The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 16 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
The New York Times poll is the absolute gold standard, so when it drops, we pay attention. And boy, did it just drop. It finds that the Democratic lead in the House generic ballot matchup is growing, and it also found a lot of other things that are deeply problematic for the GOP and for Donald Trump. It’s not a coincidence that Trump just erupted in crazed fury over the Supreme Court, which just blocked his plot to steal the election via corrupting vote by mail. Meanwhile, other polling shows Trump absolutely cratering with Latinos, which means the Texas Senate race could be gettable.
We’re talking about it all with Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki, who’s worked on a lot of midterms and knows this stuff in and out. Caitlin, always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Caitlin Legacki: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: So the Supreme Court just blocked Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service to rig the midterms. He exploded in a frenzy on Truth Social, calling the ruling horrible. He said:
“It is a big loss for Republicans and America itself, and makes cheating by the radical left ‘Dumocrats’ on mail-in ballots a much easier thing to do. The Supreme Court has really let our country down!”
Trump added that Democrats are “crazed and depraved.”
Caitlin, this was maybe his longest tirade ever. It was really, really lengthy. He really lost it. He was counting on using the mail to steal the election, I think. Your thoughts on all that?
Legacki: Yeah, I mean, this is an issue that I’ve been working on for a couple of years, but it’s part of a larger agenda where Trump has been trying to either use the FBI or the Department of Justice or his ability to control and change regulations at the U.S. Postal Service to really turn the federal government against his perceived political opponents. And so it isn’t surprising that it got to this place.
I think the most surprising thing is that the Supreme Court stood fast against him. But you know, he definitely is the kind of guy that, like, if you can’t win the game, he’s going to change the rules. And that’s clearly what he’s trying to do here.
And, oddly enough though, a lot of his voters vote by mail, whether it’s rural voters, older voters. Plenty of Republicans have tried to push back on his war on vote by mail, but he clearly views this as a huge loss for him and his interests.
Sargent: And I think that that’s probably a good thing. Look, we’re going to have a real election, it looks like now. They’re still trying to corrupt the elections and steal them, but the big story right at this moment is that with around eight weeks to go, we now know we’re going into an actual election without any kind of shenanigans, any theft like that—presuming that the Republican efforts don’t work, which I don’t think they will. That’s what Trump is angry about. He has been hoping to avoid a real election, and now he’s facing one, right?
Legacki: That’s exactly right. And I think what’s funny is that the more he talks about all of this other stuff, the more it’s going to drive the American voter away from him. Because what we’re seeing, whether it’s in this New York Times poll or elsewhere, is there is a massive affordability crisis in America right now. And, you know, I think the American people are smart enough to know that there’s not always a lot you can do on that.
But the fact that he’s actively making the problem worse by going to war with Iran and closing the Strait of Hormuz—you know, diesel just hit its highest price, I think, on record, going into the fall and winter. And people are just so sick and tired of all of this other stuff that he’s spending his time on, all of these other fights that he’s waging, when he’s really just ignoring the challenges that they have every single day, whether it’s, like, buying a dozen eggs or filling up their car.
Sargent: Yep. Trump is really, really making this election as bad as possible for Republicans. The Times poll is probably the best survey out there. It’s worth taking extremely seriously. And it just found that Democrats lead by over eight points in the generic House ballot matchup, 51 percent to 43 percent.
The Times’s Nate Cohn says that’s getting into blue wave territory. Trump’s approval is just 38 percent. That’s lower than any president going into a midterm since George W. Bush, just before the 2006 Dem wave.
Caitlin, up until today, it was looking as if the Dem lead in the generic ballot was expanding, but I don’t think we could really say that with any certainty. I think this Times poll brings us a little closer to confirmation that that lead is expanding. What do you think?
Legacki: I think it’s absolutely expanding. I think as energy prices continue to get worse, I think as the situation in Iran continues to devolve—and then also, I think there is a real moment happening around concerns about technology and AI right now. And without going too deep on that, I think that Trump’s reaction to some of that dialogue has been relatively unserious.
He’s not taking those concerns seriously. And I think that that’s just one more brick in the wall, where people are going to look at him when they’re in the voting booth and say, like, this guy just doesn’t care about the things that I care about.
And I think that as we continue to see more polls, there’s a real shot that we do get into blue wave territory. But you know, like, I’m personally kind of like Chicken Little when it comes to polling. I never take a good poll at face value, but I always take a bad poll at face value.
Sargent: Good policy.
Legacki: Exactly. But you know, I think when you look at some of the comments from voters related to this poll, it goes to show that our position is improving every day, but we shouldn’t necessarily take that for granted. I think there’s a clear call from a lot of these voters, and some of the comments that they gave, that they just want normalcy, they want centrism. They’re tired of swinging back and forth from the far right to the far left.
And so I think for Democrats who are looking at a message that resonates with those voters, it’s really not that hard. It’s, we want to bring your costs down, and we want you to feel secure in your neighborhood. And that’s really it.
Sargent: I do want to home in on what you said about AI for a sec, just to clarify for listeners. You were talking about Trump essentially raging wildly about the very idea of regulating AI, saying that all we need is a smart president like him and we don’t need any regulations.
Now, I want to point out that this Times polling came before the comments about AI that Trump made. And I do think those comments from Trump are going to make things worse.
Legacki: The problem with Trump’s answer and his response to this whole dialogue is that he’s telling people, you don’t understand, I don’t care what you worry about, just leave it to me and it’ll all be fine. And, like, for a lot of people lately, that hasn’t worked out well for them. And I think that’s part of why his numbers are crashing.
It’s when you look at all of the gains he made with Hispanics in 2024—those are being wiped out because the economy is bad. And he ran on an agenda of reducing costs, of improving the economy. It’s gotten better for some very, very wealthy people, but for your average American, it hasn’t gotten better. In fact, it’s probably gotten a little bit worse.
Sargent: We’re going to talk about the Latino collapse in a bit, but first let’s talk about this other Times finding, which is really surprising. Democrats are leading the GOP on just about every major issue—the economy by six points, 51 to 45. And get this: Democrats are leading Republicans on immigration, on which party is trusted to handle immigration, by seven points, 52 to 45. Those are both big turnarounds on issues that were absolutely central to Trump’s 2024 victory.
On top of that, 52 percent overall strongly disapprove of Trump, including 60 percent of independents who strongly disapprove. That’s astounding. It’s such a dramatic repudiation of the president. I’m going to say this again: this midterm is about Trump, Trump, and Trump. What do you think?
Legacki: I agree completely. I think when you look at this battery of issues—health care, immigration—Democrats are plus 10 on the deficit, which I don’t know the last time we saw something like that. It’s just a clear repudiation of not just his policies, but his posture and his tone and the things that he is focused on.
And so, I’m going to be the skunk at the garden party a little bit, which is to say these numbers are fantastic for Democrats, but I think they’re still pretty fresh. They’re not fully baked, and they’re not the same thing as an endorsement of all of our policies.
Like, when you look at the immigration number, D plus seven—that’s not a D plus seven embrace of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, but it is a D plus seven rejection of the way that Trump and his administration have conducted themselves. And I think that’s just an important distinction to keep in mind.
Sargent: I agree. What it signals is that there’s a big opening for Democrats to grab hold of the debate. And as I’ve argued a million times on here, and at The New Republic, there is an opening to do that and Democrats should do that. They’re still not there yet. I get why—it’s a midterm, like, you want it to be about the president.
The truth of the matter, and this is something that a lot of people don’t like to say out loud, is that the challenging party doesn’t actually have to stand for too much in a midterm, because they really are about the president and his record, and about the party in power. That’s just how these things work. You’ve been down this road a lot of times, Caitlin, right? Can you talk about that?
Legacki: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, because we always joke that it’s a lot easier to be in the minority, because you don’t actually have any real responsibility. Your job is to just respond to what the party in power is doing.
But when Democrats do get in power—whether it’s we win the House, we win the Senate, we win both, some combination of the two—that changes the dynamic. And there is responsibility that comes with governing that I think is different than when we’re in a situation where Republicans control all three branches and they’re the ones fully holding the bag.
Sargent: Well, let’s talk about the Trump-GOP collapse with Latinos, which you referenced earlier, in the Times poll. Dems are leading among Hispanics in the generic matchup by 68 percent to 25 percent. And 70 percent of Hispanics disapprove of Trump—63 percent strongly. Sixty-three percent of Hispanics disapprove of Donald Trump strongly.
That’s just crazy stuff. I mean, the 68 to 25 in the generic matchup—those are the types of numbers where you look at Texas and you say, well, this is still going to be very hard. The Texas Senate race sure looks like it’s doable, but it’s Texas, and Democratic hearts have been broken before. But then you look at these numbers and you say, if this is going to happen, these are the numbers you need to see that will make it happen.
Legacki: That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important that you point out Texas has broken our hearts before. I think when you look at Beto O’Rourke, he came within two of Ted Cruz. I think the key difference we’re seeing here, with people like Talarico and Gina Hinojosa and Mary Peltola and Rob Sand and Josh Turek—all these guys and women that are running in pretty solidly red states—they’re clearly playing to win. They are taking positions that are the right positions for their states, whether it’s Mary Peltola on oil and gas, or Talarico and Turek, who both have made news about their positions on trans kids in sports.
That I think maybe is a little bit outside the mainstream for a lot of Democratic voters, but it reflects the mainstream of their states. And that tells me that they’re going to do everything they can to win these races and make this possible. And I think that’s what matters.
Sargent: Well, it certainly looks like James Talarico is really running to win that race. CNN’s Harry Enten added another data point from CNN’s polling. He looked at working-class Latinos and found that Trump is 47 points underwater among them on immigration. Enten called these “terrible, terrible numbers.”
Caitlin, remember that working-class Latinos actually approved of Trump on immigration in 2024, as hard as that is to believe. Now they’ve really seen the light, though. What do you make of all that? I mean, I just want to remind people here that the working-class Latino shift to Trump in 2024 was heralded as a sign of a seismic, durable realignment in U.S. politics. All gone now. All gone.
Legacki: Yeah, there’s a couple things. One is that, first of all, when you’re talking about Latino voters, that means that they are either people who were born here or people who have gone through the legal immigration process to become citizens so they can vote here.
So they typically tend to be a little bit more conservative-leaning on issues like immigration, because they’ve gone through the process, their families have gone through the process. And so, I think Democrats for a long time made a mistake that all Hispanics just wanted open immigration. And that was not the signal they were sending us.
The signal they were sending us, though, is that they want an economy that works for them and their families. They want everyone to play by the same set of rules. And what Trump has done is he’s made the economy terrible for working people. Like, stuff is just too expensive for working families.
But then the other thing is that all of these Latino Americans who are U.S. citizens, have gone through the citizenship process—they’re also getting hassled by ICE agents on the street. They also know people who have been wrongfully detained, and that’s not what they signed up for. And so I think that you’re seeing a real rejection of how Trump specifically has conducted himself with Latino voters. And he really overplayed his hand there.
Sargent: And I think we should talk about this in the context of Texas again, because those South Texas counties, the ones that are heavy on Latinos—those are places where Trump really shifted the vote, because a lot of them are border counties. And for them, what they thought they were voting for was border security, right? Like, that’s what Texas Latinos thought Trump was promising them, I think. Does that make sense?
And of course, that set of promises was just completely thrown to the wind. And what they’re getting instead is, you know, ICE kicking the shit out of people on the streets and shooting people and profiling them. I think that’s the essence of the miscalculation. And again, if Texas is going to happen, that’s how it happens, because that Texas Latino vote really moves to Talarico in a big way, right?
Legacki: Totally. And I think you’re exactly right. They were voting for border security. And I think when you even talk to border Democrats in places like Arizona and Texas, there were real problems in those communities with too many people coming over the border, overwhelming their communities, overwhelming their social services. They were just looking for a little bit more, I think, control in terms of the volume of people coming over.
And especially in those border communities, those people are used to interacting with Border Patrol, because there are many land borders, ID checks, checkpoints within 50 miles of the border. And so it’s not like there hasn’t been a presence of Border Patrol in these places before.
The difference is that now, whether it’s ICE, Border Patrol, whoever else, they’ve been completely outrageous in terms of how they hassle people, how they stop people on the street. There’s no effective targeting about who they’re trying to find. And, you know, we were told that they were going to crack down on the worst of the worst. And what they’re doing instead is just breaking up families and terrorizing kids.
Sargent: So two weeks ago, GOP officials leaked their fears about the midterms to Politico’s Jonathan Martin. It’s worth revisiting now. They said they worried that the cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the middle of the electorate, and the huge enthusiasm gap Democrats are enjoying were becoming locked in and becoming close to irreversible. Jonathan Martin called this the nightmare for Republicans.
Caitlin, you look at this polling from the Times and the stuff that Harry Enten’s citing, every one of those fears is turning out to be right. Those things are getting locked in. Trump is cratering on the economy and with independents, and the Democratic lead is growing in the likely voter polling, which is what this Times poll is, which shows the enthusiasm is with Dems. What do you make of all that?
Legacki: Yeah, I mean, I think historically what happens, especially in the midterm, is the out party, the challenger party, comes into this summer with a wave of enthusiasm. They’re the new guy, everything looks possible. And then as you get closer to November, voters start going home. And you typically see those polls closing and getting tighter.
So for example, in a place like Iowa, where you’ve got Josh Turek running against Ashley Hinson, normally we would see that poll get a lot tighter as we got closer.
What should be concerning for Republicans about this New York Times poll is we’re seeing the generic ballot gap expand. And so what that means is that, you know, every race is going to be different. But the overall mood and the overall sentiment towards Republicans is getting worse by the day, which is not how you want to be going into November. You want it to be getting better, or people to be coming home, getting more comfortable with Republicans.
And here we’re seeing not only are they not coming home, but they’re actively leaving Republicans. And with two months to go, and Donald Trump not seeming to recognize, I think, the gravity of this situation, there’s no indication that that situation’s going to get better.
Sargent: I want to close on a warning note that’s based on what you just said, which is that, folks, these polls may tighten. And it isn’t just that voters will start going home to their respective parties, although that’s a big factor. It’s also because the Republican money is really starting to flow big time. MAGA Inc. opened up its spigot—that’s the Trump super PAC.
We’re going to see an enormous amount of negative advertising hitting these Democratic candidates in these big Senate races, and some of the most contested House races as well. So don’t get alarmed if these polls tighten. It’s what usually happens in this situation. And hey, as Caitlin says, if it doesn’t happen, all the better, right? But that is a real worry, isn’t it, Caitlin?
Legacki: It is. I mean, the Republican outside groups, including MAGA Inc. and all of the Republican Senate groups—they have a significant cash advantage over the Democrats. The Supreme Court recently made it a lot easier for the Republican committees to get the same ad rates that candidates get.
It’s very technical, but there used to be a benefit for candidates like, for example, Roy Cooper, who is just totally outraising his opponent Michael Whatley. That playing field is getting a little bit leveled.
But you know, the good news is that we continue to see Democratic candidates either maintaining their leads, holding steady, or in some cases expanding their leads. And if you are a Democrat, you’re looking at this polling and it’s going in absolutely the right direction.
Sargent: Caitlin Legacki, that was all really illuminating stuff. Folks, she really closed on an important note there. We shouldn’t freak out if some of these polls tighten. It’s what’s supposed to happen. Caitlin, thanks so much for coming on. It was great to talk to you, as always.
Legacki: Thanks for having me.
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