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’re going to work through all of it with Michael Cohen, who has a good piece on his Substack, Truth and Consequences, arguing that the big story of this moment is GOP extremism. Michael, good to have you on.
Sargent: So in this Pennsylvania state legislative district north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, Democrat Brandon Dukes is slightly ahead of Republican Scott Tempko. This district backed Trump by 18 in 2024. It’s voted reliably Republican for decades.
Cohen: It’s actually a continuation of a good story for Democrats, which is that in the vast majority of special elections since Trump took office in 2025, Democrats have dominated, and often by double digits. This is yet one more place where Democrats are overperforming. And look, the reality is that this kind of overperformance in special elections is usually a pretty good indication of where things are headed in the midterm elections.
Sargent: Absolutely. And there’s actually an example from 2018 that applies very well. Recall that before the 2018 midterms, Democrat Conor Lamb won a House special election in southwestern Pennsylvania. Trump had carried that district two years earlier, in 2016, by like 20 points. And so this was a big shift, and it was a harbinger of the midterm blowout in 2018 that was to come.
Cohen: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. You make a great observation, that you know, Democrats are unlikely to do as well as in 2018 just because there are fewer seats that are competitive. But when you look at the raw numbers and you look at where they are in the generic ballot, I actually think they might be in a better position, just with fewer seats that are available for them to win.
Sargent: I will point out that the Fifty Plus One site has the generic House ballot matchup right now at Democrats plus six. That’s still not quite where we need it to be for Democrats to win the Senate. But it seems to be moving right now. It seems like Democrats are gaining in this generic House ballot matchup. And I think it’s worth focusing on this too. The electorate in midterms is different from the electorate in presidential years.
As you know, being a veteran of following politics, Michael, midterm election electorates tend to be highly educated, engaged voters. And so there are lots and lots of signs that Republicans could kind of sit out this election, especially without Trump on the ballot. Can you talk about that dynamic?
But I mean, I think it’s important to point this out, that it’s still very hard for Democrats to do this. We’re still talking about a place like—take Alaska, right? Trump’s won all three of his elections there by double digits. Now you’re looking at a situation in which Democrats could potentially win a Senate seat. Right now they look like they’re pretty well positioned to do that. That’s a pretty crazy outcome.
Sargent: You brought up the Alaska Senate race, so I will point out that in the nonpartisan primary that was just held in Alaska, the Democrat Mary Peltola got forty-eight percent of the vote. The leading Republican, Dan Sullivan, got forty-two percent of the vote. And so, God, that is a reason for optimism right there.
And so, I agree with you that Michigan heavily complicates the picture, but that is a real cause for optimism—Peltola being up.
So I just think that she has a track record in Alaska. Sullivan appears to be an unpopular incumbent. The national environment is just terrible for Republicans. So yeah. And she’s leading every poll. So it does seem like she’s got a chance. But again, like I said a second ago, you have to remember, these are red states. And for Democrats—I mean, you could see Democrats win two or three Senate seats in red states.
There’s one Republican senator in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024, and that would be Maine, and that’s Susan Collins, and she looks like she might might lose. So, for Democrats to be competitive in Iowa, in Ohio, in Alaska, in Texas—states that again went for Trump all three times—is really unusual. And I think it speaks to just how deeply unpopular he is as president, and how much his unpopularity has hurt the Republican brand.
But note this: Trump has just hit his lowest point ever in The New York Times average of polls, which has him at 37 percent approving, with 59 percent disapproving. The Times average is kind of conservative. It has a lot of data in it. For him to be twenty-two points underwater by those averages suggests maybe that the 33 percent that Reuters has might not be far from where he really is now. What do you think?
You look at, like, his strong disapproval, it’s generally flirting around 50 percent, with the somewhat-disapprove, like, in the single digits. And people who don’t like Trump really don’t like Trump. And that, I think, is a little bit unusual. I mean, look, George Bush at the end of his second term was this unpopular—he was actually more unpopular, it was in the 20s, right?
Sargent: But one other thing—I want to pick up on what you said about the strong disapproval of Trump, because I think people miss the importance of this. It’s not that unusual to see a poll in which 50 percent of the country strongly disapproves of Donald Trump. That is unbelievable.
Cohen: You raise a really interesting point here, I think, that people won’t comment on, which is that when Trump’s not on the ballot, Republican candidates tend to underperform. So it’s not just that he’s unpopular. It’s that without him on the ballot, all those Trump voters who turn out for him are not going to turn out. I mean, traditionally they haven’t turned out.
Sargent: Maybe this is how we should think about it. To the people who approve of Trump, at least—you know, whoever’s left that still approves of him—Trump’s not on the ballot, right? But to the people who disapprove of Trump, Trump is on the ballot.
Sargent: They’re going out to vote against Donald Trump. He is on the ballot. They see this election as an opportunity to, A, register their profound disapproval of the president and their profound disapproval with the direction of the country, and B, put a check on Donald Trump. So you put all that together, and it starts to look like even more of a perfect storm, I think.
So this was always going to be a rough cycle for Republicans. I think what’s made it potentially an historically bad cycle is just how unpopular Trump has become. And frankly, that Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot with some of these really lousy nominees.
CNN’s Harry Enten caught something really interesting, which is that Trump is absolutely bleeding Hispanic men. Enten pointed out that Trump won that demographic, Hispanic men, by ten points in 2024. But now, in CNN polling, his net approval among them is minus 41 points. And so I think this is significant, because it’s like another way in which the Trump coalition is falling apart.
Cohen: No, they are. And if you look at—I mean, you could go back to last year, the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, some of the biggest overperformance by Democrats was in Hispanic districts, Hispanic areas, right? The drop-off in Hispanic support for Trump has been extraordinary.
So I agree with you. I mean, I think that is an underappreciated part of this. Look, Hispanic voters are localized in just a few states—Florida, California, Texas. But in the places where they are, where they vote in big numbers, they can make a big difference. And I think Texas is the most interesting place to see how much that bleeding of Hispanic support really hurts the Republican Party.
And so for those Texas Hispanics to now be shifting back toward Democrats once again shows how absurd it was to read Trump’s one-point-five-point victory in 2024 as a major realignment moment, right?
And look, we’ve been going through this cycle every two years, right? 2016, you could say it was a backlash to Democrats. 2018, a backlash to Trump. 2020, a backlash against Trump again. 2022, backlash against Biden. 2024, backlash against Biden. 2026, a backlash against Trump. This is how these cycles go.
And that is a problem for the party. And he has pushed them, the Republicans in the House and the Senate, to follow through on an agenda that is unpopular. And he has overreached, right? He acted as though he had this huge mandate, and that led him to pursue this policy on immigration enforcement that has created enormous backlash, not just among Hispanics, but among a whole host of Americans. He went forward with the tariff thinking that had broad support. Guess what? That’s creating a huge backlash.
Sargent: So just to review all this very quickly: there’s been a huge shift in a Pennsylvania state legislative district toward Dems. Mary Peltola is looking very good in Alaska. Hispanics are abandoning Trump in enormous numbers. Trump’s approval is down at 33 percent in a new poll and down at 37 percent in the New York Times averages. And Democrats are plus six or plus seven in the generic ballot, and are winning by double digits among very, very engaged voters.
Cohen: They do. I mean, look, again, we have two months to go until the election, and it’s easy, I think, for Democrats to get really excited about where things are going. But I think, as it stands, the trend lines point in one direction, and that is for Democrats to do well. I mean, at this point, I think—the chance Democrats take the House—I would be stunned if they did not end up taking the House. And the Senate, again, that it’s in play really says a lot about the direction American politics has gone.
Sargent: Well, you know how politics is, man. The second things go your way, you think that it’s a realignment, just like they did.
And they need to have a plan for that when they go into 2028—to understand that, like, they haven’t made the case to Americans. Although, having said that, because, you know, how unpopular Trump is—this whole cycle feels like 2006, 2008 to me. 2006, Democrats had a huge victory in the second midterm for W. Then you go into ‘08, you have the Great Recession, you have the war, people are upset about that, Democrats got an even bigger victory in 2008. I think that’s kind of where things are going. But as you remember, in 2010, what happened to the Democrats? They got their butts kicked. So be careful. That’s what I said.
Cohen: Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Greg.
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