Will Trump’s Failures Cost the G.O.P. in Texas?

0:01Michelle Cottle:This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:19David French:I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times opinion. And this week, we've got the band back together. I've got my fabulous colleagues, David French, coming to us from Chicago, and our man in Charlottesville, Jamel Bowie. Guys, good to see you as always.

0:38Jamelle Bouie:Hey, Michelle. Hey, Michelle. Hey, David.

0:40David French:All right. Today, we're going to talk about the center of the electoral universe in the coming week, Texas, and the emerging cracks in Trump's coalition. Usual caveat, we are recording this on Thursday, and Trump is set to head to Texas on Friday, ahead of the state's primary elections next week. So, you know, anything goes. But as for the current no-nones, Trump is hitting the Lone Star Trail to spread his message of economic victory, prosperity. Now, of course, this past Tuesday, he had an even bigger platform from which to tout his economic record during the marathon State of the Union. So how did he do on that front?

1:28Jamelle Bouie:I'm sort of astonished that I managed to sit through the whole two hours.

1:33David French:Hey, good endurance. Very impressive.

1:36Jamelle Bouie:But the things that stuck out to me, I mean, the two big things that stuck out to me, the first was really the level of truly lurid and virulent racism, especially against Somali Americans. I think people have gotten desensitized to this kind of public performance of bigotry, and they shouldn't because it's truly extraordinary. It's not as if all American, past American presidents, or even most American presidents, have ever been racial egalitarians. But there is a recognition that public bigotry of that kind was just not acceptable. It's not a thing that was okay. because the president is supposed to represent all Americans and at best try to represent all Americans at their highest aspirations.

2:20Jamelle Bouie:And that gets to the second thing that was striking to me about the State of the Union, which is that there are no aspirations here. It's sort of the most base kind of emotions and attitudes and feelings, you know, a crude instinct to dominate others. And that's all that Trump has to offer to the public.

2:38David French:Okay, so he was supposed to be going in there to focus on the economy and make America feel like he understands their concerns. Now, he started off with a list, a laundry list of all the magical things he feels that he has done for the country, and that included some plans or moves he's made, although they were creatively spun, like how he has lifted so many people up off of food stamps, by which he means He has slashed the number of people who are receiving food stamps. So I'm not sure that even in that small chunk of time where he talked about the economy and economic achievements, that it would necessarily resonate with a public that clearly doesn't think that the economic problems have been solved.

3:30David French:And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that specific part of this, because that's so important to the party in November.

3:38Michelle Cottle:Yeah, this is a really important point. And I think it's something that, you know, both parties really, you know, they're doing what they only thing they can do when voters experiences are sour. So what Trump did is sort of boast about things in a completely false way to say, everything's better now, everything's great, but vote, you cannot lie your way out of voters actual experiences, right? So if voters are experiencing a job crunch, if they're experiencing higher prices and key goods and services that they want, if their interest rates aren't as low as they want, you can talk and boast all you want, and it's not going to land.

4:17And this is something the Democrats kind of learned in the 2024 race is that even though inflation had come way down, people were still behind where they'd been in 2018, 2019, et cetera, and sort of saying, here are the statistics.

4:31Michelle Cottle:Aren't they great? Yeah. wasn't effective to trump people's experiences. And now Trump is coming out and he's sort of, he's up the ante and saying, well, I'll make up statistics. I'll make things up and tell you how great everything is. But again, you just can't lie your way out of voters' actual experiences.

4:50David French:So Jamel, what do you think in terms of, you know, looking at the midterm, they know what he needs to do or they have a sense of what he needs to do. How did he approach?

5:02Jamelle Bouie:I mean, I don't think this was particularly successful. We have actually, you know, as David kind of alluded to, we have an example of a elderly declining president trying to tell people that things are good when they feel otherwise. Just a disaster. Didn't work out well for him. Yeah, it's just – so in fairness to lawmakers, I'll say, in fairness to people in politics, there is a bit of a conundrum here because macroeconomic indicators up until recently were showing a pretty strong American economy, right? Like something that was humming along. And even in the midst of that, even in the midst of sort of at least what appeared to be wage growth, what appeared to be high employment growth, people were still very dissatisfied.

5:47Jamelle Bouie:The vibe was off. People didn't feel as if they were living in a prosperous society, even though the indicators seem to say that they were. And that's sort of a, that's like a hard problem to solve. So that's me being fair to the political problem here. But the Trump administration and Donald Trump have done nothing to try to really reach people where they are, right? Like cutting food stamps, cutting ACA subsidies, like cutting direct assistance to people. recent analyses say that the tariffs have cost the typical american household about a thousand dollars that's like that's sort of the low end higher end the democratic minority in congress put out a report higher end around seventeen hundred dollars so somewhere between a thousand and seventeen hundred dollars between a little less than a hundred dollars a month and a little more than a hundred dollars a month americans have lost due to tariffs and that's like real money So the president going before the country and kind of trying to browbeat people into believing that things are all good, I don't think it's going to be very effective.

6:50Jamelle Bouie:And I actually want to make one just quick observation. It has been, it's 2026, we are 10 years removed, just about, from when we had a president who could deliver good to exceptional oratory. Neither Trump nor Biden, even young Biden, not a particularly good public speaker, neither Trump nor Biden have really that kind of rhetorical command. But we, you know, politics is rhetoric and we are living at a time when the high arts of rhetoric are just in such short supply.

7:29David French:Okay, we got to get to Texas next, but I want to jump on that because I am fascinated by that because one of the things that Trump's supporters have always sort of bragged about is that he speaks on a fourth grade level. And so I'm wondering how much of this is that we have dumbed down society to the point that, you know, if you talk at too high a level, you're just going to lose everybody who is going to think you're snooty or whatever. And Trump has absolutely kind of embraced this whole Democrats bad, I'm good, biggest, baddest ever, whatever. So I am fascinated by the idea of what would happen if we didn't have somebody who actually knew how to give a good old stem winder anymore.

8:19David French:I don't know. Would it play? It's a great question.

8:22Michelle Cottle:And I think we've always had a vulnerability to just the lowest common denominator politics. And, you know, I think for me, when I was growing up, if you watched the way people interacted with each other, the arguments and the conversations that they had, it was fundamentally different. And we just didn't know what we had when we had it. And it really is brought home to me when I teach undergrads. I one time asked some of my students to watch the 2012 first debate between Romney and Obama. And I can't remember if I've told this story before, but the overwhelming sentiment that these students took from it was I didn't realize they were friends or I didn't realize that, you know, like how civil this could be.

9:07Michelle Cottle:And I remember that 2012 first debate in particular is pretty tense.

9:10David French:Oh, yeah. But you look at it now, it's just fundamentally different.

9:14Michelle Cottle:And I know there are Republicans out there and he lost. Well, there are lots of examples of Republicans who won without being like Trump. So can we just dispense with the idea that that's the only way to win?

9:26David French:Well, it's interesting that you have brought up civility and integrity and character because that is indeed the perfect pivot to Texas. So in the Republican Senate primary, we are seeing very different political models fighting for the nomination down there. You know, I spent some time down there, go into various events, talking with people. Always a good time. Love it. What we're looking at right now, in the Senate race, a highly divisive MAGA warrior, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, who we have talked much about on this show because what perhaps defines him more than his politics is his huge pile of scandals that he carries around with him.

10:12David French:In this corner, we have Representative Wesley Hunt, a young, charismatic, conservative military vet who would be Texas's first Black senator. And over here, the four-term incumbent, John Cornyn, who is seen as too establishment and not nearly Trumpy enough by many in his party's base. So what kind of champion does the party need this cycle to keep Texas deep red, but also maybe to start moving the party into, dare we dream, a post-Trump era?

10:49Michelle Cottle:I am so all about this primary. This is such a, it is American national politics and our choice in a microcosm, right? With Ken Paxton, it might be fair to say that he could be the most corrupt politician in America, not named Donald Trump. It's quite possible. The charges against him. Look, there are personal friends of mine who used to work in his AG's office and quit in protest because of the conduct in this office. It was insiders. And when I tell you insiders, I'm not talking like squish Republicans or whatever, but like people are very thoughtful. Senior, hardcore staffers. Senior, very thoughtful, very conservative Texans said no.

11:36Michelle Cottle:I mean, he was impeached, almost convicted. And then you have John Cornyn, who I don't think anyone would call him a squish. I mean, there's some resentment that he signed onto a gun control bill, but he signed onto measures that were extremely popular, just extremely popular. And so the idea that John Cornyn is a squish and he needs to be supplanted by the most corrupt politician not named Donald Trump in America. It's absurd. And then I think with the Democrats, you almost have, it's like the platonic form of the choice. How do you fight Trumpism? Is it, you know, is it going to be the populist, pugilistic, you know, Jasmine Crockett, I'm going to kind of walk out there and punch you in the face rhetorically?

12:21Michelle Cottle:Or is it going to be like the walking TED talk, you know, James Tallarico?

12:25David French:A seminarian, no less.

12:27Michelle Cottle:I mean, yes, seminarian. They're very contrasting styles, very contrasting. And here's the interesting thing. If Ken Paxton wins, I think Tallarico could probably beat him. And I think Jasmine Crockett might be able to beat him. I think if Cornyn wins, then the dynamic shifts very dramatically. But it really is one of the, it's just what, which way, primary voter, which way? Which way? Jamel, what are you thinking?

12:56David French:Jim?

12:56Jamelle Bouie:Ultimately, what happens in the Texas Senate race in terms of who wins the actual Senate seat in November is going to be shaped by national conditions. If Trump is just hideously unpopular, if they've done something terrible and egregious that got national attention, then I would very much agree that even if it's Cornyn and Crockett, then I would say Jasmine Crockett has like a decent chance of winning that race. Just it's all national conditions. You raised this question, Michelle, of whether this race might chart a post-Trump course forward. And I've come to the view that first, as long as Donald Trump is alive, there will not be a post-Trump Republican Party.

13:40Jamelle Bouie:I think that he's like a gravity well and there's no real escaping. There's no real escaping his influence in that way. So I'm just not, I'm not certain that there is any way for a Republican to truly distance themselves from Trump, even in the interest of trying to win elections. And this gets back to our previous discussion, which is just what Republican primary voters seem to believe is necessary to win elections. And they seem to believe that what is necessary is a level of kind of aggression and contempt for decency that really does advantage a guy like Paxton.

14:24David French:So one of the things we're looking at with Texas in particular is how the party is holding on to or not holding on to the gains that it has made among Hispanic voters who make up about a third of the electorate in the state. So in 2024, with Trump on the ballot, we saw a significant shift of Latino men, specifically toward the GOP. Now that support seems to be slipping away. And again, it's always different when Trump is not on the ballot. And I know that I've done reporting at the border about the Republican Party trying to woo Latino voters up and down the ballots, you know, even in years when Trump wasn't there.

15:12David French:But observers in the state note that the Trump policies have not been all that Latino voters were hoping for. So one question in this race, what does the party do to stop the slippage among this demographic? Or is there anything?

15:31Jamelle Bouie:I don't think there's anything that can be done. So after the 2024 election and after Trump more or less replicated George W. Bush's 2004 performance with Latinos and even Black Americans, right, should have begun to reconstitute that Bush coalition. There was a lot of, I would say, crowing among Republicans. Like, oh, we are now this multiracial working class coalition. But it's important to sort of distinguish between an electoral coalition and a durable party coalition. A durable party coalition is pieced together through all kinds of moves, through all kinds of actions over time. So the Roosevelt FDR New Deal coalition wasn't just the 1932 election or the 1936 election.

16:25Jamelle Bouie:It was a product of the New Deal. It was a product of a set of policies, a set of political approaches that didn't just win votes, but that like binded a number of different communities and different groups of Americans to a particular political order. Trump was able to assemble an electoral coalition that put him over the top. But the administration equated that, equated that with having bound those voters to the political project. And that's not what happened. It could have happened. There was a path to do that. But what happened instead was operating under the assumption that the battle had been won, the Trump administration and the Republican allies in Congress just began to pursue every single ideological hobby horse and bugaboo that they have.

17:21Jamelle Bouie:And the result has been that this nascent coalition immediately began to fall apart, right? Because a bunch of these voters weren't voting for snatching grabs of brown people off the streets. They were voting for maybe another stimulus check. I mean, and the polling shows this. Among black voters, among Latino voters, among young voters, young men in particular, every gain Trump made in 2024 hasn't just reversed itself, but has gone basically fleeing in the other direction.

17:52Michelle Cottle:So, you know, when you think about the Trump coalition, you know, if you looked at the commercials that Trump was blanketing their waves with, they were inflation, the economy, too much immigration, just very mainstream messages. But if you went to the rallies, if you saw the rallies, it was wild, you know, just wild down every conspiracy rabbit hole you could imagine. And so the question was, who's going to govern, commercial Trump or rally Trump? Well, it wasn't even really a question. It was going to be rally Trump. And so you put the wildest, most extreme people in charge of some of the most delicate and important policies in the United States of America, and what you're going to see is you're going to see extremism and you're going to see brutality.

18:36Michelle Cottle:And when you combine extremism and brutality, especially when you overlay that with a reality that a lot of you know, Black and Hispanic Americans, depending on where they are in this country, can't feel like they can walk down the street without necessarily having a show me your papers moment. And even if they show their papers, can sometimes be seized anyway. And when you do that, you can't build a multiracial coalition around that. That is just not possible. He's taken a sledgehammer to his coalition literally from day one.