Anti-Trump Sentiment vs. Policy: The Battle for the Midterms

[music] Hey, what's news listeners? It's Sunday, April 19. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news. Less than 200 days out from the midterms, possible fractures are emerging within both major parties. As President Trump's criticisms of the Pope this week, risk alienating Catholic voters and representative Eric Swalwell's fall from grace forces a reckoning among the high-profile Democrats who endorsed his run for California Governor. With voters in some key states now just weeks away from selecting who'll represent them in November, we'll look at how Democrats and Republicans are positioning themselves to emerge victorious in a wide open battle for control of Congress. Let's get right to it. [music] Without further ado, I'd like to bring a pair of journal politics reporters into the mix today. Eliza Collins is with us from Arizona, and on the line from the Chicago area is John McCormick. John, let me start with you. Before we talk about specific party strategy or any specific names, you've covered every big US election going back to 2000 midterms, as most people know, don't generally favor the party that's in the White House. Is that likely to be the case again here this year? What's the overall narrative of this election 200 days out or so? Well, first a couple stipulations. It's going to sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth and I am. First, it's still about six and a half months until the general election, and that's a long time in American politics. At the same time, it's only about five months until early voting starts in some states. Here's a good statistic to drop at your next cocktail party when the midterms come up. Since World War II, the party holding the White House has gained US House seats in just two elections, 1998 and 2002. So just the historical environment is challenging for Republicans. Add in a war, rising gas prices, a president prone to controversy, Democrats showing enthusiasm for voting, and strength in some local and state contests that have already been held this year. The general consensus among nonpartisan forecasters is that Democrats are likely to win the House and control of a Senate which looked very unlikely a year ago is increasingly considered to be in play. So the Democrats making some inroads there. Eliza, you have just published a story looking at Bernie Sanders. He's not expected to run for president in 2028, but he is still very actively steering the direction of the Democratic party. It seems about as active as he's ever been and more popular really the party has moved to the left in many ways, including the establishment sort of elite Democrats, but where Sanders has had a lot of success is in supporting these progressive primary candidates who win their party primaries and then go on to general elections that are considered not very competitive and win those seats. Sanders is now testing that in some of these key races, especially races like John was saying, that could decide control of the Senate. And so we're seeing a clash between the Sanders progressive wing of the party and really the establishment Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer who have picked out more sort of moderate candidates that they feel like can win people who have won competitive races before, for example, in Maine. Governor Janet Mills has won the state previously. Democrats are trying to take out Senator Susan Collins who have they've tried and failed before, but they feel like this year they have a chance. Meanwhile Sanders and other progressives are backing someone named Graham Platner. He's an oyster farmer, a political novice, and he really looks right now like he might win this primary. And so this is a really good example of the tension between the establishment and progressives, but in a race that has huge consequences. It's a majority maker for Democrats and really a must win if they're going to have a chance at taking back the Senate. John Eliza mentioned that race in Maine and granted as you've mentioned, still early days, but we have seen some results already from this gamble on whether the Democrats should take a progressive turn here already. Yeah, we have one that I'm going to mention is really going to give us a good sense for sort of the mindset of Democratic voters. This Michigan race, the primary is not until August 4th, so it's going to play out all summer. And it features three major candidates competing to get the nod to fill a seat that's being vacated by Democratic Gary Peters' retirement. So that race features representative Haley Stevens. She's sort of the establishment moderate candidate. She flipped a GOP House seat in 2018. She's sort of that kind of candidate that centrist and Democratic Party say they need more of if they want to win general elections. And then there's also state Senator Mallory MacMarrow. She's a bit further to the left. And then the progressive in that race, who is backed by Sanders is Abdul El Saeed. And he's the most left leaning of the three. And there's concern among centrist Democrats that if El Saeed wins the nomination that he could struggle in a general election, just be too far to the left for independent voters in Michigan. But that's going to be a very important race to watch both from Democratic Party perspective and also just from, you know, do Democrats have a chance of winning the Senate? This race will be critical in that calculation. Because we've been sort of hammering this progressive to centrist spectrum point a bit, I want to bring in a different choice Democrats will have to make. And one that people might argue Kamala Harris struggled with herself in 2024 is how much do you campaign on just defeating President Trump or running against his policies versus leading with policies yourself? Democrats are really struggling with this. They have been able to win races in the past on just anti Trump sentiment. It did not work in 2024. Because there were a whole host of reasons that voters were angry at Democrats in power. And now Trump is back in power this time. And as John noted at the beginning, the world looks very different. We are at war. Prices have not gone down. That was a huge thing voters were hoping for in 2024. Immigration and deportations in particular have been a huge problem for President Trump, including with Republicans. So Democrats are grappling with can they run on anti Trump policies? They're still division over what the party actually stands for. And I've talked to a lot of Democrats who say, look, we can't be the anti Trump party forever. We might have a good year in 2026 because of headwinds, but that doesn't mean that then Democrats have it figured out. And so there's a lot of anxiety within the party about what's next. But from what I'm seeing so far, I'm not seeing a lot of very clear plans for what Democrats would do differently. Yeah, I think some of the 2028 prospective presidential candidates are trying to put down some policy markers. One guy that I follow very closely, a Chicago and his Ramamani, and he's been somebody who's been very critical of the Democratic party and says that it's been too fixated on identity politics. Has sort of forgotten how to appeal to independent voters and focus on the economy and pocketbook issues that do tend to drive general elections. And so all of the prospective 2028 candidates, there are definitely to varying degrees showing that they can fight Trump and criticize him and take him on. I mean, that's sort of a prerequisite to be a Democrat these days. But a few of them are putting down a lot of policy ideas and talking about how the Democratic party needs to just talk differently, use fewer acronyms, talk like normal people do as Kentucky governor Andy Bashir says. And so we have to keep in mind these 2026 midterm is obviously important for control of the Senate in the house and governorship and all those other things. But it's also sort of the warm up act for these 2028 candidates. All right, we've got to take a very short break, but when we come back, we'll be looking at Republicans own battles as they stare down the disadvantage of incompancy and the challenge of defining their allegiance to or differences with the occupant of the White House stay with us. John, as we look at how Republicans are planning to contest this campaign, it's now been a few months since our most recent Wall Street Journal nationwide poll, which followed the killing of René Nicole good. But then subsequently we've had the fatal shooting of Alex Freddie, the recalibration of Trump's immigration crackdown, the government shutdown as well, the debacle at airports and last, but of course not least the launching of the Iran war. You have been speaking to party officials lately. What do they make of where the party stands in the eyes of key voters? Yeah, no, both the lies and I have been talking to, you know, Republican elected officials and party officials in recent days. And yeah, there is definite anxiety out there. The longer the war drags on, the longer gas prices stay high, this environment is just going to continue to be very, very challenging. So there's sort of the soul searching going on in the Republican party. They can't look too panicked because that's not a good look either to voters. And so they're trying to sort of stress that hey, we still have some time if things get better in Iran, if, you know, the president is able to accomplish some of the goals that he has for this war, if gasoline prices are going to be high. come down who knows how things look in September or October, November. But there's plenty of worry within the GOP that like the House may already be gone for Republicans. Eliza, some of this based on the results of some of those March primaries, we got there was some in Texas notably, which is itself telling that it maybe sparked a little concern among GOP leaders. Well, I think it's not just the March primary. Democrats have had success in special elections really over the last year. They won the Virginia New Jersey governor's races. Virginia was a flip for them. And we have seen some local elections like you're mentioning in March in Texas, a state house seat flipped. Texas is particularly interesting and concerning for Republicans really because of course the state is a deep bread state. It should be an easy pickup. The Senate is sort of on the map for Democrats here. It might just be a big money pit for them, but Republicans are nervous about losing the Senate in Texas. And then of course, South Texas, which has a large Hispanic population, they are now moving away from President Trump. Our team has done a lot of great reporting down there talking to voters who felt like they were voting for Trump on immigration because he said he would get criminals out. Obviously his deportation effort is much larger than that. And that has really earned backlash from voters across the country, but in Hispanic South Texas as well. There's a house seat, a long shot house seat for Democrats, but that they're very excited about because they have a strong candidate down there. And it's just sort of a microcosm of the problem President Trump has with Hispanic voters on immigration, but on other issues as well, such as the economy. He really created this fragile coalition in 2024. He did better with every demographic group. And it's a difficult coalition to hold on to going into these midterms. We've talked about Democrats wrestling with how much they should be focusing on having their own messages or constructing a sort of anti-Trump resistance campaign. Are Republicans in a similar boat over how they frame their relationship with the President? Well, not in primaries. There are a few examples out there where there are some select candidates who have been critical of the President have broken with him, but by and large as these candidates look at their primaries, they have to embrace the President. But in some of these places where candidates are competing in battleground states, placed like Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, some of these candidates are going to have to be a little bit more nuanced after they win their primaries and maybe distance themselves a little bit from the President. And as we talk about sort of the Republican angst and stress here, they do have one thing going for them and that's money. The power of income and see really does help fundraising. How much the President will spend on people other than himself sort of remains to be seen. But presumably he's going to spend some of that money on candidates that he backs in the midterms. Some individual Democratic candidates have had great success raising money individually. But the party committees have struggled because of the party that's in power in Washington tends to have a much easier path to fundraising. Eliza, I'm curious just because John mentioned both you and him have been talking to Republican officials lately. Do you see a slightly different messaging from some candidates as opposed to what we maybe get from White House messaging social media the like? This has always been a problem for Republicans. President Trump demands complete loyalty from his party and he has really built that up over the last decade. There are very few Republicans left in office that are vocal in their opposition to him, particularly in the House. It's a very Trump-friendly caucus. I think we will see, especially as we get to a general election, candidates trying to find that nuance or at least hear out voters. We have seen a handful push back on certain things as it related to immigration, especially under the former DHS Secretary Kristi Nome and what happened in Minnesota with the deportations and the protests. But Republicans are in a very complicated position because President Trump is extremely popular with the base and his polling is dropping with independence, who these candidates also need to win general elections. I have been speaking to all street journal reporters John McCormick and Eliza Collins. John Eliza, thank you both so much. Thank you. Thank you. And if we've got you excited for primary season now, because how could you not be? You're in luck because we've got Sunday episodes coming to you over the next month on the pivotal midterm campaigns that are playing out in Ohio and Pennsylvania. You'll find those right here in this feed. And that's it for what's new Sunday for April 19th. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach, supervising producers Sandra Killhoff and Melanie Roy. I'm Luke Vargas and we will be back tomorrow morning, the brand new show. Until then, thanks for listening.