Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We think this is a telling moment because it shows that Republicans really do expect to face real elections this fall—and it doesn’t look like Trump can get his way and cheat his way through this. Is that too optimistic? We’re talking about all this with Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who’s a shrewd observer of politics as the publisher of Courier Newsroom. Tara, nice to have you on.
Sargent: So Trump wants Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which is a truly disgusting piece of voter suppression legislation. It’s already passed the House, but doesn’t have close to 60 votes to pass the Senate. Trump and MAGA want Republicans in the Senate to use a talking filibuster to pass it. Tara, can you explain how this Trump-MAGA strategy is supposed to work?
And so now what’s happening—and this gets a little convoluted—basically there is another procedural option to get around the 60-vote threshold with a talking filibuster, which would require Democrats to hold the floor, as we have seen occasionally and recently in other situations. They would need to hold the floor to debate this bill and talk about their opposition to it. But they essentially have to hold the floor. And when they cease holding the floor of the chamber, then the majority party can bring the measure to a vote and pass it on a simple majority instead of requiring that 60-vote threshold. That’s how I understand it.
Sargent: The strategy of getting rid of the filibuster itself doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass, because a few senators—maybe more than a few Republican senators—oppose getting rid of the traditional filibuster. And the talking filibuster strategy can’t work either, because Democrats would probably relish the opportunity to hold the floor for pretty much forever. They could do what Cory Booker did recently and get a ton of attention on what’s going on with Trump’s economy, with his immigration crackdown.
Sargent: That would be absolutely something that they would do. And I think smarter Republicans know that it would be an absolute catastrophe to let Democrats tie things up that way, especially when Republicans want to be focused on the economy. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board ripped into the strategy, calling it basically a mirage and a fantasy, and pointing out that Democrats would love to jump at the chance to draw attention to both themselves and to all the failures on Trump’s watch. So it’s not happening.
He knows—and Mike Johnson, the House speaker, came out after the State of the Union and even said—if and when Republicans lose the House in the midterms this year, that is game over for this Trump administration or any Trump agenda. They won’t be able to get anything through—not that they’ve gotten anything through that has the support of the American people to date.
Sargent: I wish I had the same sort of confidence you do.
Sargent: Well, okay, let me just switch gears here. Punchbowl News had this striking report: It says that GOP senators are “incensed” with Trump and MAGA for pressuring them to do this. They’re shocked that Trump and MAGA are demanding that they do something unworkable. Some of them are blaming social media disinformation for this, according to Punchbowl. You know, Tara, this is funny because Republicans created this Trump-MAGA disinformation monster. Now they’re upset that Trump and MAGA are making unreasonable, non-fact-based demands of them. You know what? Tough shit. You deserve this. Your thoughts on that?
Clearly these tariffs have hurt the economy and our alliances abroad. The cost of living has only gone up. It was a huge promise of Trump and his campaign that that would be a priority for them, as was releasing the Epstein files.
And I really appreciate what you said at the very top of this program, which is that them panicking publicly is actually a very good sign. Because I think all of us paying close attention—our worst fear is that they do not allow free and fair elections, or elections at all, in the midterms, because they know that they will get a shellacking—to quote President Obama from 2010.
Sargent: So yeah, it’s very clear that Republicans do think they’re facing an election. Politico reports that Republicans are looking at all these Democratic wins on the state level—some of which are coming in deep red areas, as you mentioned earlier—and they’re worried about this fall, the midterms.
Tara, that does seem like the story right now. It’s a double whammy. First, midterms usually are driven by high-engagement voters to start with, which is not great for Republicans. Second, in the Trump era, Republicans are particularly reliant on the low-information voters who turn out for Trump and no one else. Is that about the size of it?
So they are going to struggle with enthusiasm—they already are—with turnout and with defection, because you cannot create the swings that we’re seeing toward Democratic candidates without Trump voters switching sides. It is not just an increase in turnout among Democrats or independents.
McGowan: I am more optimistic than you today, Greg—that’s not always the case. I think honestly everything is on the map in this country. I truly do believe it. And that’s based on a lot of data from the special elections, from the turnout numbers that we saw.
They do not want Americans killed in the street by masked thugs who work for the federal government. They do not want the economy to tank even worse than it already has. Everything is on the surface right now and being felt very viscerally by the American people.
And I am optimistic about the Senate for the same reason. We have enormous opportunities because there is an incredible bench of Democrats running and contesting Republicans in open seats across the country in Senate races, including in states like Alaska and Ohio. And I think that these folks would have been living on a prayer in an ordinary midterm election season, but now actually have a very viable shot.
Sargent: The Senate always looked like a very, very tough road. And in a really dated thing, Virginia was seen as a really, really tough lift for Democrats. And then of course they somehow squeaked out that Virginia race and won Virginia—this was before the big shift in the Democratic direction in that state. And they were able to take the Senate. It does have that feel to me a little bit.
And the other thing I would say is that the part of this story which is important to note is that all of this defection and increased enthusiasm and turnout against Republicans is happening despite Democrats having the lowest approval rating they have ever had in history. Republicans know this is about them—this is their failure, in power, to have a trifecta of power.
The corruption is everywhere on the surface—which is the issue that actually unifies the most Americans in a bipartisan way—against a system of corruption where the wealthiest and most powerful get a different set of rules. That is the definition of this administration and this Republican Party.
We are seeing races that are getting very little attention or investment have these massive swings. It’s a testament to the American people saying, this is not the country that I want to live in—and even, this is not the Republican or the president or the party that I voted for, even on the right.
As you know, I want to address the point you made about Democrats having their lowest approval rating ever. I think we should be sensitive to that point. And there are a number of critics out there—kind of centrist liberal types—who point out this problem a lot. And I think it’s fair enough, right? We have to worry about the Democratic approval rating.
McGowan: I mean, yes, I hope so. My hope is that—because we’ve seen this before, where Democrats have won despite themselves pretty much every election, honestly, going back to what they won after 2016—the error of their ways was that they didn’t believe that they won despite themselves, and they believed that they had a mandate for one sort of approach or another, and that wasn’t actually the case.
Sargent: All right, just to wrap this up—I think a lot of liberals and Democrats tend to look at Trump’s demand for passage of the SAVE Act and simply assume he’s going to get his way, because they just assume he’ll be able to hold power forever no matter what. But I wonder if that ultimately surrenders too much power to him. Like, we can’t demobilize ourselves.
Sargent: I agree on that point 100 percent. Tara McGowan, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on—it’s getting very interesting.
McGowan: Sure is. Thanks, Greg.
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