How Far Can Trumpism Go Without Trump?

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1:03It's Tuesday, so what next, fam? You know what time it is. Isaac Saul, Jamal Bowie, thank you for coming on the show. I'm thrilled to have you both.

1:11Jamelle Bouie: Thank you so much for having us. Glad to be here. It's Super Tuesday time. Can I ask you both a question? Sorry, I guess that's why you're here. It'd be weird if you didn't ask us a question. Let's just sit in silence. This is the time every week where I call up some of the smartest folks I know and ask, where the heck is this midterm season leading us? This time, I got the New York Times' Jamel Bowie and Tangles' Isaac Saul on the line. How right on do you think the current polling is about what is going to happen in the November midterm? And I'm asking you both this because right now the polling looks so good for Democrats in places that are not usually good for Democrats.

1:56But I think it feels a little bit hard to believe. It's a midterm election. And like any election, what matters more than anything else is who's actually going to turn up and vote. I think that's why you see Trump doing this sort of campaign trail late run in October, going to places like Alabama or Idaho or wherever else, because Republican operatives know that when he goes into some of these towns or cities or areas, he's pretty good at turning his base out in the wake of a rally where they collect a bunch of phone numbers and start texting people. And, you know, and the real sickos are the ones that turn out for a midterm.

2:33Yeah, exactly.

2:39I would say that, first of all, there doesn't seem to be much divergence at all between national

2:46Jamelle Bouie: polling, between the things that there might be divergence of if the polls were off, right? The president's approval rating and the generic ballot and the actual polling in the state-level races all seem to be lining up the way you would expect it to line up. Everyone's singing from the same hymnal. Right. I think my perspective right now is that we're just in this period, what, two weeks before election day when we're chatting here, we're in this period where we're reaching the limits of what the polls can actually tell us. What the polls can tell us is that it's probably not going to be a good night for Republicans.

3:19Jamelle Bouie: What the polls cannot tell us is the extent to which that is true. If Republican Trump disapprovers are not voting for Democrats, but simply not voting at all. This is the undertow we keep hearing about. Then all of a sudden, what you have as a situation where maybe the polls are favoring Republicans by two points, three points. And in that world, what was a bad night becomes a catastrophic night. Wow. OK, so I wanted to hone in on the reaction from the GOP in this moment. There are certainly signs that Republicans might distance themselves from Donald Trump. Like you look at Senator Darlene Graham in South Carolina coming out over the last few days.

4:00She's running to take over Lindsey Graham's seat, her brother. She's sort of gently disagreed with Donald Trump over his recent decision to exempt Russia from sanctions policy that her brother championed. You see Mike Rogers, the GOP senator of Michigan, calling for a wind down in the Iran war. These sorts of things are little samples of actual politicians changing behavior in the wake of things they see as threats, right? I wonder if you look at either of those things and you think, huh, maybe the GOP is going to break with Trump. I mean, I think they're going to break with Trump for sure. I think that's inevitable.

4:37It's just a question of whether they do it in 2026 or 2028. But isn't he like all they've got? I don't know, Jamel, like, am I being crazy here?

4:46Jamelle Bouie: I actually find this a little difficult to work through because what you would assume is what Isaac is describing, right? Like, let's say - That's like normal world. Right, that's normal world. Yeah. But then what makes this a not normal world is Donald Trump does not care about the Republican Party, right? In a world where the president cares about his party, he understands that his fellow partisans have to distance themselves from him. So he kind of plays along. Like George W. Bush disappearing basically after January 20th, 2009, was as much him trying to help the Republican Party as anything else.

5:23You mean he didn't want to just go paint?

5:26Jamelle Bouie: I mean, sure, he wanted to retire, but him fully vanishing from the face of American politics enabled the Republican Party to create the necessary distance from the Bush years to be able to recover. Trump is not going to do any of that, right? If anything, Trump will demand in the wake of this election that Republicans tie themselves even tighter to him. He will try to discipline those Republicans who do not do that. If that's what happens, then the normal kind of accountability mechanism, you might say, that would structure how the party responds, like doesn't work. And so I don't know. I don't know if the Republican Party is going to be able to disentangle itself from Trump.

6:12Jamelle Bouie: And that's even after he leaves office. This is, of course, assuming that he leaves office peacefully, for which we have no evidence he'll ever do. as long as the guy is still breathing, he's going to regard the Republican Party as his personal possession. So how does that structure how Republicans move forward, right?

6:35Today on the show, our weekly roundtable takes on the GOP. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.

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9:52Jamelle Bouie: toast is designed for both with tools to keep you humming and help turn grind into growth that's how you turn busy into business toast built for busy i mean i wonder if you guys could just like give me your odds each of you um you know given the current state of things like the Cook political report recently has Democrats picking up anywhere from nine to 19 seats in the House. Nate Silver, he upgraded the Democrats chances of taking the Senate to 75%. So Jamel, like what's your read here? If you had to. I mean, I'm very risk averse. And so if I were like betting money, you know, if I were like, you know, put it putting 100 bucks down.

10:34Jamelle Bouie: I would say that I'd expect Democrats to win somewhere between 235 and like 240 House seats and to win somewhere between, you know, win a Senate majority, most likely like 52 or 53. Like, you know, I'll give them Iowa. Ashley Hinson's actually a pretty decent candidate. Yeah. I mean, Isaac, I know you recently weighed in on this and you thought the Democrats would take the House but not the Senate. And it was kind of interesting to hear you talk because you were basically projecting Democrats would win in some races that they're really sweating right now in Michigan and Maine, but you were just a little more conservative on those places like Iowa, for example.

11:13Yeah, it just gets, when you do that, when you do the math and look at the map and what it requires, it just really would be an astonishingly good night for them. And I don't think that that's off the table. I think it's a very, very live possibility, but it does require not just winning in, you know, Michigan or North Carolina or whatever, where I think they're in a really good position, obviously. Um, but also picking up places like Iowa or even Texas. And again, I just did this right up on Texas today and you dig into the polling. James Tallarico is in a really, really, really good place with two weeks to go.

11:54And I think there's a strong case that he's the favorite there. And doing just that exercise of looking at all those cross tabs and reading those polls and comparing them made me feel a little bit more compelled about Democrats' path. But they have to hit. It's not just flipping one or two seats. They really have to hit everything. Well, to bolster what you were saying there, I had Jessica Huseman on the show last week from VoteBeat, and she was basically like, Texans don't vote. We're mad at voting here. And also, we make it really hard to vote. You can't register online. You can't do all these things.

12:24There are all these like structural things in place that just like are extra weights around the neck of someone who is trying to change the current paradigm as it exists in a place like Texas. And it seems like the one thing the GOP has going for it right now is money. But like, when I think about that a little bit, I think like the problem with that is that actually the case a lot of Democrats are making right now is against money in politics. And so I look at that, it's this weird thing. You see it too with Trump going to the states that he won and campaigning there where he's like, vote like I'm on the ballot.

12:58And Democrats are like, sure, do that. Do you know what I mean? It's like both of the parties are actually saying the same thing. And it's like, you know, vote for us because of this thing. It's also important. Republicans have a money advantage, but they don't have a donor advantage. They have an Elon Musk advantage, which is a pretty big, you know, typically when we talk Talk about that money raised donations, even, you know, big donors, super PACs, whatever. All of that is typically a sign of enthusiasm. And in this case, like Texas is a great example where James Tallarico is crushing Ken Paxton, out raising him, but Ken Paxton just has Elon Musk.

13:34And that's kind of the thing that's leveling the playing field. So, yeah, I don't know if money can fix what Republicans are facing, but they definitely have an advantage in terms of what they can spend on TV ads for sure. Yeah.

13:46Jamelle Bouie: I'll say just on that, that even though they do have this Elon advantage, you know, one danger of all of your money going through a single guy is that you're kind of tied to that guy's particular priorities. And so, you know, one thing that I've noticed is that a lot of Elon's ads are about trans rights, right? They're about trans kids playing sports. They're about, you know, medical procedures. and I'm sure that's really important to Elon Musk, right? And I think one of the pieces of conventional wisdom that came out of the 24 election is that that helped win the election for Donald Trump. But in terms of salient, it's actually not particularly salient to most voters.

14:29Jamelle Bouie: The voters for whom it is salient are probably going to vote Republican if they vote. And if the challenge for Republicans right now is either turning out their voters or persuading, again, persuading Republican Trump disapprovers to vote for the Republican candidate, then I'm not sure that it does it, right? And there's already, you can already read stories of Republican strategists saying, you know, we're trying to focus on the tax cuts in the one big beautiful bill act. We're trying to focus on, you know, border stuff. And the relentless focus, either from Trump on his own personal obsessions or Musk, is actually getting in the way of making a closing argument to voters that might help recover a bit.

15:16Jamelle Bouie: So depending on how the night goes, the reliance on Elon may turn out to be a double-edged sword. You have a lot of money from this guy, but you're also like— You also have this guy. You have this guy. Yeah. I'm sure you guys saw this video this weekend of Abdul El-Sayed. This guy in the audience named Tommy gets up and asks him a question, asks him to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. And it became this moment for Abdul El-Sayed. And the reason I'm bringing this up is that Marisa Kaba, so I bet you both know she does the handbasket. She's a reporter. She did this really good video where she IDs who Tommy is.

15:57He's worked with Josh Hawley. He's tied through family to, I think, Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana. I thought it was good that she did that and interesting that she did that because it showed to me how Trumpism, like this approach, this negative approach is very baked into what the GOP does now. And it's not just Donald Trump pushing it. And I was thinking about it in terms of like, how could the party change? How much can the party change post November if there is some kind of big lesson here from them? And I don't know. And I wonder if each of you have thoughts on that. I mean, I don't see a world where they're going to be able to quickly off ramp from the kind of incendiary Trumpism that we've all experienced for the last 10 years.

16:49I think the best case that they'll have to or eventually that will will witness that is that everybody who tries to do the Trump impersonation comes out looking even worse than he does. I mean, my personal view, however you feel about President Donald Trump, is that he clearly has some showmanship, it factor charisma that connects with enough Americans to keep him politically popular, to buoy him even through all of the negativity and the kind of like gross conduct that we see from him on a regular basis. I mean, just look at his true social account. It's insane. But when we see other people try and do that, it just doesn't land.

17:32And I don't, like Matt Gaetz is not in Congress anymore. And he went down the Trump route and everybody was just like, ew, dude. And it just didn't work. And so I think there's going to be the kind of crop of people who come up and try and do what he does and fail. And you're going to see the Marjorie Taylor Greene's come out and say they're reformed and they regret it and whatever else. And I think that'll happen over years and we'll eventually see them move a little bit away from that. You see somebody like James Tallarico, if he succeeds on this kind of decent political persona where he's just being like a good guy and not being super negative or an asshole, then you might see it, other people on the right, try and copy that.

18:13But it'll be this battle between like the J.D. Vance, Donald Trump Jr. senior types and the sort of Marco Rubio's who I think are doing something that's still a little bit more elevated and kind of respectful. But I think it's going to take time for them to get away from that. Yeah, I'm curious to see if Marco Rubio is like able to get out from under Donald Trump. I'm curious.

18:35Jamelle Bouie: I mean, my answer to that is no, the guy has no juice. But I think one kind of interesting element of all of this is that Trump's appeal to voters and really to the voters that have delivered him to the White House on two occasions, which is sort of the low propensity, loosely attached voters. I would say his principal appeal to those voters is that the character of Donald Trump as established by decades of being on television is more or less the sort of totem for ostentatious wealth. And so the theory of the case for him, for these voters went, well, if you put this guy in office, he'll make us rich, right?

19:21Jamelle Bouie: He'll get us money. He'll make us prosperous. He's like our lucky rabbit's foot. Really, he's like our lucky rabbit's foot. The pandemic era stimulus checks were understood in those terms. Oh, of course Trump, the rich guy, would give us money in this particular circumstance. And I would say those things helped aid his stronger than expected performance in the 2020 election and aided his return in 2024. So that's how voters understood him. But then you have like the cadres of, you know, far right ideologues who actually make up the Trump administration. And for them, Trump is this vehicle for this hard right, ethno-nationalist, oligarchical political agenda, right?

20:04Jamelle Bouie: This attempt to remake the United States as, you know, or re, re, you know, returned to the United States to being something like a white man's country. And that ideological goal is the thing that is like, that attracts a JD Vance, right? JD Vance with his, the declaration of independence is too broad. Or Stephen Miller. Or Stephen Miller, that your Americanness is tied to your heritage. And if your heritage doesn't go back far enough, and you're kind of a provisional American, all that stuff. That stuff, right, can be iterated on in government because voters aren't really voting for it. They're voting for Trump.

20:47Jamelle Bouie: What happens when the people who want to succeed Trump and who, as Isaac notes, aren't celebrities, don't have this sort of animal magnetism? My editor doesn't like when I say that because he's like, well, what did animals ever do? They're not magnetic. But I like the term animal magnetism. It sounds very like 1920s. And I enjoy it. I bet Trump would love it too. He thinks he's a lion. But what happens when those guys attempt to do the ideological content of the Trump administration without the celebrity qualities of Trump? I think it just completely falls flat. I keep thinking about Blake Masters in the 2022 Arizona Senate race, who was like many flaws as a candidate chief among them that he really did give off a school shooter vibe.

21:35Jamelle Bouie: But he attempted to kind of do the ideological content of Trumpism without the Trump stuff. And it just it just didn't work. Like, I just. Do you think we need a moment of reckoning to like say that out loud and have everyone agree that's bad before we like move through it? Oh, I don't know if that's going to happen. I know. That's the thing. I definitely don't think it will.

22:07And I just I worry about just like the idea of like, let's just let it fall on its face. I would love it if that happened. I feel like Trump is like the evidence that it won't necessarily.

22:16Jamelle Bouie: Yeah, I mean, when you think about the Republican Party is staffer class, it's operative class. You know, I don't think the Trump mark is going to be with us for like the next generation. So I kind of think that those politics are just going to be with us for a while. But I'm unconvinced of the ability of those politics to win national elections without some kind of celebrity charisma attached to them. I think you do need basically some kind of, you know, way to tell these voters who will determine the elections that, oh, this, you know, you're not voting for that. You're voting for this. So they can feel better about themselves.

22:59Jamelle Bouie: They can feel better about it. Or that it doesn't, it's not like it's not something they are aware is on the table. Isaac, do you have something? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think, you know, what I'm sort of thinking about as I'm listening to Jamel talk is, you know, we've been reading all these stories about these young staffers that are popping up in GOP circles now. Yeah, John Ossoff is very keen to let us know. Yeah, I mean, more the Groyper incel types who, you know, Ted Cruz is saying he can't bring anybody into his campaign who isn't like an anti-Semite or into his office who isn't an anti-Semite.

23:36He's having trouble hiring these young conservatives. Rod Drehar wrote this awesome piece about, you know, talking to Vice President Vance and some of the things that he heard about what the White House is experiencing behind closed doors, where this like generation of voters, these like 18 to 30 year old Trump voters they're inspiring, are coming up and coming into interviews or showing up on Capitol Hill, being them full self, being their full selves. And everybody's like, whoa. Yeah, that scares the crap out of me. Yeah, it's like a little much, right? And I think what's interesting about that is it's sort of a reflection of how the right wing movement and the Trump movement, I think, is just like no longer driving the bus.

24:17They've kind of lost control. I mean, we saw this in the early days of his second term where Dan Bongino comes into office, this guy who's been like hammering the Epstein file stuff and all these conspiracy theories. And then he gets consumed the moment he joins the FBI by his own followers who are like, do something, dude. Like we've been waiting. This is our moment. And you're you're like a total traitor. You're not actually doing the thing. You're a coward. And he gets like chewed up and spit out. And now is back on radio sort of like pretending that he did something or saw the inside or whatever.

24:50And I just think when I imagine the future, it's like these the generation of voters that they're inspiring kind of on the fringes. They're not even palatable enough for Ted Cruz to hire them. They're definitely not palatable enough to go out and win elections. But relying on Ted Cruz to be like the guy preventing those? I guess I just mean like that trajectory to me spells long-term trouble for Trumpism. And I don't think it's going to happen in two or four years where like that distance is created and the movement kind of dies. But I think to Jamel's point, like the the ideology is being carried by this singularly charismatic figure who has some juice that works.

25:37And once he leaves and other people try and carry that ideology, I think a lot of Americans are going to be like, oh, this is gross and horrible. But it's the same ideology that's been getting carried for the last 10 years. They're just going to see it in really clear terms when it's not being sort of shown off and vouched for by somebody like Trump. And I think that's the problem with the future prospects of Trumpism and why it's probably not going to have a super long shelf life. But, you know, that could take 10 years. It might not happen by 2028.

26:09After the break, we go back to the last time there was a blue wave.

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27:27I wonder if we could look at 2018. Jamel, you did this a little bit already. But look at 2018 as an analog for what might happen come November. Like, it's imperfect for a number of reasons. But just to remind people, in 2018, Donald Trump was in his first term. Democrats surged in the House. They did not win in the Senate. This is basically what Isaac thinks could happen here. And I think it's useful to go back, first of all, just to realize how far we've come, which is, you know, after 2018, the Mueller report came out. And like I was refreshing my memory reading back and I was like, oh, yeah, the Mueller report kicked off because under Donald Trump, the investigation was begun, which, of course, would never happen in this timeline that we're on now.

28:15So it's like all sorts of things were happening that just would not happen. Also, you saw an effort at impeachment. He was impeached. That did not actually go through. So what is 2018 and what happened then tell you about what might happen now? And do you think folks who are in power are learning lessons from that moment that they will now be applying? I mean, Jamel, you've written if Democrats win the Senate, they cannot mess around. But I'm like, huh, I'm not sure they're going to follow that formula. Yeah, I mean, I just think the.

28:54Jamelle Bouie: I think what 2018 says is that, or what it suggests is that as long as the economy is basically chugging along, voters actually will tolerate a lot of Trump stuff. They just will. What distinguishes 2026 and 2018 really is just the economy, right? It's the fact that diesel prices are as high as they've ever been, that gas prices are, I think, a record for being consistently above$4 a gallon. you know, inflation has increased from when Trump entered. So if 2024 was an election that was about inflation and economic conditions in the past 10, 11 months have been a presidency largely unconcerned with dealing with those things, in fact, taking steps to exacerbate them in addition to all the other unpopular stuff.

29:41Jamelle Bouie: The difference is just that the economy is really weighing Trump down in a really dramatic way. So can Democrats impeach him because he stole your money? He made you poorer? Well, this is the thing. There is Trump's unpopularity. It's creating opportunities. Those opportunities may cash out into meaningful Senate and House majorities. Then it's like, well, what do you do with those majorities? And my view is that power is to be used and not shepherded. That to me is actually one of the lessons we should take from the past 10 years. And so my view is that if voters are very angry with the Trump administration about cost and corruption, and they are.

30:28Jamelle Bouie: That's what the polling suggests. They are very angry about cost, obviously, but they're very angry about corruption as well. Then you should act to address that. You shouldn't just act to address cost. You should also act to address corruption. And I would argue further that if you're thinking beyond the next election, if you're thinking to 2030 and 2032, you kind of need to deal with the corruption. You kind of need to deal with the non-economic stuff from the administration, if only to prevent it from happening again and putting yourself in a better position to have a functional country a little bit down the road.

31:06Jamelle Bouie: I think that the Biden administration was this experiment in can you just do economic management and not worry about the other stuff? And I think the conclusion is no, you can't. You can't. Yeah. I mean, like listening to you talk, I can hear how you would sell it, which is like here's where our economy is and then connect it to corruption. And that's why we're prosecuting this, which I think is a stronger case than a phone call with Zelensky. Do you know what I mean? Like it's just a better. Yeah. I mean, just in terms of the case you'd be making to the public, right? You're right. It's not just corruption is a better case.

31:40Jamelle Bouie: It's, hey, do you remember when the ICE agents killed two people on the street? We think that was bad. We want to do something about it, right? Those are stronger cases. The extent to which this administration is truly lawless across so many arenas does make for a stronger case for submitting the administration to the rule of law. Yeah. Isaac, what do you think? It's interesting. So first of all, I'll just say I'm aligned with Jamel about the obvious corruption of this administration. I think it's the most corrupt presidency we've ever seen. And it clearly expands way beyond just Trump. I mean, the Kimberly Guilfoyle stuff we just got last week is astonishing.

32:22Ask her to play her credit card bill before she gets to the ambassador. It's all just so totally insane. And I think, you know, when we talk about other nationalist movements we've seen fall apart, like Viktor Orban in Hungary, there's sort of a misnomer, I think, here in the States that he lost because he went too far on the nationalism, which is not really what happened. He lost because he was comically corrupt. His administration was comically corrupt. And so Hungarians turned on him. And I think Trump, you know, we are now getting this polling showing that for the first time ever in American history, corruption, political corruption is the number one issue for many Americans, which is astonishing and is not a good sign for the Trump administration.

33:03That being said, I'm not totally sure I agree with Jamel about the long term play to prosecute that corruption and prosecute the administration. When I think about the Biden administration, I don't necessarily agree that it was just economic management. I mean, at least from the eyes of the country, you know, Trump was prosecuted during the Biden administration on all fronts. I mean, Department of Justice, state of New York. he was basically in court nonstop for four years. And eventually, a lot of those cases, for various reasons, kind of fell apart at the seams. Few of them landed, but in ways that I don't think necessarily was really salient for voters.

33:47And the image that Trump carried into 2024 was of this man being politically persecuted. And then we had the attempted assassination attempt, which when that happened, the moment that happened, I was like, Trump is going to win in 2024, I was sure of it, because it was just all part of this image. And that, to be clear, that's not a good reason not to prosecute the Trump administration from like an ethical, moral perspective for its corruption. But as a political matter, I am not convinced that if Democrats take power in 2026, and they spend their time trying to impeach the president or drag Jared Kushner or Elon Musk before Congress, that that's going to play really well with voters.

34:30I actually think there's just as good, if not a better chance that voters would look at that and be like, we put you in office to stop the war and solve gas prices and fix the affordability stuff. And instead, you're just going after the Tesla guy. I don't give a shit. And that is like the counter argument I would put forward. Despite the fact that I want to see the corruption prosecuted, I actually am not convinced that that is a smart political play, even in the long term. I understand this political argument, because I do feel like, while I agree, and I think we all agree about the economics of the situation right now, I do feel like part of what people may vote on in this election, this midterm, is chaos.

35:10It's essentially like, things look messy, stop being messy, let's fix it. And I think the only way through this is more mess. Do you know what I mean? Like, you actually, I think morally what Jamel says is correct, but it is more mess. And I can see what Isaac is saying, which is like the average voter who maybe isn't as tuned in being like, why is it still so messy? I just told you I wanted to like afford something. So I guess what's your case, Jamel?

35:38Jamelle Bouie: I mean, my case is that I don't think there's, I don't think, how do I put this?

35:46Jamelle Bouie: there is a political case for doing this that just requires one to actually make the political case. I think Ossoff is doing some of this in Georgia. And that political case essentially is that you can't get to the problem of affordability without dealing with the problems of corruption. And that doesn't necessarily mean an impeachment drive against Trump. Although, of course, I think Trump should be impeached. I think it's sort of – I think he's just going to force the issue and you have to make a choice about it. I think he said he was begging for it recently. Yeah, he's begging for it. But there are – in the administration, right, there is wild graft happening.

36:26Jamelle Bouie: There is evidence of members of the administration and basically handing away regulatory authority to the relevant industries. There's all this stuff happening. And I think you could make a very good political case that in order for us to begin to get things in order, we actually have to engage in this project of cleaning up what's happening in government. I think also the political case for this is that voters like to see that things are happening, right? And you can pass a bunch of legislation, certainly, but Trump first is not going to be signing it. And second, you need something to show voters that things are happening.

37:04Jamelle Bouie: And the thing about hearings, the thing about having your young – let's say there's a Senate majority – your young, hot Democrats screaming at Pete Hexeth, Stephen Miller, right? Like Mark Wayne Mullen, really dragging them before Congress and then making them answer for various things is it's a thing that's happening. And it's a thing that you can say, look, we are in the process of doing the kind of cleaning up so that when you elect us to the presidency, we can just immediately begin working on the things we need to do to help you out. The other political case for doing this is that it's sort of a, it's a truism.

37:45Jamelle Bouie: It's a bit of a cliche even to note that Democrats are broadly unpopular as well. Why Democrats are broadly unpopular is actually an interesting question. My read of why Democrats are broadly unpopular is because people think Democrats are a bunch of wimps. They think Democrats are soft. They think Democrats are unable to stand up for themselves. They see your Hakeem Jeffries and your Chuck Schumers give mealy-mouthed statements in December, and they're like, yeah, these people can't stand up for us. And it's noteworthy that the most exciting Democrats in this cycle are the ones who are pushing against that, not in terms of ideology, but just in terms of affect.

38:30But Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are still going to be the guys.

38:34Jamelle Bouie: Sure. But that's – so we can have a whole conversation about sort of like how the chambers are organized. But I would say that the fact that they are the leaders of the congressional parties does not necessarily mean that they must be the political face of the party. I do feel like there are going to be better communicators in office than there were in 2018. I think there will be more people who look and sound like AOC than Hakeem Jeffries. And so if you find people who can make this case, people like John Ossoff, who are good communicators, want to communicate in this way, I think that it will be different in that way, too.

39:12And I think that's really important to just say out loud. The class of people coming in are going to look different. They're going to speak differently. And that may be an opportunity.

39:20Jamelle Bouie: I really think I don't like entirely disagree with like Isaac's diagnosis here, but I'm of the view that you can fall a little too much into saying essentially, because this is what the polling suggests, therefore, this is what you should do as the politics rather than saying, this is the picture of what public opinion is. and that just gives you a sense of how you might try to manage and change it, right? That we know that people really care about affordability. So if you have a set of political goals, how do you do those political goals within that context rather than, oh, we shouldn't do that because people say this?

40:00Jamelle Bouie: I think actually Democrats doing the latter, saying we shouldn't do that because voters say this in polls, is actually part of why they have the reputation they do. You know what's interesting? Isaac recently made this argument that he's like because he was explaining I'll let you make it but like the basic argument was if the Democrats don't win the Senate it'll actually create this like kind of um what's the word I'm looking for it'll create like a hot pot for AOC where like she will supercharge herself to like a presidential nomination essentially because like there'll be so much built up energy for someone like her and it was kind of interesting to me and because the Yeah, the case against the Trump administration would be getting prosecuted in the House instead of the Senate for the most part, because that's where the power would be.

40:46And I do think that's true. I mean, I think there's an opening. There's a way that this election goes where like an Abdul Al-Sayed wins in Michigan, but Democrats don't take the Senate. that simultaneously proves the sort of AOC, Bernie, Abdul-Sayed, kind of DSA, progressive, socialist adjacent type of new Democrat can win in a swing state. But what the establishment is doing is still not good enough to take the Senate and still not good enough to sort of like actually stand up to Trump. That becomes an opening for them. And I'll say, I guess, to give some, lend some credence to Jamel's point.

41:25Like I do think Democrats could successfully prosecute a Pete Hegseth or a Stephen Miller, uh, you know, before the American people, a, because I think the, some of the stuff they've done is so egregiously bad, whether it's ice killings or how the war in Iran has gone or whatever else be, I think those are just two super unlikable dudes. Um, and so it'd be easy to put them in front of the American people. I think though, So, you know, it's just a fine line, like, because all of a sudden you have Jared Kushner or Natalie Harp or something like they reach for something like that. And then there's this, oh, are you prosecuting American businesses?

42:03Like Kushner is, you know, whatever. It's all it's bullshit. Like World Liberty Financial is an incredibly corrupt concept. And he is selling access to the White House very clearly, in my view. But I could see him defending himself. And he already is starting to as kind of this businessman who has the best interests of America at heart. And of course, his interests and the American people and his business interests can be aligned sometimes. Or like Natalie Hart being like this innocent staffer that they're dragging out because they think that she has some sexual relationship with Trump or whatever.

42:32Where it's just like they overreach all of a sudden and then it looks bad and a waste of time and ugly and that blows up in their face. So I think they can. And I think ethically, morally, they should. I think politically it's not a layup and they just have to be really careful if they want it to work. I mean, I'm just really curious to see who, how the power center shifts. Do you know what I mean? Like right now we already have people like Hakeem Jeffries kind of making the case like, I'm going to keep this under control. There was this op-ed in the Washington Post that was basically like, I'm going to keep this energy under control.

43:03It was from Donna Brazile. And I don't know how possible it's going to be. And I think it'll be really interesting to see like what, who leads where.

43:13Jamelle Bouie: I do tend to think that if Republicans lose both chambers of Congress, it's not going to be a chasing Trump. It's going to be a totally unhinged Trump. Yes. And that so much of what's going to drive 2027, 2028, it's just it's going to be a game of chicken. It's going to be confrontations and like how Democrats manage those confrontations. I do think that right now we're talking as if there's like a lot of choice involved here. But I do think there's going to be an extent to which actually there isn't much choice at all. Right. That like Trump is going to force the issue in effect. And you're going to have to decide how you're going to respond to it.

43:51Jamelle Bouie: Pick your fighter. Sorry. Did you just say there's going to be an unhinged Trump? More unhinged. Escalation of the unhingedness. Yeah. Yeah. Isaac, Jamel, I'm so grateful for your time and for talking all that with me. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks, Mary. Isaac Saul is the founder of the news website Tangle. Jamal Bowie is a columnist over at the New York Times. And that's our show. What Next is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate.

44:37Ben Richmond is our senior director of podcast operations. and I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down on Blue Sky. I'm at Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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