem. E.J., we have a big Democratic primary coming up next week in Michigan. It's one of those seats we say is a must win for the Democrats if they if they're to win a majority in the Senate. I wonder what what you see as being significant about the Michigan primary. Yeah.

3:12E.J. Dionne Jr.:I want to put Michigan in the context that Jamel just put on the table, where I agree that a lot of this expression is more or at least as much about anger as it is about ideology. And I recently wrote about how I think this debate between capitalism and socialism is a really stupid debate for Democrats to engage in, partly because neither side is really a pure capitalist or socialist if such a thing even exists. And because it's about a lot of other things, I would say, though, that there were an awful lot of candidates out there. You know, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Mary Peltola, Sherrod Brown, Tell Rico, all these folks, I think, embodied enough anger to sort of be fairly middle of the road progressives and still win the nomination.

3:58E.J. Dionne Jr.:What I think is interesting about Michigan is the placement of this primary. If Democrats could redo this calendar, boy, would they not want to have perhaps the most divisive primary in the whole country happen this late in the process? Because I think what we're looking at is two things in parallel. A lot of summer noise about Democratic division, which Michigan is going to bring home, and the fundamentals of the election continuing to move away from the Republicans. I was really struck by a CNN poll this week that showed Trump's approval down to 34 percent, as low as it was around the time of January 6th in 2021.

4:39E.J. Dionne Jr.:Seventy three percent of U.S. adults said President Trump has not paid enough attention to the country's most important problems. Seventy three percent. That's astonishing. And if the election is about the president, his policies and his party, as midterms usually are, this is a real nightmare for Republicans, which is why their core campaign theme is going to be, well, we may be terrible, but they're worse. And Michigan is sort of the example, if there is any out there, of real ideological division, because you have Abdul El-Sayed, who is probably the better candidate of the two in terms of performance in reaching audiences and the like, and a clear progressive with a very strongly anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian view against Haley Stevens, who is a moderate, unapologetically moderate Democrat supported by AIPAC.

5:43E.J. Dionne Jr.:And that has been a real source of division in the party. And they are battling it out. If at the moment, it looks like El-Sayed is ahead in most of the polls. But then on this electability front, there was one poll this week that showed Stevens beating the Republican will be running against One of them, Mike Rogers, by a point, El-Sayed losing by 10. We'll see if that has any impact. And she's trying to turn the fact that El-Sayed may be the most forceful and articulate into a kind of asset, basically saying, look, I sound like you. I'm not a fancy candidate, but I have done a lot of practical work.

6:22E.J. Dionne Jr.:But however this turns out, I think the bitterness left by this primary creates problems for either of them if they win this primary. Right.

6:31Robert Siegel:Jamel, does the El-Sayed Stevens matchup, does that fit the paradigm of a demand for performative anger in the campaign?

6:42Jamelle Bouie:I think it does. I want to be clear that I don't think performance here is a bad thing. I think part of politics is performing things, right? Like showing people in a public way that you understand their concerns and understand their anger or whatever the emotion might be. And I think that, you know, when I'm looking at how Democrats have maybe fallen short, according to their own voters, it's been this sense that, oh, our job isn't to perform. Our job is just to sort of like be workhorses, not show horses. And this is something that I think a lot of Democrats take pride in. But to my mind, it's political malpractice.

7:17Jamelle Bouie:You actually do have to be a show horse as well. You have to show what you're doing. You have to perform what you're doing. I think that the divide on Israel is really critical in this primary. Although as far as how divisive it is, I mean, the thing is that when you look at public opinion polling of Democratic voters on their views of Israel, they've become starkly negative. Right. Like most Democratic voters have much more sympathy towards Palestinians these days than they do towards the Israeli government. And this has been a sea change in opinion. And so the Michigan primary might be divisive along this axis, maybe.

7:53Jamelle Bouie:But like El Sayed also represents where Democratic voters are going. Right. Looking ahead to the 2028 presidential primary, I would be surprised if there are any candidates that sound like Stevens that are willing to accept AIPAC money or any of that. That seems like a death knell for a Democrat.

8:11Robert Siegel:Let's talk more about Israel, the Democratic Party and American Jews. Stevens, her campaign has got, I think, 30 million dollars from AIPAC and AIPAC affiliates. And this is something that her opponent, I'll say it, has used against her. And as you say, he seems to have the trend within the Democratic Party on his side. does this mean that a a unique relationship between american jews and the democratic party where you actually have a prosperous white uh group of the public that votes 70 percent plus for democratic candidates uh is their relationship with the with the democratic party conceivably on

9:01Jamelle Bouie:the rocks i i mean you don't really you don't see it in polling if it's happening you don't really see it yet. I would say that one has to consider as well that many American Jews also hold complicated feelings about Israel and negative feelings about the Netanyahu government. And so to the extent that the larger Democratic Party turn against Israel is very much about Gaza, is very much about Israel's conduct, and not so much about Jewishness, but really about the conduct of this particular government, then I don't imagine there'll be that much change in terms of the relationship between American Jews and the Democratic Party.

9:44E.J. Dionne Jr.:What do you think, EJ? I think, first of all, I think one of the difficulties for Democrats here is that, say, through the Obama, even the Hillary Clinton election, Jews and Muslims both voted overwhelmingly Democratic, American Jews, American Muslims, you know, two-thirds or more Democratic. And this has pitted, particularly in Michigan, where there is a large Muslim American population.

10:09Robert Siegel:And a very large Arab American population.

10:11E.J. Dionne Jr.:This has pitted two constituencies inside the Democratic Party in a way against each other. But I want to underscore something Jamel said, which is opinion on Israel, especially since Gaza and even going back to the whole Netanyahu period among American Jews has gone a very negative among more progressive Jews. A.P. and Newark had a fascinating poll. 43 percent of Jewish adults, including 58 percent of Jewish Democrats, say the U.S. is not giving Palestinians enough support. And one of the most fascinating findings, 44 percent of American Jews held a favorable view of Zoran Mamdani. Just 32 percent held a favorable view of Bibi Netanyahu.

10:55E.J. Dionne Jr.:So there's something going on here that is true within the progressive parts of the American Jewish community, even though I think there are times when American Jews feel that some of this opposition is expressed in terms that start to barrel into anti-Semitism. So I get that reaction. But I think a lot of it is about the reality on the ground right now and a feeling about this Israeli government and its policies.

11:22Robert Siegel:I wanted to return to the bigger view for a moment. When we look at what's happened in the primaries around the country and we see people like El-Sayed in Michigan, how many progressives like him do we think they're going to be in the next Congress? Are we talking about five more seats, 20 more seats? Is it going to be, if the Democrats have a decent year, a big block or a few safe Democratic seats that have been won by a progressive?

11:57E.J. Dionne Jr.:You know, I went back and did some searching around on this question. As best I can tell, there may be seven, possibly another one or two Democratic Socialists of America in the Congress. We've talked a lot about DSA. They certainly won some important victories in the New York primaries, but still their number is going to be around seven. So that's something. And they can have a voice. But Democrats, if they win, let's say a small victory, they have 225 seats. Where are the rest of them going to be? Right now, there are 100 members of the Progressive Caucus. There are actually, last I checked, 116 members of the New Democratic Coalition, which is this more centrist group.

12:38E.J. Dionne Jr.:If the Democrats gain seats, my hunch is they're probably more likely to gain seats in districts where more moderate candidates will prevail because the party will have nominated in general, not everywhere, but in general, more moderate candidates in those seats. And so paradoxically, despite the gains, some of the gains the NSA will make and despite all the talk about how the Democratic Party is moving left, you may have a mix in that conference, which is ever so slightly more moderate than it is today.

13:08Jamelle Bouie:And to that, I would add, I think this is where I think it's really important to not get so bogged down on the ideological debates because setting beside like policy differences. I think what's really going to have an effect is if there is a big victory, people are going to be paying attention to how Democrats what they not what they did to win in terms of a campaign strategy, but sort of like their general approach. Right. And so you look at someone like John Ossoff in Georgia, who is likely to win a nice, comfortable reelection victory. And he's running this very explicitly anti-corruption campaign.

13:42Jamelle Bouie:Tallarico in Texas is also running on this anti-corruption line, also sort of taking this like they ought to be ashamed of themselves kind of approach. I think you're going to be you're going to see Democrats observe all of this. Like, how are how are these successful candidates speaking? How are they orienting themselves towards both other Democrats and towards Republicans? And that's where the influence is going to show. Right. That's where I think you're going to see the effect of the elections, not so much on ideology, because, again, Trump will still be president. Right. So it's not like anything's kind of getting done.

14:15Jamelle Bouie:But what will what will be viable are investigations, are hearings or these sorts of things. And so how are Democrats going to be approaching those questions? And if it's a narrow victory, it might be a much more sort of like, you know, the public barely wanted us here. We should cool our horses. If it's a big victory, it may be a much more aggressive. Oh, they really want us to go after these people. Who is doing that? Who can I emulate?

14:41E.J. Dionne Jr.:Right. I think the corruption issue, first of all, the polling shows it's actually starting to grab some voters. One survey by Echelon, 8 % said corruption was the most important issue in politics back at the end of 2024. It's up to 17 percent now. So this is starting to take hold among a lot of people. And I think the way corruption sort of builds into policy is in two ways. One is obviously Trump is looking out for his own interests and the interests of the very wealthy and not yours. And that has a lot of implications where Democrats of a lot of different stripes can play with that to push policies that are more egalitarian, but it also creates the sense of a kind of kleptocratic country that is in danger of becoming more like Russia.

15:29E.J. Dionne Jr.:Fortunately, we still have free elections and a lot of other good things that have not, we hope, are not destroyed and hope underlined several times are not destroyed in this election. But this sense of the linkage between unfairness and a corrupt government, I think, has a lot of political potential going forward. I think that's right.

15:51Robert Siegel:We talk so much about the divisions within the Democratic Party that we overlook the not entirely harmonious Republican Party. When you look at the Republican Party, is the whole idea of MAGA and non-MAGA finished? It's just a subsidiary of MAGA?

16:10E.J. Dionne Jr.:You know, I think there are a couple of things here. One is the people who think of themselves as a Republican now are not the same people entirely who thought of themselves as Republicans a decade ago, that Trump has pushed a bunch of people out of the Republican Party. And Jamel alluded to this in his Chimes chat last week that, you know, Gallup shows that 30 percent of Americans call themselves Republicans in 2024 and their latest average for this quarter of 2026, it's down to 25 percent. So you've got a Republican Party that if you don't like Trump, you are less likely to call yourself Republican than you used to.

16:50E.J. Dionne Jr.:And I think that explains a lot of these primaries we've seen. It explains why Trump's approval rating among Republicans, even as it's cratering among independents, is not cratering among Republicans. The question is, is MAGA sustainable without Trump himself? And it seems to me that he has particular gifts, if I may use that term about Donald Trump, in terms of appealing to people, certain habits of forcing people in his direction, intimidating Republicans in Congress, that I don't see either J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio have. The other thing is we tend to talk a lot about how the extreme left is given to sectarianism, you know, the socialist vanguard workers party splitting off from the socialist workers party.

17:43E.J. Dionne Jr.:And, you know, Janine Ganesha, columnist for the Financial Times, made a great point. You're seeing this splitting on the far right in Europe. You're You're seeing it in Italy where there's a split. Now there are two parties on the far right in Britain where there's a split where the reform party is not the only far right party. There's a new one. You're seeing it in Poland where the formerly ruling law and justice party just split last week so that I think on that level, absent Trump's both iron hand and peculiar charisma, it's not clear where this goes. And I guess the question is, is there such frustration with Trump at the end of his term, if it stays on the current trajectory?

18:28E.J. Dionne Jr.:Will there be some Republicans who come along and say to the party, you don't want Rubio, you don't want Vance, you want something different? And that's the only possibility I see of recreating anything that looks like the old Republican Party.

18:42Jamelle Bouie:Yeah, even in that situation, I'm not entirely certain if there is in just a single cycle the ability to recreate the old Republican Party. And certainly I very much agree with you, E.J., that I think people understate the importance of Trump's kind of celebrity charisma. You know, the thing that has delivered him victories or near victories in presidential elections is that he can turn out loosely attached voters, people who otherwise would not be voting and who critically, in some cases, don't even vote down ballot. They just vote for Trump. And in doing so, they've delivered him these very narrow victories.

19:16Jamelle Bouie:And I tie that explicitly to the fact that he's a celebrity, first and foremost, to many, many Americans. They don't register or read him as a Republican, which does two things. First, it's hard to convince voters that he'll do things that Republicans do that they don't like. Right. You can say he's going to cut taxes for rich people. He may have already done it. But precisely because he's not associated with the Republican Party in this sort of intimate way. A lot of voters say, oh, well, you know, is he really right? Like he signed the checks. Is he really going to be that bad? So I think there's no other Republican politician who has that, who had this decades long pre-political career where they essentially became a byword for wealth.

20:05Jamelle Bouie:Right. Like Trump was associated with wealth and pop culture. That doesn't exist for anyone else. And I'm very skeptical that any of the people who seem to be presidential contenders have the ability to reconstitute or pull together anything like the Trump coalition. And the other thing is that if you think of the Trump presidency as being this sort of like, I mean, there are three legs in the stool, but they're like awkwardly placed together like you're like a two year old might do. Yeah. of kind of MAGA populist neocons, people who want aggressive foreign policy and then Christian nationalists, for lack of a better term, they're able to come under Trump because fundamentally Trump just doesn't care that much.

20:44Jamelle Bouie:Trump is in it for Trump. And this kind of allows these other parts of the coalition to kind of be under him as sort of, he'll do what we want him to do because he just wants to be able to make some money and stay out of jail. Any president, any Republican president, Republican candidate who comes after Trump is going to have a particular ideological vision they want to pursue. And will that have room for these other more discordant elements?