Well! Election season is a very busy time at our small shop, but reflecting back on the epic seven-hour livestream we did with GD Politics, Silver Bulletin, and The Argument, what really strikes me is the extent to which the wild inferences we drew right at the beginning of the evening from the early ballot drops in Indiana proved accurate.
We were all on there covering our asses and saying you can’t just assume that things that happen in Hamilton County will reflect national trends, but in this case, it turns out they did! It was a ton of fun, and I’m very grateful to everyone for letting me participate. Personally, though, I prefer writing to speaking live on camera, so I’m glad to be back doing election takes here in writing.
David W Lavoie: What is Trump’s play here? Is he really so shallow to say that as long as the border stays secure and the ballroom gets completed, Dems can do what they want?
My dominant answer here is that I have no idea. Donald Trump is such an incredibly overexposed figure that it’s easy to overlook how mysterious he is.
It’s relatively simple to understand, broadly speaking, what Paul Ryan thought was interesting and important about American politics. You could see which things he really emphasized and where he was more flexible. Trump sometimes seems like he doesn’t care about anything and is only interested in money and weird construction projects. But he sometimes seems borderline fanatical about tariffs and immigration. On the other hand, he rarely actually discusses his administration’s immigration policy in any detail. He gambled his presidency on a war with Iran but seems largely disengaged from it. And it’s not like there’s no reporting on this stuff; it’s just that the piling-on of information doesn’t really clarify the picture.
There were various points during Trump’s first term when it seemed like his indolence would lead him to be willing to do bipartisan deals with Democrats on reasonably favorable terms for the center-left. But as time went on, those deals always seemed to collapse and it seemed like he was a faker. But then the CARES Act did come together. And then he did a half-assed coup after he lost the election. But even there: Why? Was there really a lot of tangible upside to that? It was one of the most insane events of American political history, and the motivation behind it — especially given the shambolic nature of the plot — remains fairly obscure.
I did not spend the weeks leading up to the midterms doing dire warnings of Trumpian election theft. But it certainly occurred to me as something that might happen. When the results were in, though, he seemed almost indifferent.
So fair enough, what does Congress have to do with him? But he personally set in motion an incredible amount of redistricting drama in the House. He hand-picked disastrous Senate candidates in Texas and South Carolina. Why do this stuff if he doesn’t care?
I don’t know, and I don’t think we ever will know.
Spencer Roach: Early 2028 speculation: are Vance and Rubio still the most likely Republican POTUS nominees? On the one hand, the midterm results seem to discredit the Trump admin, making an outsider nominee more likely. On the other hand, most Republican primary voters will probably still be loyal to Trump, though it’s possible that the midterm result gives Trump loyalists permission to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: My best guess is that a viable outsider candidacy won’t come from an “anti-Trump” figure but from someone I’d call a post-Trump figure.