Will the Midterms Show Shifting Coalitions for Democrats and Republicans?

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0:28Ruy Teixeira: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. With eight days to go before Election Day 2026, callers are tightening around campaigns across the country and especially in the White House. Democrats are anticipating a big win, But beyond the electoral math are deeper questions about what the results will tell us about the shifting coalition of Republicans and Democrats. How have those coalitions changed since 2024 when Donald Trump rallied a new coalition of working class white voters, Hispanics and independents and other minorities to win nearly 50 percent of the vote?

1:14Ruy Teixeira: I'm Paul Gigo, editor of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And my guest today is Roy Teixeira, a longtime student of politics, political scientist, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and founder of the sub-stack newsletter, The Long View. Welcome, sir. Thanks for coming in.

1:33Paul Gigot: Thanks for having me, Paul. This should be interesting.

1:35Ruy Teixeira: Let's talk about this issue of the fundamental issue that seems to be approaching us next week is that the Republican Party, considering from where it was in 2024, has shed voters. The Trump coalition isn't what it was two years ago. What's driving this political dissatisfaction with the president and his party?

1:57Paul Gigot: Well, I think it's pretty simple. I mean, this is a thermostatic reaction against the party in power, which has not delivered what it said it would. People's views of the economy are extremely negative. People's views of a lot of Trump administration actions are extremely negative. Look, Trump came in with this new coalition you alluded to. And in a sense, he was promising to fix the economy, you know, make life affordable and bring things back to normal after a certain amount of Democratic craziness. I think on all of those scores, he hasn't really delivered. So you could argue he's pushed back on some of the Democratic craziness.

2:31Paul Gigot: And fortunately, he substituted his own craziness for it. So I think people are really very unhappy with how things are going. And that's why the Republicans are hemorrhaging a lot of the votes that they picked up in 2024 from non-white working class voters, even some working class white voters, young voters, Latinos. I mean, it's pretty much across the board. Those voters that swung exceptionally heavily in this direction in 2024 are all swinging back. Now, we can't really control for who are those voters who are swinging back. Maybe those are the voters who were always more likely to swing back to begin with.

3:09Paul Gigot: In other words, there's some peripheral voters who moved in Trump's direction in 2024 who just aren't going to show up this time, even though on balance, they probably still prefer him to the Democrats, to the Republicans, to the Democrats. So with that said, I mean, I think it's undeniable that this shift will be big and it will be precisely in the opposite direction what happened in 2024.

3:29Ruy Teixeira: So if you talk to the White House, they'll say, well, look, We're just not getting the credit. We closed the border. And that was a big driver of votes in 2024. Prices, hey, I mean, you know, wasn't our fault. It's the residual carryover from Biden. They have a harder time denying the tariffs played a role in this. And they have a harder time denying that the war in Iran has played a role here. In fact, Trump has all but acknowledged the latter by saying it's just temporary. It'll come back after we end the war, however that does end. Particularly on immigration, you don't get credit for the things you promised that you do that are no longer issues.

4:12Ruy Teixeira: People say the border's closed, so let's move on to the next thing. And then there's this, do you think that the way that the administration has enforced internal immigration control with its deportations, is that factoring in here at all?

4:24Paul Gigot: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it's really true that he did something that he said he was going to do, that people basically supported and still supported, still support, which has closed the border. That's been very effective. He doesn't really talk about it enough, I think, or in the right kind of way. But it has been twinned with this pretty, at least initially, this pretty draconian enforcement actions of ICE, which obviously would get pumped up endlessly in most of the media whenever something untoward happened. There were the huge demonstrations and tragic deaths in Minneapolis. And it just struck most people as being excessive, right?

5:01Paul Gigot: Even people who supported a much more restrictionist approach to immigration and supported Trump partly for that reason. So I think that's still a big hangover on, you know, views of the Trump administration. And, you know, Democrats now, you know, they're not that far off Republicans in terms of who's preferred in immigration. Depends on the poll you look at. But Trump's approval rating in particular is dreadful on immigration, even though it's slightly less dreadful than on the economy or inflation. that's really a lot driven by the sense that, yeah, okay, I wanted the immigration situation under control, but this is exactly the way I had in mind, right?

5:39Paul Gigot: If they were doing then what they are doing now, which is a much quieter approach to deportations, I think they could have avoided a lot of these problems. Unfortunately, they did it. And that's still, you know, first and foremost in the public mind about their interior enforcement regime as they associate it with that early days of ice raids and, you know, sort of the heavy demonstrations and, you know, mask people in the streets. And this is like, you know, Nazi Germany, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you don't have to be have the resistance liberal view of it to nevertheless be somewhat disturbed by it.

6:14Paul Gigot: And I think that's really hurt them quite a bit.

6:17Ruy Teixeira: It's one of the more striking things when you look at the issue mix and you said the voters say, Trump, who do you favor more on issues, Democrats or Republicans? Immigration has been the strongest Republican, one of the strongest issues for a very long time. And now it's turned. It's not, as you say, it's only slightly more negative for the Republicans and the Democrats, but it's still striking that that is the case. You would think that they would get, the White House and Trump would get more credit for it. But this this enforcement where they want to set a quota of three thousand deportations arrested a day, you know, I mean, just a terrible idea because it's going to lead to excesses as people try to meet a quota as opposed to actually just trying to arrest people who are here illegally, particularly criminal aliens.

7:07Paul Gigot: Right. So it's an own goal. Democrats have been able to skate on the whole issue of interior enforcement. Now they can just say we'll be nicer than and less crazy than Trump and the Republicans. And we, we too believe ax murderers should be deported. And it really elides the whole question of what about people who are here just illegally per se, right? I mean, they aren't ax murderers. They're basically, maybe they have a job. Maybe they've been here for a year or two. Maybe they came here six months ago. What do you do about those people? Are you going to have any enforcement regime against them whatsoever?

7:39Paul Gigot: And I think Democrats would prefer very much not to talk about it. and in fact basically quasi-legalize the people here and do a vast immigration reform package, which of course will never get through Congress. So I think the Democrats have been able to skate on this, and I think that's a real liability for Trump because it takes one of his biggest issues out of the Republican quiver.

8:00Ruy Teixeira: Let me ask you about Republicans and their motivation to vote here. The president is spending a month here, and to his credit, very vigorously. He's out every day doing an event, a rally in some state or another where there's a key Senate race in particular and mostly in the red states, Republican states where there are competitive seats. I mean, you know, Kansas, I didn't expect to see Trump having an advance rally the troops. But he's in a lot of these states in Mississippi. He's trying to rally the core Trump vote. OK, he's saying, I'm on the ballot. pretend I'm on the ballot. I'm not, but pretend I am.

8:43Ruy Teixeira: So he gets those people out. My reading of the polls though is that those people are likely to vote anyway. They were going to come out. Maybe I'm wrong, but the people that have been telling pollsters they may not come out are some of the traditional Republicans, the Romney voters, the McCain voters, people who They voted for Donald Trump probably twice because the alternative was worse in their eyes. They're still curbing their enthusiasm here for the Republicans now. And I'm not sure. How important is it for Trump to get those people out here? And can he do it?

9:25Paul Gigot: Well, you know, I agree with you. I mean, I think a real problem that these candidates face is not the hardcore MAGA Trump voters. It's rather the people who voted for Trump, you know, but weren't necessarily super enthusiastic about questions about it to begin with. I mean, these are the people who are more likely to stay home. These are people more likely to vote for the other side. And how, you know, you don't necessarily rally them to the Republican side, to candidates like Paxton or whatever, by holding a bunch of rallies. Trump rallies, which attract the Trump faithful and get that kind of coverage.

9:57Paul Gigot: And it's a desperate attempt to cover up on the fact that a lot of these are, as you say, own goals where, you know, the administration has done things. It's essentially pushed voters away. Exactly. Those kinds of voters who whose support for Trump and at least the Trump administration was somewhat provisional. I mean, if you're going to one single factor could explain a lot of what's going to happen as much as anything else, which is the Iran war and the rise in gas prices is a bit catastrophic. I mean, they're already doing poorly, right? And this is just like undercut the whole claim of the Trump administration of the GOP to having, you know, solved people's economic problems.

10:36Paul Gigot: Hey, look, these guys are making it worse. This is crazy. You can't make up for an error like that by going out and holding a bunch of rallies. Really, the hope here is just the polls are a bit wrong. And they could be, especially in red states. I mean, there's a record. There's some good analyses by Patrick Buffini and Sean Trendy and others that show that polling error is much more common in these red states, these solidly red states, not swing states. And if that's true, there might be enough error that we might wind up seeing Senator Paxton, certainly might wind up seeing a Senator Hinson, I think.

11:07I mean, I think that's somebody who's more likely than not.

11:09Paul Gigot: But, you know, basically, as is well known, the Democrats need to take a lot of these red states. And if the polls are inaccurate on this, they're in better shape, the Republicans are in better shape than they thought.

11:20Ruy Teixeira: It's Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general from Texas running in neck and neck with James Chalurico, even a little bit behind in Texas. And Ashley Hinson, congresswoman from Iowa running in Iowa as a senator, and that's neck and neck. She's a little ahead in the polling, but these are margin of error. Yeah, these are margin of error issues. So, I mean, what's your personal view on the polling accuracy? I mean, I've seen the Patrick Graffini data pretty compelling. You know, it's also we've seen years when the Democratic turnout has been underestimated. What's your view about how whether or not this year they are going to be underestimated one way or another?

12:02Paul Gigot: Yeah, I hesitate to make a point prediction on that. I mean, Nate Silver's traditional reply to this is, well, I mean, you know, this kind of a random walk, the polling errors. I mean, it could be pro-Democratic. It could be pro-Republican. It's very hard to make a prediction, particularly about congressional elections, where the pattern is less clear. So on the other hand, you take a look at the Rafini, Trendy, et cetera, data, and you do see that sort of pretty well-defined trend of being over-optimistic for the Democrats in red states. So I would not be surprised if that means that some of these polls are bid off and that would help the Republicans too much in favor of the Democrats, the polls.

12:43Paul Gigot: I mean, again, is it enough to actually prevent a Democratic Senate? I guess I would tend to doubt that. I don't really want to go through the races race by race and say, well, this one might work for the Republicans. The leads are solid enough and big enough in a lot of these red states that even an error might not be enough to push them back toward the Republicans. So my overall take, I guess, is yes, there'll probably be some polling error. I would not be surprised if it was more on the pro-Democratic side than the pro-Republican side in these red states. But I also would kind of expect not that not to be enough to push the Senate back into Republican hands or keep it in Republican hands.

13:27Paul Gigot: But I could be wrong. Yeah, well, that's definitely be wrong. You know, I mean, one thing that actually politics thinks is interesting case because this is actually going to be a good test of how good the polls still are. If, in fact, there is a really a pretty big polling error to the extent that, for example, Republicans hold the Senate, I think, man, what's going on here? I mean, everything you saw for the last four or five months, everything shifted toward the Democrats. Every modeler says the Democrats are more likely than not to take the Senate. If that doesn't turn out, well, they'll say, OK, well, we never said it was for sure.

14:08Paul Gigot: We just said what the probabilities were. But still, it's disturbing. It's just hard to poll these days. It's hard to get an actual random sample of the voters who are actually going to show up on Election Day, particularly in reds. And this ongoing problem with, you know, peripheral Republican or populist oriented voters of relatively low education levels, they don't want to talk to pollsters. And it's really hard to adjust for that. So I think this would be a fascinating test case of whether pollsters are even close to figuring this one out.

14:43Ruy Teixeira: We are going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk more about what the election holds and what it means for the Democratic Party in particular when we come back. This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. This is Matthew Hennessy, the editor of Free Expression. I want to personally invite you to come check out what we're doing. Signing up for the newsletter couldn't be easier.

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15:49Ruy Teixeira: Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch with Roy Teixeira, particularly in the red states where Democrats really do have to pick up some. North Carolina, And Roy Cooper is going to win that. Put that in the Democratic column. That's done. That's 50 to 52. Susan Collins in Maine. I think there's a really good chance she pulls it out. That's tied. And I think her personal standing in the state could pull it out. And then you've got the Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Texas. These are states where Democrats are going to have to win some of these.

16:29Ruy Teixeira: But I want to ask you about two races in particular which deal with the Democratic quality of the candidate. And that is Maine with Troy Jackson, who's a man of the left, no question about it, and has not performed well in the debates. Clearly doesn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. I don't know how many voters care about that, but I noticed it. That's asking a lot, Paul. And then you've got Abdul El-Sayed, also a really distinctive man of the left, deeply anti-Israel, portrayed by Mike Rogers, the Republican as a radical. Yet he's laid in the polls, you know, by a couple of points, pretty solidly throughout.

17:06Ruy Teixeira: He's very smooth on his feet. But could those candidacies really upend the Democratic attempt to get a majority?

17:19Paul Gigot: Oh, I think she'd be very concerned. I mean, basically, you're talking about one state that they were counting to flip Maine, right? And if they don't flip Maine, that just makes everything more difficult, right? Because then they got to pick up five other seats, right? Not four. So, and then the Michigan thing is not, is a hold. So if they lose that, the whole arithmetic goes into a cocktail. I mean, I think Troy Jackson is, he's left, but he's not. Basically, most Democratic candidates who don't, are pretty left these days. And he is a left populist type of guy, but he's not Plattner. And he has not as charismatic as Plattner, but he has the overhead from the Plattner failed candidacy, which I think really, really hurts him.

18:03Paul Gigot: So would they have been better off with a sort of generic Democrat nominee in May? Probably, I think. And where I think it really would have favored a generic Democratic nominee would be in Michigan. I think Abel Saeed will probably win, but I think he will underperform, you know, the overall swing, He'll underperform the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. And he may lose. And you really, in this year, you shouldn't lose in a state like Michigan, right? With the national tide running so heavily in favor of the Democrats. But there's huge question marks by this guy. They would have been much better off.

18:39Paul Gigot: That's not the mood of the Democratic primary electorate, what actually may be the worst aspect of Abdel Saeed running, even if he wins. And again, I think he probably will win. And because I just think this is a massive green light, the semaphore is down green for the DSA, you know, progressive left to say, OK, we did it. I mean, Abel Saeed won and why can't we as AOC so memorably put it, we can win anywhere. And I think that, you know, one can contest this interpretation, but I think it will have a lot of purchase within the Democratic Party. And I think it will turbocharge the progressive slash DSA left and the Democrats, which I think will make it more difficult for them post 2026 moving into 28 cycle.

19:25Paul Gigot: Because, I mean, some people believe Democrats have solved their problems. But as we discussed earlier, this is primarily a thermostatic reaction against Trump. They don't love you. They hate your opponent, I think is what I keep on telling the Democrats. That's the victory of Abul Saeed will be an important factor, pushing them away from that sensible interpretation. Change anything? Why do we need to change anything? Look, Abdu 'l won. We kicked the Republicans' ass. This is great. Let's press the accelerator. So I think that's going to be a real problem for them. We'll see how bad a problem after the election.

19:57Ruy Teixeira: I focused on Michigan and Maine because I think those are two critical races in the result. What signals will it send to the party about the lessons of this election? If Collins goes down, for example, it was likely to be because of Trump. I mean an astute observer of Maine politics said it would almost be better for Collins if Trump were at the top of the ticket now because then Democrats split their ticket, vote against Trump, but then say, OK, I'll vote for her. Instead, now voting against her is the only way they can register their unhappiness with Trump. But if she, you know, with her moderate voting record, her history, you know, sometimes voting against Trump, if she loses and Jackson wins, it will not only turbocharge the left.

20:46Ruy Teixeira: Some Republicans will say, see, you can't win anywhere with a moderate Republican now. And for the Democrats, I mean, it's interesting, right? Who went to campaign for Collins? Joe Manchin, former West Virginia senator. Who went to campaign for Troy Jackson in Maine? It's Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and who came for El Syed. Those three and Barack Obama on the weekend. The left wing of the party, the Democratic Party, really thinks these are the two most important races they've got.

21:19Paul Gigot: Do you agree with that? I agree with that. As a political observer, I think people who really count noses in politics would question the interpretation of the progressive left. if in fact those victories take place. But I do think it's going to have, again, huge purchase, huge momentum. Yeah, as you say, look who shows up the campaign for those people. And I think they will count it. That's in our column. We won. Come on. We've got the big Mo, as they used to say. It's undeniable. I mean, look, those people even showed up for Angie Nixon in Florida. It was like absolutely bonkers. but you know they were happy to go out there and say oh angie nixon great that's what we need of course she'll lose but if she loses by any less than people are expecting they'll probably say that's a victory too you know florida's coming back baby yeah well that's uh that is uh angie

22:14Ruy Teixeira: nixon the uh the democratic senate candidate she's going to lose there's no question about it but it's interesting that they nonetheless said went down there to fly the flag and even obama showed up for her, which is interesting. We're going to take another break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the economic populism and whether that is the secret of future democratic success when we come back.

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23:13Ruy Teixeira: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. All right, we're back and I'm here with Roy Toshera talking about the meaning of the 2026 election results, which we will soon know. Let's say that the – I mean, Democrats take the House comfortably. Senate, you know, we'll see how those close races go, but likely 48 or 49 Republicans in the Senate in the end, so 51 or 52 Democrats. So that's sort of where you think that's going to come out. That's a reasonable bet, I think. There's still a chance Republicans hold it with 50. I wouldn't bet my 401k on it. So let's say they get that outcome, right?

24:02Ruy Teixeira: Big swing to the Democrats. What lessons does the party learn?

24:06Paul Gigot: Well, that's the big question, right? I mean, I think that in some ways it's less interesting than what the outcome is at this point. It's like how the party is going to interpret it going forward. And I think that, I mean, I follow these debates pretty closely. I mean, you've already touched on the idea that I think you can put it in the bank that the progressive left, and I don't just mean the DSA, I mean the progressive caucus is huge. It's over 100 members. Greg Cesar is already talking about, you know, I'm looking forward to passing a bill every week. He doesn't mean a bill that would actually become law.

24:44Paul Gigot: He means a bill that would reflect progressive priorities. So that's going to be their strategy. Let's fly the progressive flag. Let's fly it high. You know, enough of this, you know, sort of no more Mr. Nice Guy. We're going to really, you know, show people what we're for. And when we show people what we're for, that will make everybody like us because everybody really agrees with us, whether they know it or not. And I think the moderates, such as they are in the party, the more establishment figures, they will not be so enthusiastic about this. But they really haven't put up much of a fight as the progressive strength has grown in the party and as the DSA in particular has become stronger.

25:25Paul Gigot: It's like a big tent. One way I think about this, Paul, is like, is it really a big 10 if a Democratic Socialist Democrat feels more comfortable in the party than a conservative Democrat? I don't think so, but I think that's the situation we have. So I think that it seems likely the post-2026 is just a tsunami of messaging bills, a lot of grandstanding in Congress. I mean, remember, they got elected on essentially the big campaign theme was affordability. What are they going to do for affordability in their defense? that it's not much they can do, but they will certainly pass a lot of bills. But I think people may get tired of that rather fast, and then looming ahead of that, you know, are sort of the delights we can look forward to with all the messaging bills, just like the big contest for the presidential nomination for the Democrats that is going to kick off the day after the election's over.

26:15Paul Gigot: So how is that, you know, these results going to feed into that? I think the optimistic interpretation that my more moderate friends in the Democratic Party say, well, look, James Tallarico won in Texas, you know, et cetera. And he was willing to say some slightly heterodox things. And it just shows we're making progress in red states. What we really need to do is keep on doing that. And, you know, the DSA people or whatever, they'll do their thing. But really, moderation is winning. And, you know, that's the kind of candidate we should have. But I think the progressive left will disagree with that strenuously.

26:51Paul Gigot: And where is the energy going to be within the primary electorate and within the sort of general democratic discourse? I'm not sure it's going to be along the lines that, well, we should be at least a little bit heterodox and we shouldn't scare people. We shouldn't be too far to the left. I think they're more like, hey, let's press the accelerator. I mean, in 2020, right, you had the candidates being herded to the left, the primary candidates, one upping each other. How do we know that doesn't happen again? I mean, especially given the likely pattern of the election results, especially given the mood in the party, why would it not be the case that even a candidate who started out thinking they wanted to be moderate realizes they have to position themselves to take advantage of that resistance, progressive energy within the party?

27:37Paul Gigot: So to me, that's the real interesting question, how that argument will play out and how it will affect the potential presidential candidates. My guess is I think that progressives will probably have the upper hand because, I mean, look, so far, the so-called moderates haven't been willing to have much of an argument with them. So why would they do it now? That's what I, if I was a Democrat, well, I am a Democrat. That's what I worry about. I worry that reasonable calls for moderation will be stoutly ignored. And I think the moderates such as they are will be reduced to saying, well, can we be a little bit less to the left than you would like?

28:19Paul Gigot: Wouldn't that be nice? And I think that's not a good position to put yourself in going into 2028. They hate J.D. Vance. I mean, they'll beat him easily. I wouldn't be so sure. Right. I think that it's two years from now. A lot of things could change. And I think they underestimate, and I think this is something that's really going to hurt them from interpreting the election result. They've underestimated or forgotten about what happened in 2024, about the populist mood in the country, about how working class voters really don't like them, how so many Latino voters bailed out in 2024 and could do it again.

28:53Right.

28:53Paul Gigot: I mean, the voters who come back in 2026 are just going to be visiting, looking around, you know, now that I'm back in, this doesn't look so great. I'll go somewhere else. Right. So so I think that that is going to be really difficult for them. They're just it's going to it's going to make them even more out of touch. You know, the mood of the voters that they lost in 24. So come back in 26. I just think it's it's going to be a real challenge for them. I mean, America, the America they want is not the America they have. And I think they're going to have to realize that.

29:28Ruy Teixeira: I very much agree with that. But I want to make a distinction between what I see in its drive to use economic populism as an alternative to Trump's cultural mega populism and cultural leftism. I see among the Democrats, you saw it in the New Jersey and Virginia governor's races a year ago, but you've seen it a little bit amongst Democratic leaders that they want to moderate themselves on immigration, for example. They've ducked it, as you suggested, but nobody's going to go out and say open borders again in a presidential debate. You're seeing some moderation even on DEI, trans issues, not as much as I think they ought to if they want to regain the center, but a little bit.

30:18Ruy Teixeira: But where they're really moving is economic populism, big tax increases. I mean, everybody in the party is now supporting a big tax increase. Now, they say it's on the wealthy. You know, there's a lot of bills that wouldn't just affect the wealthy, for example, fixing Social Security. They want to raise the cap on Social Security, which is a big increase on suburban voters, for example, who make more than$180 ,000 a year. They're moving hard to the left in economics. And that's where the billionaire wealth tax in California, I think, is a bellwether and will be really significant here. If that referendum passes Prop 40, that will give further fuel to the democratic economic populism.

30:59Paul Gigot: Yeah, I think that's very true. I mean, I wrote a piece a while ago on my old stuff, Substack, The Liberal Patriot, no populace without cultural populace. But as you point out, you know, the way they're dealing with those issues is, you know, is sort of carefully titrated, you know, moderation in some of these things without really changing their fundamental position much. And they feel that's enough. Now, why do they feel that's enough? Because they've got economic populism, the magical pixie dust of an economic populism that can sprinkle over their program. It'll make everybody love them. But what is the content of that economic populism?

31:35Paul Gigot: What is it actually going to accomplish? I mean, what even is it in program? They don't know, you know, down with the billionaire class. In a way, it's like Bernie Sanders' old thing, down with the billionaire class, has become like hegemonic within the Democratic Party, as if that's some sort of substantive position. And the more we tax them, the better. But look, again, I mean, back to something I mentioned earlier. They ran on, you know, we're going to make life affordable. We're going to fix the economy. You know, what is their program for fixing the economy and making things more affordable?

32:07Paul Gigot: Is it simply to tax the rich? I mean, if you look at the things they are going to put into play and after, you know, in the 2020 Congress after 2026 and the things that are likely to be prominent as Democrats run for the nomination, it's basically like redistribution and spending money. Is that actually what I see, too? Is that going to produce the economic growth the country needs? I mean, whatever happened to economic growth? I mean, Democrats never talk about it anymore. Right. And I think that is a real problem because almost everything they want to do is dependent on having, you know, pretty solid economic growth, very solid economic growth.

32:46Paul Gigot: And, you know, if simply the program devolves down to spending money and redistribution, I don't think it's going to produce the results that they want. And it's actually not going to uplift the working class and all this this kind of thing. And so, I mean, populism is a rhetorical stance. Its content as policy and actual governance, I think, is highly questionable. Kind of like fool's gold. It kind of works as political rhetoric. But I think what it would actually deliver in reality is questionable. As I think the Biden administration found out, you can promise a lot of things and then get into power and even do some of those things.

33:26Paul Gigot: And if they're not the right things, it doesn't work out very well. This is a long-winded way of saying, yeah, I think economic populism, you know, somewhat bankrupt as an approach, unless you actually have some ideas of what you're going to do that would actually work. Fundamental to working is an approach that would actually produce a high level of growth in the United States, which then would allow you to do other things if you want to expand social programs or what have you. But expanding social programs, spending more money and redistributing in the absence of that is probably not a particularly great idea.

34:01Paul Gigot: And taxing the rich isn't going to be nearly enough to bring in the money you say you need to do all these things. So, I mean, I probably don't have to convince you of this, Paul, but they need to do some work here in terms of fleshing that. What are they going to do about AI? I mean, AI is a huge deal. Right. What is a democratic program on AI? It's kind of like, well, you know, we should slow down the data centers and maybe it'll kill us all. And that would be bad. But if AI, in fact, is a general purpose technology, which could produce a high productivity growth regime in the United States, which lift people's living standards.

34:34Paul Gigot: I mean, my view is you need to have more to say about it than that. And and sort of economic populism is a very poor substitute for dealing with those very difficult problems. problems, but the payoff from dealing with those difficult problems could be pretty big. I mean, right now, voters don't have a lot of faith in either party to produce the kind of economic regime that they want. So maybe you should start thinking about that instead of thinking about how to bash your opponents. End of rent.

35:02Ruy Teixeira: Yeah, that real food for thought for Democrats. And I would just say that the counterpart there on the Republican side, the food's gold on the populist side has been tariffs. Donald Trump ran and said, the Republicans said, okay, hey, tariffs really work because it gives us and identifies us with unions and the working class. But you put them in the power, you put them in place, and it turns out they have all of these damaging effects on voters in Michigan and Maine, for example. Roy Teixeira, thank you so much for coming in. American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow. His own substack, The Long View.

35:36Ruy Teixeira: Thanks for coming in, and we'll have you back in here sometime as the primaries unfold, which will be sooner than I think most Americans would hope.

35:46Paul Gigot: You got that right. Well, thanks for having me, Paul.

35:49Ruy Teixeira: All right. Thanks very much, Roy. Appreciate it. Thank you all for listening. We are here every day on Potomac Watch. At Janice Henderson, we strive to deliver better outcomes through insight-led investing, innovation for clients, and a partnership approach that's core to our identity. I'm Jessica Lianzini, Head of Fixed Income Client Portfolio Management. I'm passionate about my role in investments. It allows me to partner with our clients, simplify fixed income, and support them in achieving better outcomes for their clients. Janice Henderson, investing in a brighter future together.