Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
To figure it out, we’re talking to veteran North Carolina Democratic operative Morgan Jackson, who’s on the Roy Cooper campaign, about what he’s seeing on the ground. Morgan, thanks for coming on.
Sargent: So let’s start here. A new Reuters poll finds Trump’s approval nationally down at 32 percent. That’s a record low in Reuters polling for Trump’s two terms. I don’t know if it’s that low, Morgan, but the FiftyPlusOne polling averages have him at 35 percent. So it’s plausible that he’s heading down into the low thirties. Morgan, what’s your sense of where the president really is right now?
One of the things he talked about was the war in Iran. He talked about gas prices, and how glad people were to be paying for higher gas prices. He talked about North Carolina, a state that he’d won three times, being the worst state in the nation. These are not things that help Michael Whatley, who is running for Senate in North Carolina.
I don’t know, Greg, that in the 30 years I’ve been in this business that I’ve seen a public official have worse numbers with unaffiliated voters. And as we know, North Carolina, as in a lot of these states, unaffiliated voters now make up the largest constituency, the largest number of registered voters.
Jackson: No, it can’t. And what I’ll tell you is he said, we’ve given you some money from FEMA, you want two or three billion dollars more—if Michael Whatley wins, I’ll give it to you. If he doesn’t, I won’t. And he paused, and then he joked, then he laughed, said, that was a joke. But I don’t think anybody thinks disaster recovery is funny.
Sargent: Well, yeah, and also this is something that really hit western North Carolina very hard, and that’s deep red territory. We should note that Trump’s drop in the Reuters poll is fueled by his slide among Republicans. In this poll, he’s only at 73 percent approval with them. That is catastrophic for them, if that’s anywhere close to right.
Jackson: So I think there are two challenges that Republicans have right now. I think the very first challenge is they have a base that is not enthusiastic about this election. They are not enthusiastic about Trump. Now think about the Trump coalition that powered him to victory in all seven battleground states in 2024.
And so I think we’re talking about a lack of enthusiasm, because it is promises made and promises not delivered on, failed expectations. And I think those voters—Trump’s not on the ballot, which has generally been the one thing that turns them out. And you also have folks who feel like they were promised the economy was going to get better two years ago by Trump, and it has gotten worse for them and their families.
Sargent: So you’re polling out in western North Carolina. That’s where Jamie Ager is the Democrat running. I think he might have a shot. That’s a tough race. I think it’s pretty close to double digits, a Trump district.
Jackson: So what we’re seeing is—one of the things, Greg, that we often poll on are to gauge enthusiasm. Not only do we screen you into a poll to ask you, are you a likely voter versus a registered voter, then towards the end of the survey, we ask you again about your interest in voting. And one of my favorite tools that we use a lot is asking people, on a scale of one through ten, you put a number beside it of how interested and motivated you are to vote.
That’s a huge enthusiasm gap between the parties. And if that holds, that can have catastrophic repercussions for Republicans this year.
And Politico reports that your guy, Roy Cooper, is ahead by double digits in private GOP polling. I just want to point out that if that’s true, if Roy Cooper is in the double digits there, then that’s when you see places like Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas suddenly become really gettable, right? Is it at double digits or not?
North Carolina’s going to be much tighter than that. I think the real question to me right now is, how do you deal with lack of Republican enthusiasm, lack of support from unaffiliated, but then you also have this massive cash infusion coming from Republican interest groups and special interest groups and independent expenditures out there.
We know this race is going to tighten with all this national spending they’re bringing. And we’re continuing to raise money and do everything that we need to do to remain competitive on the airwaves and in paid communication with voters.
Jackson: No, I don’t. I don’t.
Morgan, you’ve been someone who’s talked about the slow transition of North Carolina for a long time. It never seems to quite materialize, at least in the presidentials. Something similar is happening in Georgia. We’re seeing similar demographic shifts, another southern state.
Jackson: Listen, I think if we can win a Senate race in North Carolina, it’s a very big deal. It’ll be the first time—only the second time in 20 years—that we’ve been able to do that. And Greg, you and I have talked about this. When you look at the demographic changes of the next couple of years, especially when reapportionment and redistricting comes after the 2030 cycle, Democrats have to be focused on consistently winning places like North Carolina and Georgia if we want a chance to elect the president. That’s just a reality.
And Georgia and North Carolina are the two that are right there. And while Georgia was able to crack the code in 2020—we’ve fallen just short each time, but we believe putting a Senate seat in the bank this time puts us in much better stead for thinking about—we’ve got a U.S. Senate seat up in ‘28 and the presidential.
Jackson: Well, it’s all of the things. Listen, when we see places like Raleigh and Charlotte and the greater triangle and the collar counties around Charlotte getting bluer and bluer and bluer from this influx of college-educated voters—the thing that’s held us just below the waterline, per se, the last several cycles, is that Trump has been able to ramp up this Republican turnout in red North Carolina, which is more rural and exurban, and they’ve outvoted their share of the electorate. And if we get to a place where blue North Carolina is actually voting its full share of an electorate, we’re going to start having better years and winning bigger races.
Sargent: Well, Jamie Ager’s the Democratic House candidate out in North Carolina’s Eleventh District. That’s the western corner of the state. It’s right in Appalachia. It’s got Asheville there. Do you think Jamie Ager’s going to win that race or not?
We have to remember, the candidate who was on the ballot, the incumbent, withdrew from the race because he got investigated by Congress in a bipartisan way, was really smacked for his inappropriate relationships with his staff members, young female staff members, and advances towards them. And so they’ve been in a little bit of a free fall.
And one of those is western North Carolina, which I’ve always believed had a lot to do with the hurricane that had taken place a couple of months before then, and the disinformation by the Trump campaign at the time, when they were telling them FEMA was not helping you, when—people, FEMA was knocking on the doors. I think that hurt their credibility.
I just want to stress for people, this is western North Carolina. This is a lot of rural North Carolina. It’s really Trumpy territory. Very hard for Democrats there. But Jamie Ager’s a family farmer. He’s a good candidate, and he fits the district perfectly. So all the pieces are there. I think it can’t be ruled out now. I mean, if Trump’s super PAC is spending there, they’re seeing something in the numbers too, right?
And he’s exactly who you see in these ads: he is a straightforward kind of guy, and he’s a mountain guy, and you can tell it by talking to him. And one of the things he’s been doing over the last week I noticed was hosting barn dances all across the district. I mean, think about the cultural connection there. That’s incredibly good.
But Democrats clearly have the advantage right now. It’s, can we hold the advantage and push that advantage? And part of that is—we need help. We need help, people, from around the country investing in these races. Because Trump just dumped in over six million dollars over the last two weeks against Cooper. He dumped in over a million, million and a half, against Jamie Ager, separately than that, just in the last week.
Jackson: Yes, that’s correct.
Jackson: I think it was a million and a half. It was close to that, yes.
So there’s not a lot of mystery as to why Trump is collapsing so badly: prices, tariffs, and war. Some new data on that as well. Reuters has Trump’s approval on cost of living at an extraordinary 17 percent. That’s not a typo. A new CNN poll has 70 percent saying his Iran war has hurt the U.S., and 76 percent saying the war isn’t worth the costs.
Jackson: It is. And I think what you see Republicans around the country trying to do is to change the narrative on voters. In North Carolina, they’ve tried to make this race about crime. You see other states, they’ve tried to make it about immigration, they try to make it about a lot of things.
Listen, we lived on the other side of this two years ago, is that people were feeling really frustrated, really agitated, really unsafe in the economy due to increased inflation. And so they voted Donald Trump in to change the policies they thought of, of Joe Biden. And now they’ve figured out that not only are things just as bad, they’re a lot worse under Trump, after they thought he was going to fix it. And so there’s a lot of blame and a lot of regret going around.
Jackson: Absolutely, I do. Listen, I think when you see places like Texas, Kansas, Iowa coming online, Alaska, Ohio—none of these were close states in 2024 in the presidential. And these states, Democrats have small leads or are dead even. And a lot of prognosticators have ranked them toss-up seats. That’s a very big deal.
Sargent: OK, so Democrats have to net four Senate seats in order to win the Senate. They have to flip four Republican-held seats. If you had to pick which are the four most likely, in your view?
But I also think—listen, I think Iowa, Josh Turek is running a great race and things are happening in Iowa. So we talked about Texas. These are places that are really challenging. And I think the good news for us, the best news for us, is there’s not just one path to get there.
Sargent: Sure looks that way. Morgan Jackson, awesome to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Jackson: Thanks, guys. Y’all take care.
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