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It brings people together in meaningful ways. Kunle and his team are building a Wi-Fi experience that connects one billion devices every year. Learn more about how Comcast is redefining the future of connectivity at ComcastCorporation.com slash Wi-Fi. True story. I have a closet full of Canadian maple whiskey because that is really good.
And I have a lot of it, thankfully, because it's going to get real expensive. How many bottles do you have? You know, just in case customs officers are listening to this podcast, I declined to answer that question. I mean, they're not going to deport your whiskey, Nathaniel. Like, how do you think this process works? What if they do?
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. As we sit down to record this podcast on Monday morning, once again, the story we plan to discuss is in flux. So markets opened this morning in turmoil over President Trump's move to levy 25% across the board tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods and 10% tariffs on Chinese goods at the stroke of midnight.
At the moment, the tariffs on Mexico are paused pending a quote unquote deal. Those quotation marks are the president's and the tariffs on Canada are still a go, but maybe that's even changed by the time you're listening to this. So what do Americans think?
We're glad you asked. In general, Americans are somewhat supportive of tariffs, but that support quickly evaporates if said tariffs lead to increased prices. So if Trump sticks to this plan or eventually gets back around to implementing these tariffs, we might see how that hypothetical plays out in real life.
And how will this all redound to views of Trump? We launched our Trump approval just in time to track that as well. We're going to tackle it all, and we're also going to take a look at where Democrats find themselves in the early days of Trump 2.0. They elected a party chair over the weekend, the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party, Ken Martin. And we're also getting early 2028 Democratic presidential primary polls with some curveball names thrown in the mix. So is that a good or bad use of polling? We'll
We will decide. Here with me to do that is senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome to the podcast, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. I am all stocked up on my Canadian whiskey, so I am ready for these tariffs. I would say congratulations, except that means you're going to be drinking Canadian whiskey. So I don't know that I don't know really who's winning here.
Also here with us is friend of the podcast, Leah Ascaridam. Welcome back to the podcast, Leah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back with you two. Do you also have a hoard of Mexican or Canadian liquor somewhere in your house? I did go to the Italian store the other day and bought some wine. So, you know. Just in case. Well, it was just in case for like tonight, you know, not just in case for...
I will admit that actually it wasn't a real political economic decision. It was just a February 2025 cold outside decision. And it was and it's delicious. So. So in the latest episode of he's not really going to do that. Oh, wait. Actually, he just did. Oh, wait. One more time. Maybe not. Trump said he's levying 25 percent tariffs on two close American allies and trading partners, Canada and Mexico. At
At the time of this recording, the tariffs have not gone into effect, and maybe they never will. If you remember all the way back to last week, the White House made a big move with its federal funding pause memo and then walked it back once the real world consequences became clear. So is that just happening all over again? Could be. But first, let's talk about the substance here.
Nathaniel, what do Americans think about tariffs and specifically tariffs on Mexico and Canada? Yeah, so Americans are actually largely opposed to tariffs. There were some polls, especially during the campaign last year, that suggested they were kind of mildly in favor of them. But of course, tariffs are an issue that I think the average American is not super boned up on. And I think that
as maybe they've learned more or as you have seen some more specifics enter into kind of the conversation, it does seem like their support has soured. And I think like things like deportations, like we talked about last week, this is probably something that is highly susceptible to question wording, but I'll just kind of sample a couple of things. So according to an AP NORC podcast,
poll, only 29 percent of Americans support imposing a tariff, which they say is also known as an import tax on goods brought into the U.S. from other countries. Forty six percent oppose that, of course, leaves 24 percent that weren't sure, which I think, again, is emblematic of how Americans probably are fairly flexible on the issue. You've also seen a Fox poll that said that only 32 percent thought that imposing tariffs on imports would be good for the economy. Fifty percent said that it would be bad for the economy.
NPR and Marist also found something similar. There was a Morning Consult poll that found that voters support a tariff on China specifically, 51 percent to 34 percent, whereas tariffs on Canada and Mexico were more divided at 42 percent support, 42 percent opposition.
Again, probably question wording and maybe the specific country can matter here. But in general, I think Americans are skeptical. Yeah, well, actually, I don't know that all of that data adds up to Americans are skeptical. If you ask someone, like, will this have a negative effect on the economy? They could say yes to that question and then still say that they support it. I mean, in particular, tariffs on
China. And if Americans are even split on 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, two close trading partners and not adversaries at all, then
That suggests to me that they may well support at least the idea of tariffs. But I think something that we find that's maybe most interesting to me is where the rubber hits the road. So Cato, alongside YouGov, did polling last year on this. Do you favor or oppose adding a tariff with no mention of increased prices? When you just frame it like that, 62% of Americans support adding tariffs to imported blue jeans.
If you say that it will increase those blue jeans by $5, the support declines from 62% to 58%. The jeans getting more expensive. As soon as you increase it to $10, 62% support to only 34% support.
And it keeps falling from there. So Americans may be supportive in some sense of the idea of, you know, oh, let's produce more here. Let's add these trade protections. But as soon as the economic consequences become clear, it seems like they are less supportive. Leah, does that add up with how you view the data? Yeah, I think for me, it comes down to two questions. One, how much is...
this question just tied to whether or not you support Trump because it's very clear if you pay attention at all in the news, this is something that Trump has championed. How much of what we're seeing now in the polling is just kind of a reflection of people's views on Donald Trump himself. One of the polls that we had,
from Navigator Research, and they asked the same question about tariffs. If new tariffs were put in place, what do you think is most likely to happen? But
But with one group, they added a caveat. As you know, Trump has proposed new tariffs. Right. So in one, they're saying explicitly, you know, this is a Trump policy. And we do see that more Democrats think it will go up when you add that Trump comment, when you add that it's a Trump policy. The cost will go up. The cost will go up. Yep. And fewer Republicans think the cost will go up. And independents, independents,
interestingly, exactly the same, 56, 57%. Are Americans more excited about the idea that Trump is shaking things up and they see tariffs as an example of shaking things up? Or do they actually like tariffs themselves? I guess it's the second question.
Yeah, I just think this is an issue because it is fairly wonky and fairly new on the scene that like it's hard to know what Americans really think about this issue because you can look at it in different ways, in different question wording and through different lenses and you can get very different responses. And even like one pollster might find one result and another pollster...
has found another result. And the question warnings aren't even all that different. So I just think this isn't an issue on which Americans have very firm views, which means that it is malleable, which is an opportunity and also a risk for Trump and for his opponents.
But it's tricky for us as analysts to say, oh, yes, like tariffs are definitely popular or they're definitely unpopular. But I guess it doesn't like the way it matters for us. Right. It's like if voters dislike tariffs, does that mean they're going to dislike Trump? And I think that's
The question of whether voters actually like tariffs on its own is not the real question that we're trying to figure out. The question is, how much leeway are voters giving Trump in his first few weeks in office? How much do they like this kind of turbulent first few weeks?
How much do they like seeing that the guy who said he was going to get things done and, you know, disrupt things that he's actually doing it? And how much are they willing to sacrifice? Like you said, are they willing to sacrifice $10 on jeans or $5 on jeans? And it seems like the Republican Party is kind of counting on the idea that the Americans are on board with Trump's vision, whether or not Americans, you know, love or dislike tariffs. Yeah.
Yeah. And also, I think the patience that they'll have because he has said himself, like, you know, this will hurt, but it's going to be worth it in the end. Right. And if Americans are willing to go along with temporary price increases, maybe because they believe there was going to be a payoff or if they immediately sour on him because, you know, the price of their jeans goes up.
We'll see how this all plays out. But if you were paying attention last week, you're familiar with the, you know, do something brash, create a crisis, solve crisis cycle of Trump's governing style. And so I wonder what you gain, if anything, from that, because people seem to understand that.
the pattern, right? The Scottish teams over at Polymarket this morning were saying that before any of the news came out, were saying that there was a 40% chance that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico would be ended before March. So within the same month that they were implemented, it got up to 65%. Now it's back down to 40% for the Canadian tariffs. What do you get out of all of this? If the idea is that you're going to create turbulence in the pursuit of
correcting things, but then it's all just bluster. Does patience worth it? I mean, I think that's the question. I mean, I hate saying I hate the kind of avoiding an answer there. But Trump has kind of introduced kind of controversial things that either like won't stick because it's an executive order and the courts are going to get involved.
Or when Trump decided to nominate Matt Gaetz for attorney general, like that didn't stick. But it did show, you know, that he was switching things up. And that didn't seem to actually have a negative effect on his relationships with, you know, members of Congress who are approving his his cabinet appointees. I mean, it's just.
It seems like there's a lot of messaging happening with these executive orders, with these decisions, with these announcements. Whether or not these tariffs stick, whether or not like, you know, 25 percent or 10 percent or different countries, what those rates end up being, I don't think is the point right now. I think the point is showing that he is able to do this and that he's willing to do this and that he has allies in Congress who will allow him to do this.
Yeah, this is an interesting question. When do Americans actually turn on the president? And is it on process stuff? Or is it when there's really substance at play? And actually, we have a lot of historical examples looking back at his first term approval rating. And we just launched his second term approval rating. So let's talk about that. But first, a break.
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A new presidential administration brings with it a lot of new faces, new rules, new everything. And here at FiveThirtyEight, it means a new presidential approval rating tracker, which we launched last week. We retired our Joe Biden tracker. The first reading four years ago in January of 2021 was net positive 21 percentage points for Biden. Our final reading this past January was basically an upside down version of the first net negative 20.
A big drop over time. Trump's first reading this year on January 24th was net positive eight. So that's better than his first reading in 2017 when he started with just net positive four, but worse than any other president besides himself in the modern polling era.
Since then, his approval rating has fallen a little bit as of this morning. It's net positive five. But we don't have a lot of polls conducted either after the chaotic rollout of that funding freeze memo or these proposed tariffs. So we don't yet know how this will all shape views of Trump. But picking up where we left off, do we have a sense of when Trump
Americans turn on Trump from looking at his approval from his first term or, you know, so far? I think we do. And I think that's actually very instructive. The closest parallel we have to what's currently going on was basically the start of Trump's first term. And people will remember that was also kind of started with a lot of initial executive actions, most notably the Muslim ban. There were
protests at airports. The news basically felt like it was exploding every day the same way that it is now. And it really took a toll on Donald Trump's approval rating. So as Galen mentioned, he started off kind of barely net positive at plus four at the beginning of his term. But that
very quickly reversed itself by the end of January of 2017. He was underwater. And of course, he basically was underwater for the entire rest of his term. And basically, if you include favorability polls when he was during his post-presidency, he was also underwater basically up until he was elected again last year.
There are definitely some different circumstances. I think, A, in 2016, 17, nobody really expected Trump to win. He was new and there was obviously a lot of initial resistance from Democrats that I think showed up in terms of those protests and also in the polls. This time around, Trump won the popular vote.
He's starting off from a place of relative popularity. This is as popular as he has ever been, basically. And granted, it is not as popular as past presidents have been at the beginning of their terms. But, you know, he may have more of a cushion than he did in 2017. And maybe people will give him a little bit more leash, like we were talking about, some patience to do the things that they elected him to do. But in general, I think that we learned from his first term that
Chaos is not Donald Trump's friend. We also saw when he was trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 when the government shut down. And I think it was the 2018 to 2019 period, his approval rating also went down. So
when there is a sense that Donald Trump maybe isn't in control, that's when things go south for him. Of course, maybe people will see that he is in control because he's, you know, I don't know the sense that he's not in control. Um,
I don't know that that's exactly how I would frame it, right? In these instances, it's very clear that Donald Trump is in control and he's doing things with his power, you know, banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, signing an executive order to begin construction on a border wall, moving to repeal the Affordable Care Act during the government shutdown when he made his demands over funding the border, right?
It seems like Trump's promises to shake things up, but then when that promise becomes a
a reality, Americans don't actually like it, or at least a majority of Americans don't actually like it. I mean, this is going to come back to maybe a theme that we just discuss over and over and over again, which is over reading your mandate, right? Donald Trump won an election where people principally wanted him to lower prices and secondarily wanted him to get immigration under control.
What has happened in the first two weeks is something far beyond that, right? You know, and I don't think people care dearly about USAID, for example, but they're going to hear through the course of things that, oh, there's like people like there's billionaires shutting down government agencies left and right that give out, you know, like HIV AIDS medication to, you know, people in poor countries. It's all just going to seem very severe for people who pick up pieces here and there even.
Yeah, that's fair. I agree with that. And I probably put it imprecisely. I just kind of meant when chaos ensues as a result of Donald Trump's policies, that's what Americans don't like. Not necessarily maybe that Trump himself doesn't have control. You're right. He is doing the things that he ostensibly wants to do. Yeah, I think I'm just I'm curious whether in his second term or at least in these first few weeks, whether Americans dislike the chaos. Like, I just I don't.
You know, they knew what they were voting for. They knew what they were voting against, too. Yeah. Yeah. But what they were voting against was like the opposite of chaos. They felt like it wasn't like strong leadership. Right. Like inaction to an extent. Right. They were voting against a weak executive, somebody who did not have control over inflation or immigration or global crises or whatever. Right.
And that was sort of like the motivating factor. I don't know if Americans looked at Trump then and said, like, he is going to be, you know, the image of a of a steel hand or whatever, whatever the metaphor is. They just said, well, he can string sentences together and he's not super liberal on all of these things that we don't like.
I was just listening. I don't know if this is kosher to talk about another podcast on here, but I was listening to the focus group podcast. This will be censored. No, I'm kidding. There are other podcasts. I know. I know. And again, like this is we're going off of very little data right now. Right. Because even if we did have tons of polling, the polling right now, like.
wouldn't be very instructive or reliable because we're trying to gauge responses to things that are happening every 12 hours, right? So all we really have at this point is
past data, which I think points to, as Nathaniel was saying, like a very clear trend where Americans tend to punish Trump when he causes chaos. But we're in a second term now after four years of Joe Biden after a pandemic. And anecdotally, like we are hearing at least like in focus groups, people kind of glad that
Things are happening. Things are being shaken up. And we're seeing Republicans, Republican members of Congress and elected officials around the country consolidate around Trump and kind of echo his ideas that cause chaos. So I guess I just am not sure if the patterns we saw in Trump's first term are definitely going to happen in his second term.
I think there's a way to square the circle, which is kind of what Galen was saying more eloquently than I did, which is that I completely agree that voters thought that Biden was not in control slash was being inactive or inattentive to the biggest problems that they saw, which were largely the economy and immigration. And I think that probably American voters do absolutely desire action and
Trump is certainly acting in the technical sense of the word, but is he addressing the problems that they are that they were concerned about, right, that they want action on? And I think that's the issue, right, is that, you know, some of his immigration related executive orders from what feels like years ago, but was actually two weeks ago, those were popular and those probably would continue to be popular if that was the only thing that he was doing. But instead, a lot of these headlines are on things like the USAID Elon Musk stuff that
is probably very tangential to the mandate, quote unquote, if there was one that that
Trump was elected on. And also, obviously, the tariffs, if they do indeed happen and do indeed raise prices, that will be a type of action that exacerbates the problem that Americans want is the opposite of the type of action. So I'm not sure that it's that Americans just want any type of action. I think it's how they want specific types of actions, some of which may not be popular, right? You can't wave a magic wand and make prices go down, which is what we know that Americans want because deflation is actually bad.
And plus, the historical trends do kind of bear this out. And I think we should listen to historical trends. I just don't think that this is going to help Trump politically. The other thing to keep in mind here is that the issues that Americans prioritize can be quite volatile and Americans can have a short memory. You know, during the 2020 election, the chief issue
issues that Americans were concerned about were, I mean, the economy was one, but COVID and race relations. Looking back on the exit polling from 2021, it was like a quarter of Americans said their most important issue was race relations. Immigration wasn't charted. It only sort of got up to a high priority issue in the second and third year of Biden's
presidency after only getting single-digit interest from Americans for, like, decades, according to Gallup's data. And so he may get immigration under control, quote-unquote, as defined by him. But...
That doesn't say anything about inflation or the economy broadly. That doesn't say anything about other issues that may arise on his watch. Because look, like, it's always going to be the unexpected thing that sort of does you in, right? You know what your strengths and weaknesses are at the start, but like...
In pursuit of, for example, you know, Democrats do the American Rescue Plan. They finally get to enact their priorities. It's going to be great. You know, they're going to get to prioritize the demand side of the economy like they've been wanting to do ever since they couldn't get their full funding through under Obama during the financial crisis. They finally did it and then poof, inflation. I'm getting into the question of like downside upside for Republicans and Trump. And some of it's just unknown at this point.
American politics is a game of whack-a-mole, right? You solve one problem, you address one problem, and something else pops up. This is why I do not understand why somebody would want to be president. All right, well, let's move on and talk about how Democrats are reacting to all of this. But first, a break.
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Democrats are back in the wilderness, but this past week we saw the first glimpses of perhaps their strategy for returning to power.
First of all, the National Party picked a new chair, Ken Martin. And in the chaotic aftermath of the Trump administration's memo freezing federal funds, Democrats raised hell. They appeared on cable news. They sent strongly worded tweets. Ultimately, the White House rescinded the memo. Maybe Democrats deserve some credit for that. They also, by the way, in case you didn't hear, flipped a Republican-controlled state legislative seat in Iowa.
And yet, the party has little to no actual power in Washington. And after Kamala Harris' loss and Joe Biden's exit from the national stage, Democrats don't have an obvious leader. So, where do they go from here? On that topic, we have a good or bad use of polling about one of the very first 2028 polls we've seen. Yes, already.
This poll comes courtesy of McLaughlin and Associates and asked likely Democratic primary voters, quote, if that election were held today, the 2028 primary, among the following candidates, for whom would you vote? I'm going to read a list of the names they polled, and let's see if you can spot the name that doesn't fit. I'm going to go fast here. Harris, Buttigieg, Newsom, Shapiro, Waltz.
Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, Pritzker, Whitmer, Beto O'Rourke, back at it, Booker, Klobuchar, Moore as in Westmore, Murphy as in Phil Murphy, Deval Patrick, Jared Polis, Stephen A. Smith. As you may have noticed, those are all Democrats who have been elected to public office, with the exception of Stephen A. Smith, who is a sports commentator at our fellow Disney-owned ESPN. Yeah, our coworker. Our coworker, Stephen A. Smith.
this poll, a listener sent it to me. Christopher. So thanks, Christopher. We always like hearing from listeners. What was Christopher's handle? Well, he sent me a tweet that linked to the original poll from Garlic Corgi, who wrote, every poll should include Stephen A. Smith as a control variable. That's funny.
And he went on to suggest, like, should we just be including random names as a control variable or a fake name or whatever to get a sense of how much maybe people are even paying attention to this or how much appetite there is for a non-politician. So at first blush, is it a good or bad use of polling to put out a poll at this time to include Stephen A. Smith? What say you, Leah?
I mean, great use if Stephen A. Smith wants to use it for his own presidential ambitions and, you know, go around saying, hey, I'm not even campaigning. And how what is it? Two percent of Americans want me to be president. However, that's not actually what you should take away from the poll. So, like, it's a bad poll, but you could use it.
to your advantage, Stephen A. Smith. It's a bad poll. Nevaeh, do you agree that this is a bad poll? I don't actually. I think with the proper caveats, this is a good use of polling. And I think those caveats are that, yes, basically any 2028 Democratic primary polling that you see at this point is
is not going to be worth very much for a couple of reasons. A, because time passes and certain candidates' fortunes will rise and fall. But B, something I think that people don't pay a lot of attention to
is the field matters a lot, right? Like if you did a field, Justin, for example, that includes Kamala Harris or not includes Kamala Harris, that's going to give you very different results for people like Gretchen Whitmer and Wes Moore and Pete Buttigieg. And we don't know if Kamala Harris is running and there's no way to know that. And so- Maybe she doesn't know. Right, exactly. If we could travel into the future-
and go to the day before the Iowa caucuses in 2028 or whatever the first contest is going to be, because I guess we don't know that.
and see exactly who's running for president and then go back in time and do a poll, that would be a good use of polling using that field of candidates because that would establish a baseline and we'd be able to see how those people's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. But right now, when you just throw every name in there, it's just, it's not going to tell you all that much. The reason, though, that I think this is still a good use of polling is that
It does tell you something about Stephen A. Smith that he's only getting 2 percent, maybe, which is that it doesn't actually seem like Democrats have much of an appetite for somebody who's not a politician or actually that's probably too broad of an interpretation for Stephen A. Smith, a sports commentator in particular. If there were a poll showing him at
20%, that would be interesting. And that would be worth interrogating, right? Because, oh, maybe like, does the inclusion of other candidates affect that or whatever? But the fact that he had only 2% says to me that like against some of these other candidates who are better known and do better says to me that there isn't much of an appetite for him. And that is good information to know. To put that in context in this poll, Kamala Harris got 33% support. Next in line was Buttigieg with 9%, Newsom with 7%.
AOC with 6% and then everyone else with 3% or below. And I just want to establish for people that like basically that just reflects name recognition at this point. Obviously, you have the last Democratic presidential nominee. You have a guy who ran for president in 2020 that a lot of people, a lot of Democrats liked. And then you have Gavin Newsom, the governor of the biggest state in the union. So.
So do we really do we really think that this is giving us the winners of the Democratic primary? No, but I think it is telling you what the appetite for Stephen A. Smith is. And maybe and I think other does it tell us what the appetite for somebody named Stephen A. Smith might be. He's quite famous. He's probably more famous than everybody on that list, except for Trump.
Kamala Harris, I would venture to guess. I'm in such a bubble. I know that this is not a super sportsy podcast, but but no, but I think like it does. It absolutely does not tell you a whether Kamala Harris is even going to run.
if she actually does try to run, right, that like changes things by nature of it. And like other candidates are going to drop out or maybe other candidates are going to, there's going to be more of a discussion about like how much of blame does she deserve for the loss in 2024? And that could hurt her. And again, I think we're starting from a point of name recognition. So in terms of using it to predict the nominee, no. But again, I think Stephen A. Smith's candidacy can kind of end before it began because of this poll. All right.
Okay, so Stephen A. Smith is probably not going to lead the Democratic Party in 2028, although never say never. In the meantime, more to the question that you posed, Leah. Democrats picked a new leader for the National Party, and the new head of the DNC is Ken Martin. He's the longtime chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party.
Neither Martin nor his main competition for the job, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler, were promising a big change. In fact, during a candidate forum last week, Martin said, quote, anyone saying we need to start over with a new message is wrong. He continued, we got the right message.
Now, Americans maybe don't necessarily agree. So a recent New York Times poll asked adults to list the issues that they thought were most important to the Democratic Party. According to the poll, Americans think Democrats' priorities are, in order, number one, abortion, number two, LGBT policy, number three, climate change, and number four, the state of democracy, and five, health care.
Absent from that list are all but one issue that respondents put in their own top five. So for Americans broadly, the top five are the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime. Now, when they were asked about the Republican Party and their priorities, Americans said immigration, the economy, taxes, guns, abortion. Now, according to that poll, Republicans prioritize more of the issues,
that Americans prioritize than Democrats do in a quite stark manner. So do you think that Ken Martin's suggestion that Democrats have the message that they need is an indication of where the party is headed? And do you think that that portends ill for the party given this poll? I think the answer to both is no, because a lot is going to happen in the next two to four years, basically. It is not...
great for the leader of the Democratic Party or one of the potential leaders of the Democratic Party to say that they kind of fundamentally don't have a problem because we know that the Democratic brand is currently in the toilet. So, for example, there was a Quinnipiac poll the other day that found that only 31 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party and 57 percent have an unfavorable opinion. So their brand is not good. And I think to your point, Galen, a lot of that is because they're not seen as focusing on the issues that Americans care about.
But I think that a lot of that is a leftover from the Biden administration and Biden in particular, who was the, you know, I guess Harris and Biden were the two leaders of the Democratic Party last year. And in the absence of someone new, i.e. a new presidential candidate, they are kind of going to be the stand ins for that. And I think that that could change once a new candidate emerges or a new leader emerges. And that could also be Hakeem Jeffries if Democrats take control of the House in 2026.
And then I also think that the things that Americans care about may very well change. Right. Or the way they see the parties as handling those, because, for example, I think Americans will always care about the economy. But if the economy tanks because of the tariffs, they won't see Republicans as handling super super well anymore. If, for instance, I mean, health care is already on the list, but.
If in this reconciliation bill that Congress is going to try to pass this year, if they do steep cuts to Medicaid, for example, and that proves to be unpopular, maybe that becomes really important to Americans and an issue that Democrats do have the advantage on. And obviously, Republicans wouldn't be seen favorably on.
I think that there is a lot of time for the circumstances like we were talking about before and about how kind of volatile Americans' preferences can be in terms of, you know, the issue that they really care about. There's a lot of time for that to change because of the many things that are going to happen in Trump's second term and future.
I think that, you know, by 2026, we know from past in dynamics, midterms tend to be good for the out party. Democrats, I think, are going to have a pretty good year, at least in the House. And they're probably going to find themselves back in a position where just being the opposition party to who will probably end up being an unpopular president is going to be helpful for them.
I think the idea that Democrats don't have to start all over, where that has kind of its kernel of truth is that, you know, if the economy and health care are in this poll,
top two issues, right? Those are the two issues that Democrats ran on in 2018, right? And I think to an extent in 2020, though COVID. But like 2018, even though while Trump was doing everything Trump was doing, Democrats in competitive districts just hammered home the idea of the economy and healthcare and them both being kind of kitchen table, quote unquote, issues. 2022 happens and the messaging switches massively
mostly to focus on abortion, which, yes, can be considered health care, but it's a different message, right? It's less about the economy and being able to afford things and more about rights. I wonder if he's envisioning 2022 as the template or 2024 or 2018, because I do think 2024 was kind of the extension of 2022, because 2022 worked well for Democrats in the wake of Roe.
I think the first signs that we'll see are how Democrats position themselves in their opening ads for 2026 congressional races. Like, are they are they talking about abortion first thing? Are they talking about, you know, paying for their dad's medical bills in kind of their introductory video? I couldn't agree more. And I think we are at a particularly kind of uncertain time as
at the beginning of a new administration where we always kind of don't know what the big issues are going to be in a year's time or whatever. But I think we especially don't know right now because of everything that's going on and all the different directions that the Trump administration would take. All right. Well, we've gotten to a place where we all agree. So we're going to leave it there for today. Thank you, Leah and Nathaniel. Thanks. Thanks, Galen.
My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Tretavian. You can get in touch by emailing us at galen.druk at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.