That’s the stuff that fills the diet of the true political junkies (like all of us), but in the end, the stuff that decides elections isn’t the small-bore strategy and tactics; it’s the larger forces that matter.

Kamala Harris didn’t lose because she skipped Joe Rogan’s podcast, or because of the infamous trans ad, or because she campaigned too much (or not enough) with Liz Cheney. None of those things helped, but Harris lost because she was the Vice President to a deeply unpopular President during a time of surging inflation and concern about the border. This is why I believed Trump was the favorite even in the middle of Brat Summer and Harris’s surge in the polls.

Similarly, the midterms won’t be decided by the messages and the ads, although that stuff will matter on the margins in very close races. If you want to know what’s going to happen in November, you need to understand the four forces shaping the political battlefield in 2026.

1. A Deeply Unpopular Incumbent

Midterms are always referendums on the party in power, and presidential approval correlates to electoral success. This is why most Presidents lose seats in the midterms, especially the second midterm. The only two modern examples of Presidents bucking that trend were Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002. In both cases, the incumbent Presidents had abnormally high approval ratings — Clinton because the Republicans made the politically insane choice to impeach him, and Bush because of 9/11 (this was before he invaded the wrong country).

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Beth Nedrow

What lessons can we learn from Fetterman? Were there signs? What do the Pennsylvania voters think?

John Fetterman seems to relish angering the party faithful. He votes with the Republicans on issues like the Iran War, and he’s a frequent guest on Fox News, where he echoes the network’s worst caricatures of the Democratic Party.

In some ways, it is a head-spinning turn. Fetterman had been a rising star in the party for a long time. In 2022, his campaign was praised (especially by me) as a model for modern communication.

As many wonder what happened to Fetterman, others have used him as an example to raise concerns about Democrats who could also end up betraying the party, in particular Graham Platner. Democrats who have opposed Platner have repeatedly raised the concern that he could be another Fetterman.

So what lessons can we learn from Fetterman, and should we be worried that Platner could pull a similar switcheroo?

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The electoral results are interesting and important, but each race is different and shaped by its own circumstances. Did Platner prevail over Mills because of ideology, or was it about age, or something else? In Iowa, the more moderate candidate seems to be leading in the polls — but is he leading because of his moderation, or because he’s been the beneficiary of nearly $10 million in Super PAC ads?

I promise you we’ll all debate these questions based on our priors until the end of time. But the recent New York Times poll has some really interesting data that sheds light on them.

And guess what? It’s more complicated than the pundits and partisans are willing to admit.

What you’re about to read is an excerpt from a detailed strategy memo I wrote for Message Box Pro, my subscription product for people who work in politics or communications at any level.

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1. Democrats Are Unhappy With Their Party

There has been so much discussion about how bad the Democratic Party’s approval rating has been since Trump won in 2024. We’ve definitely suffered among independents, but the thing driving down Democratic approval is that Democrats themselves hate the party.

In this poll, 53% of Democrats and Dem-leaning independents are unsatisfied with the Democratic Party. The dissatisfaction is greatest among the most important parts of our coalition:

• Black voters: 59% dissatisfied

• Voters under 30: 68% dissatisfied

• Dem-leaning independents: 65% dissatisfied

Even a majority of college-educated white voters are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party. Relatedly, Chuck Schumer is more disliked than liked.

2. A Complicated Ideological Picture

Many political observers have interpreted Democrats’ dissatisfaction with their own party through an ideological frame — that the party is too far left, or not left enough. This poll contradicts that interpretation.

Only 20% say the party is too far to the left, and only 17% say it’s too far to the right. Fifty-five percent say the party is neither too left nor too right.

Based on focus groups, anecdotal data, and common sense, it seems like people are pissed at the party for losing the 2024 election and not doing a better job of standing up to Trump. This is why Democrats are simultaneously telling pollsters that their party sucks and then voting for that same party at every opportunity like their lives depend on it (and they may).

That said, 47% of Democrats and Dem-leaning independents would like to see the party move to the center, while 28% would like to see the party move left and 19% don’t want it to move either way.

And in case you think this result is driven by the inclusion of Dem-leaning independents in the sample, every cohort other than voters under 30 thinks the party should move to the center — and even that group is only a 7-point margin in the other direction. Black and Latino voters want the party to move to the center by very large margins.

The poll also asked voters whether they personally wanted to see the party move left or to the center on a battery of issues. By large margins, Democrats and Dem-leaning independents want the party to moderate on crime and immigration.

3. Electability and Ideology

The poll also asked Democrats and Dem-leaning independents about what the party needs to do to win. I usually hate these sorts of poll questions — I’m much more interested in what voters actually believe than in questions that turn them into pundits and make-believe strategists. But given how heavily Democrats are factoring electability into their choices, this data is pretty instructive.

First, the pollsters asked whether moving to the center, the left, or neither would give Democrats the best chance to win the next presidential election. Consistent with the other results, 52% said moving to the center would help a Democrat win, while only 25% said moving to the left would.

A similar dynamic exists across all issues except health care.

The number of Democrats who think the party should move to the center is slightly smaller than the number who think doing so would help it win. In other words, there’s a swath of voters willing to swallow their own policy preferences for what they believe will help the party win.

4. Voters Want Populism

Make no mistake — Democrats wanting the party to move to the center is not the same thing as Democrats wanting mealy-mouthed, sand-down-the-edges corporate centrism. Far from it.

Democrats, like the rest of the electorate, think the system is corrupt, broken, and unfair, and they’re looking for people with the willingness and the strength to overturn it. Nearly nine in ten respondents think the country’s economic system is unfair to most Americans. More than eight in ten think the political and economic system either needs to be torn down completely or undergo major changes.

The party also prefers a candidate “who promises to lower prices by going after corporate monopolies and price gouging” over one who promises to lower prices by making it easier to build housing and expand energy production — by 37 points. You can also see the desire for populism in the fact that 50% of the sample wants Democrats to move to the left on health care.

I know these results are frustrating and confusing. But voters can be frustrating and confusing. They look at the world differently than political professionals do, and they tend to reject ideological silos.

Perhaps the most important finding from this poll is that there’s an assumption baked into much of Democratic strategy: that there’s an inherent tension between appealing to the base and appealing to swing voters — that appeals to one group necessarily alienate the other. This poll, very helpfully, shows that’s not really the case.

Well, all of that is gone now.

A recent Emerson poll showed Vance and Marco Rubio in a dead heat. Vance had 36% support and Rubio 35%. Back in August of 2025, Vance led Rubio 52% to 9%.

Vance’s problems got even worse with a recent blockbuster New York Times story with this brutal lede:

In recent conversations with aides and allies, President Trump often interjects with a question about his vice president: Does JD Vance have what it takes to go all the way?

He usually answers his own question: He’s not so sure.

This is a stunning fall for Vance. Even if the Emerson poll is an outlier (and it’s very possible that it is; their Democratic numbers in that poll were also unusual), other polling makes it clear that Vance’s numbers are coming down rapidly and Rubio’s are rising.

As you can imagine, I find this very enjoyable. I have always found Vance to be a dangerously shameless politician who will do or say anything for the sake of fulfilling his bottomless well of ambition. I can’t help the schadenfreude (and you probably can’t either). Vance is repellent.

Vance’s star is falling more rapidly than any presumed presidential frontrunner in recent memory, and what’s particularly notable is that there was no precipitating event. The more people saw Vance, the less they liked him, and then, as criticism and concerns about his abilities permeated the public conversation, his support seemed to collapse.

I know we have midterms coming up in about five months, and it may seem irresponsible to dabble in speculation about 2028, but what’s happening to Vance offers object lessons about the state of politics.

With that in mind, here are three reasons Vance is losing the GOP nomination before it even starts.

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Not an easy or fun topic, but let’s get right into it. First, some housekeeping.

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Skylar Cohen

I’d like you to elaborate on the question Reid asked at the end of poller coaster and you cut him off. Are Osoff and Talarico “return to normalcy, nice young men” candidate or are they “uniquely qualified”? What are your definitions and distinctions here?

Answer

The context here for non-Pollercoaster listeners is whether the excitement around James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, and Pete Buttigieg, who all code as “nice young men,” represents a return to normalcy in the post-Trump era.

I reacted aggressively to the notion of Democrats embracing a “return to normalcy.” I believe I said I would light myself on fire if that was the approach.

Aggressive? Maybe. But let me explain.

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The Bidens are back in the news. Jill Biden has a book out this week where she tries to set the record straight about the debate, President Biden’s health, and his decision to run again.

In an interview with CBS News, Jill Biden said the following about her reaction to the debate.

I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.

Biden went on to say that she had never seen him like that before or since, and in the book, she writes about how it was possible that the president may have accidentally taken codeine cough syrup or Ambien.

These comments infuriated many, including a lot of former Biden staffers, because they were such a stark contrast to what she said publicly after the debate and the way the Biden high command reacted to anyone who called out Joe Biden’s abysmal and alarming performance in that debate. As someone who was pretty vocal about Biden dropping out after the debate and caught a lot of slings and arrows from the Biden White House, it was stunning to see Jill Biden essentially admit that she and everyone else had been gaslighting us for years.

The whole thing has reignited a big intra-party fight of 2024 between people who blame Biden for Trump’s return and those who blame the people who wanted Biden to drop out.

Like many of you, I am pretty tired of that debate (perhaps that’s because my social media mentions are still filled with people very, very mad at me for thinking Biden should drop out of the race). That conversation is relevant for the history books, and at some point, I would love to see some of the people involved take even a modicum of responsibility for their actions.

But Jill Biden’s reemergence and her admission that she was lying to all of us in 2024 is emblematic of a much larger problem that still plagues the Democratic Party with implications for 2026, 2028 and beyond.

The broken trust that comes from the President and most of the party telling the public not to believe their eyes when it comes to Biden’s age, and that they were silly to think that an 82-year-old shouldn’t run for reelection.

The party’s approach to Biden’s age was part of a broader pattern. They told voters that inflation wasn’t real, that a genocide wasn’t happening in Gaza, and that they had a plan to win when they never did.

Working to rebuild that trust needs to be at the center of the Democratic Party’s strategy.

A Broken Trust

Much digital ink has been spilled in this newsletter and elsewhere about the Democratic Party’s brand problem. For much of the 18 months since the 2024 election, Democratic Party approval has been at or near an all-time low.

To use a technical term, the party’s approval has been in the toilet.

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Despite all of that baggage, Platner continued to surge in the polls — so much so that Janet Mills, the two-term incumbent governor with the full backing of the Democratic establishment, was forced to drop out of the race.

And now, on the cusp of officially securing the nomination, Platner and his campaign have once again been rocked by another set of disturbing revelations.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that:

Days after Graham Platner announced his Maine Senate bid, his wife informed the campaign about a potential political problem she had previously discovered on the oyster farmer’s phone: sexually explicit texts with several women, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new revelations sparked fears that Democrats may be about to blow a must-win Senate seat, and reignited the seemingly never-ending intra-Democratic Party fight around Graham Platner.

While this story is still unfolding, many are asking: can Graham Platner still win? Did Democrats make a mistake in nominating an untested outsider with scant political experience?

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Slow Loras

Dan, what impact do you think expanding the House to (population-of-US)/(population-of-Wyoming) representatives? This would have a big impact on the Electoral College, would probably make partisan gerrymandering a greater challenge (you’d end up splitting safe seats too finely to keep them safe?), and would just generally be more equitable (next stop: DC statehood).

Answer

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, Democrats and others concerned about democracy have been looking for big structural solutions to a growing structural problem.

One idea getting a lot of discussion in certain corners is expanding the House. Unlike most other big democracy reforms — getting rid of the Electoral College, overturning Citizens United — changing the number of House members can be done legislatively. You do not need a constitutional amendment.

The 435 cap is set by the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. Congress could change it tomorrow with a simple majority in both chambers and a presidential signature. The only practical limitations set by the Constitution are that every state gets at least one representative and there can be no more than one representative per 30,000 people.

So it can be done. But is it a good idea, and should Democrats pursue it if and when we have a governing trifecta again?

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This is an absolute gift to Democrats.

The Paxton-Cornyn primary was one of the most brutal and expensive in modern political history, with accusations of adultery, bribery, support for Sharia law, and so much else. The end result is a bruised and battered, very vulnerable Ken Paxton running against an incredibly talented and well-funded Democrat in James Talarico.

Texas has been the great white whale for Democrats. We have been eyeing the state's shifting demographics, waiting for the day when we had a real shot at turning it blue. Every few cycles, we get our hopes up, fall in love with an exciting Texas Democrat, invest our money and hopes into Texas, only to have the rug pulled out in the end.

So, I understand why so many people are skeptical of Talarico’s chances. This is a very hard state. But make no mistake: this is Democrats’ best shot to win Texas in a generation.

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Comments are back …

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Karen Quesenberry

So you and other pundits keep telling us how unpopular Trump is, how it’s going to be a backlash, but then in primaries the people he backs keep winning! It feels like his unpopularity isn’t actually showing up in what’s happening on the ground. What do you make of this?

Answer

Look, I get it. I, too, tuned in on the night of the Indiana and Kentucky primaries, hoping for Trump to get his comeuppance, and left disappointed to see him win yet again. Like all of you, I was hoping for a sign that Republicans were ready to truly turn on Trump.

Alas, that was not the case. But Trump-backed candidates winning primaries is not a positive sign for Republicans heading into the fall. In fact, it may portend the opposite.

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All along, Martin’s argument was that the autopsy had happened, it had been helpful in informing his strategy, but that releasing it would be a distraction and divide the party before the midterms.

Well, that was all bullshit.

CNN got their hands on several parts of the autopsy, which forced the DNC to release the rest of it to CNN and the world. Here’s what was found:

The version CNN is publishing is missing key sections, including a conclusion, because those sections weren’t submitted, according to the DNC. There are factual errors, from misspellings of the names of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and former Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin to incorrectly listing the margin of victory in the 2024 race for North Carolina governor.

The DNC included in the document its own rebuttals of arguments Rivera makes and a disclaimer that the report “reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The DNC was not provided with the underlying sourcing, interviews, or supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein and therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented.”

In other words, the autopsy wasn’t released because the political crony that Martin hired to do the job didn’t really do the job. He failed to speak to many of the top decision makers and never really wrestled with the tough questions like Biden’s decision to run for reelection, his age, or the impact of his Gaza policy.

The final product was a joke. Not good enough to be released, so Ken Martin just lied about it until he got caught.

This is the final straw.

Ken Martin is not up to the job, and his continued presence is going to make the DNC woefully ineffective heading into the midterms and then the critical 2028 primaries, where the DNC plays a major role.

He should step down for the good of the party, and if he won’t, the DNC should fire him.

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As many of you may have heard, a few weeks ago I launched Message Box Pro, a subscription product for people who work in communications or politics at any level — from candidates to staffers to local organizers and activists. This is a project I’ve been working on for years, and I’m genuinely excited about how it’s coming together.

Today, I wanted to give you a real sense of what Message Box Pro members get in their inbox every week.

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Thanks,

Dan

After Democrats romped in the 2025 elections, Republicans declared that their strategy for the midterms would be focused on affordability. White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, Trump’s de facto political hand, told Politico:

The president is very keyed into what’s going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you’ll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living.

Trump was supposed to go on an “Affordability Tour” where he barnstormed the nation talking about the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill and other (pretty fake) administration measures to lower costs. Of course, his pivot to an affordability message was an abject failure even before he launched his disastrous war in the Middle East. He can’t bring himself to admit prices are up, because doing so would mean admitting he failed to keep his core campaign promise. He gets visibly angry at the mere idea of affordability. He’s called it bullshit and immediately tells everyone how high the stock market is and how things have never been better.

This graph from Nate Silver shows just how poorly that strategy has worked.

The Republicans have lost on affordability. With gas prices rising and unlikely to fall significantly before the midterms, it’s hard to see what they could say or do that would change the dynamic.

So they are pivoting once again to a new midterm strategy. Here’s how Politico Playbook described it last week:

In other words, the GOP plans to use its massive financial advantage in this election to nuke the Democrats and make them an unacceptable alternative.

Why the GOP Landed on This Strategy

I am in no way surprised that the GOP landed here. It’s really the only option available to them. Given that Trump is now underwater on immigration, they can’t even pivot to his favorite issue. This is their best card in a bad hand.

They kind of have no viable options.

I should note that in this context — for most voters, at least — “woke” doesn’t mean using your pronouns, DEI, CRT, or any of the other stuff that drives Fox News programming. It’s just another way of saying “liberal.” The real message is that Democrats are dangerously out of the cultural mainstream and too weak to protect you.

The GOP has some things going for it. First, people do not love the Democratic Party. It remains quite unpopular — and in most polling, more unpopular than the Republican Party despite Trump’s abysmal approval rating.

The “Woke, Weak, and Way Too Liberal” message also fits with voters’ preconceived notions about the Democratic Party. A post-2024 election survey conducted by the centrist think tank Third Way asked voters to describe Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in one or two words.

You can see the results.

The fact that voters thought Trump was stronger and viewed Kamala Harris as too liberal is one reason he won and she lost. But Dan, don’t you always say Trump won because of inflation?

Good catch. The perception of Democrats as too liberal and too weak is a key reason voters didn’t trust Harris to tackle the problem of inflation.

Without any better options, the GOP is re-running its 2024 playbook.

Will “Woke, Weak, and Too Liberal” Work?

I know this causes a lot of us to want to repeatedly bang our heads against the nearest hard surface. To a lot of swing voters in 2024, Trump didn’t seem “extreme.” He said he would protect Social Security and Medicare. He demurred on abortion. He didn’t code as a right-wing cultural warrior.

Meanwhile, because of a post-2020 backlash to progressivism, decisions made by the Biden administration on immigration, and a gazillion dollars in ads highlighting some of Kamala Harris’s most extreme positions, Democrats were the ones seen as extreme and culturally out of step.

A lot has changed since 2024. Trump is not the president most voters thought he would be. He and the Republicans are now seen as more extreme. In that CBS poll, 58% of voters describe Republicans as extreme. A Cook Political Report poll of the 32 battleground districts found that voters — and especially independents — are more concerned about Republican extremism than Democratic extremism.

On the other hand, the perception of Democrats as weak has not improved. In the same February CBS poll, nearly two-thirds of voters describe the party as weak. These numbers are driven, in part, by Democrats who see their own party leadership as too weak to stand up to Trump — but who are still planning to vote for Democrats this fall.

Two pieces of good news. First, strength is a much bigger issue in presidential or gubernatorial races than in legislative ones. Voters want their chief executive to be strong enough to protect them from threats at home and abroad. Second, Trump is no longer seen as a particularly strong figure. A recent TIPP poll found that a plurality of voters see Trump’s leadership as weak.

In other words, the GOP is trying to re-run its 2024 strategy. But Trump and the Republicans are in a very different place than they were in 2024.

What to Do

The operatives running the GOP and the AI/Crypto-funded Super PACs know their only option is to nuke the Democratic brand. And even if that doesn’t fully work, it could help rally a deflated GOP base by raising the stakes of the election. The strategy may be the only one available to them, but the money behind it makes it dangerous regardless.

This assault affects everyone in a tough race with a D next to their name — whether or not your face is in the ad.

So the question is: what do you do about it?

First, this goes back to the Message Box exercise from the first memo. A good political or communications campaign must know what the other side plans to say about them. It’s particularly helpful when the other side announces their playbook in Politico, so we can prepare.

Second, if the other side is looking for ways to damage the Democratic brand, be more than a generic Democrat. (I plan to write more about this in the coming weeks.) Find ways to break from your party — by tacking to the middle, to the left, or by criticizing the party establishment, nationally or locally, where appropriate.

Third, win the battle on extremism. Politics is often a fight to claim the mantle of mainstream American values. The Republican Party has given us ample opportunity to paint them as the extreme ones. Don’t hesitate to do so.

Finally, the conventional wisdom in Democratic circles after 2024 was that the answer to “Democrats are too liberal” is to moderate ideologically. There’s something to that. Running as a generic progressive in a Trump +5 district is not a winning strategy.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle in some recent polling worth flagging. A February analysis by Strength In Numbers found that voter perceptions of Democratic strength were a stronger predictor of vote choice than perceptions of Democratic extremism.

I’d be careful about leaning too hard on a single data point. I don’t think this lets Democrats off the hook on the substantive policy questions about where the party should be positioned. But it does suggest something I’ve been arguing for years: how you fight matters as much as what you fight for. Voters reward candidates who project strength, fight for their constituents, and refuse to be pushed around — regardless of where they sit on the ideological spectrum.

For a downballot candidate facing the “woke, weak, and way too liberal” assault, the takeaway isn’t necessarily to soften your positions. It’s to project strength about whatever your positions actually are. The voters who will decide your race want to know you’ll fight for them.

Run your campaigns. Don’t swerve out of your lane, but look for opportunities to blunt the attack to come.

If you liked what you read and you want more strategy memos, messaging guidance, polling insights, and access to an incredible community of candidates, staffers, and organizers, sign up for Message Box Pro today and get your first month free.

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The Trump Administration has spent a ton of wasted effort over the last year trying to prosecute Trump’s enemies. They have tried and failed to indict Adam Schiff, Jerome Powell, Letitia James, and Fed Governor Lisa Cook. Trump did succeed in bullying his Justice Department into indicting former FBI Director Jim Comey for threatening him with a seashell photo. But the Comey case seems highly likely to be tossed by any sane judge.

Where Trump had more success was in exacting political revenge on those who dared cross him. A few weeks ago, Trump’s political operation invested millions of dollars in defeating many of the Indiana State Senators who resisted his push to redraw their Congressional maps. Then, on Saturday, he helped defeat Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy for voting to impeach Trump in 2021. Trump endorsed Congresswoman Julia Letlow in the race, and she came in first in the primary. Cassidy dropped all the way to third, meaning he doesn’t make the runoff — a brutal and embarrassing result for an incumbent Senator who had spent the last few years debasing himself to get back into Trump’s good graces.

Last night, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie lost his primary to a Trump-backed opponent. Trump has had Massie in his sights for years, but the thing that truly infuriated him was Massie’s work to force the release of the Epstein Files.

All of these wins have been a display of brute political force, and it has impressed some in the media. As an example, here is the reaction to the Massie defeat from Rachel Bade, a former Politico Playbook author turned Substacker.

Yes, the incumbent President can influence primaries in his own party. And yes, Trump is getting rid of the people he believes wronged him. But spending nearly $20 million to defeat a Republican in a district Trump won by 35 points is not the flex people think it is.

At best, this is a Pyrrhic victory — and Trump’s revenge tour is a big problem for the GOP moving forward.

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Short Term Wins, Medium Term Problems

The message to Republicans from Kentucky, Louisiana, and elsewhere is crystal clear — buck Trump and lose your job.

The problem for Republicans on the ballot this fall is that the best way to keep their job might be to buck Trump.

Trump’s approval rating is under 40%. He is embroiled in a deeply unpopular war. Voters hate the economy and blame Trump’s economic policies. The voters who made up his winning coalition have abandoned him.

Trump is a massive drag on his party, and to win, many Republicans will need to show some independence from the deeply unpopular President.

Trump won’t let them do that. Cross him, and he could turn on you. It’s too late for Trump to run a primary challenge against someone now, but he could attack them on social media, depressing turnout among the MAGA base, or cut off funding from his array of well-heeled Super PACs.

We are seeing this dynamic play out in the Senate, where Trump is trying to force Republicans to take the politically suicidal step of spending upwards of a billion taxpayer dollars on his asinine ballroom vanity project.

A smarter, savvier, less megalomaniacal leader would give his party the room to do what they need to win.

Trump is incapable of doing so, and the GOP will pay a price for it.

Texas Tomfoolery

Everyone with half a brain in American politics believes Republicans would have a much better chance of winning the Texas Senate race with John Cornyn at the top of the ticket.

Cornyn is far from the best candidate, but he is better than scandal-plagued Ken Paxton. After Cornyn beat expectations in the primary, Trump said he would endorse a candidate, and everyone assumed that candidate would be Cornyn.

But then Trump didn’t do it for weeks. He let Cornyn twist in the wind and let Paxton regain momentum.

And then, yesterday morning, Trump said he would make an endorsement later in the day. Once again, everyone assumed it would be Cornyn. It was the logical move. A Trump endorsement would have likely put Cornyn over the top and positioned the GOP to hold onto a must-win Senate seat.

But no. Trump stunned everyone, including Republican Senators, by endorsing Paxton. In the endorsement post, Trump explained that he passed on Cornyn because

John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination, and then, the Presidency, itself, both of which were Landslide Victories and, more importantly, gave us the Country that we have today.

Trump was more interested in seeking revenge than in helping Republicans hold onto the Senate.

Revenge is a Two-Way Street

The problem with defeating incumbents in primaries is that they don’t immediately leave Congress. They stay in their seats until January of next year. In addition to Cassidy, Trump also forced North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis into retirement. Now the two of them are hanging around the Senate, unburdened by any political need to appease Trump. Earlier this year, Tillis held up the nomination of Trump’s Fed Chair pick to force the DOJ to drop its bogus investigation into Jerome Powell.

And yesterday, Cassidy flipped his vote to allow the War Powers Resolution on the Iran War to pass the Senate — a stunning move that will cause some real headaches for Trump.

So sure, Trump has had some short-term wins in these primary contests. But these are wins that he, and the Republicans, will likely come to regret.

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Many Democrats have reverted to our natural state — panic. You can feel the political narrative changing in real time.

Republicans are once again ascendant, with a real shot at surviving what should otherwise be a brutal midterm.

Well, the New York Times put out a devastating new poll this morning that shows the GOP’s newfound bravado is very much misplaced. The NYT poll is the highest-rated and most respected poll in the business. It’s not flawless, but it has a great track record, and it confirms what is clear when you ignore the noise and look at the fundamentals.

The Republican collapse has begun.

Donald Trump is VERY Unpopular

The New York Times poll makes it clear: Donald Trump’s political position is historically putrid, and he is an anvil around the neck of his party as we head into the midterms.

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It’s hard to think of a more urgent topic, so let’s get right into it.

But first, a little housekeeping:

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Thomas Reynolds

I’m very concerned about the midterms after the Virginia ruling. Do you have any insight into how the Democratic Party plans to respond or shift strategy?

Boris

Do you think that Democrats in states where they have a trifecta will eventually get on board with the most aggressive gerrymandering possible for after 2026? Some redistricting analysts suggested that the math for Democrats controlling the House in 2028 once the Republican gerrymandered maps get fully implemented gets very difficult if we don’t target as many seats as possible with our own gerrymandering but I’m worried that some Democrats still aren’t there.

Answer

You have every right to be concerned. What has happened since the Supreme Court decision gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and greenlighting racial gerrymandering across the Deep South represents the greatest threat to democracy, minority representation in Congress, and Democratic chances this fall. Thirty percent of the Congressional Black Caucus could see their seats eliminated. The House will be more Republican and even more White. Decades of progress have been wiped away based on the whims of six justices.

Prior to the double whammy of the Supreme Court ruling and the Virginia court ruling striking down the new, voter-approved map, Democrats were on a glide path to winning the House by a relatively substantial margin. Now, that once-certain outcome is in some measure of doubt. By letting the GOP redraw the maps so close to the election, the Supreme Court is attempting to give Trump a measure of political immunity to go along with the legal immunity they granted him in 2024.

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But for all of Trump’s stupidity, he does have one core political insight that has fueled his rise to power: strength is the currency of American politics.

Voters want strong leaders who can protect them from threats, domestic and foreign, and stand up to what they increasingly see as a corrupt and broken political system.

As Bill Clinton famously said:

When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have somebody who’s strong and wrong than somebody who’s weak and right.

Trump embodies strong and wrong to so many voters. It’s an image he cultivates. I think Trump truly wants to be a dictator. He is genuinely envious of dictators like Xi, Putin, and Erdogan. But Trump also acts like a strongman because it communicates strength to voters. And because it baits Democrats into attacking him as a dangerous strongman, which also communicates strength to voters.

Trump loves to call his opponents weak. “Low energy Jeb.” “Sleepy Joe.” “Lil Marco.” He even called the Pope “weak on crime.”

Trump rode his strongman image to two terms in the White House using the classic authoritarian playbook. He is often described as a master brand marketer, and Trump’s political brand was strength.

He began his second term astride the global stage. More popular than he had ever been. Reams of political capital.

Well, that’s all gone now.

Trump is no longer seen as strong and decisive, and that has big implications for American politics.

This is Trump’s emperor-has-no-clothes moment. And it’s the end of the Trump era as we have known it.

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A few weeks ago, I launched Message Box Pro — a members-only consulting service for people working in politics and communications at any level.

Subscribers get weekly strategy memos, data-driven messaging insights, polling analysis, guidance on communicating in this chaotic media environment, and regular office hours where I answer your questions.

I wanted to reach out because we’re down to the last handful of founding memberships — and I don’t want you to miss out if this is something you’ve been thinking about.

A quick reminder of what that means: founding members lock in $49.99/month forever. Once we reach 250 members, the price increases to $65/month for everyone who joins after that.

Sign Up for Message Box Pro

If you’ve been on the fence, here’s where things stand a few weeks in:

The content is flowing. The first strategy memos have covered:

• How to develop a campaign message

• A comprehensive midterm narrative built around costs, chaos, and corruption

• Where swing voters are actually getting their information

• Why Democrats now have their biggest opening on the economy in 16 years

• How to beat the GOP’s strategy for the midterms

The community is real. Local candidates, organizers, campaign staffers, and political operatives are connecting on Discord every day — asking questions, sharing what’s working in their races, and learning from each other. I’m on Discord every day, interacting with members and answering their questions.

I built MBP for exactly the people who are in the fight — candidates, staffers, organizers, and anyone who wants to sharpen how they communicate in this chaotic media environment.

The founding memberships are going quickly, and I want to make sure you have a chance to sign up before they’re gone.

Sign Up for Message Box Pro

If you have any questions, reply to this email and I'll get back to you right away. And if you know anyone who might find Message Box Pro valuable, I'd really appreciate it if you could pass this along.

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Thank you, Dan

A quick note: these mailbags run every Saturday as a special feature for paid subscribers. Subscribe to get full access and drop your questions for future mailbags.

Subscribe now

And don’t forget to leave your questions for next week’s mailbag in the comments.

Leave a comment

Bethany Reynolds

What’s your take on the accuracy and value of prediction markets vs. traditional polling? And should we be wary of prediction markets affecting outcomes, either by driving campaign strategies or influencing voter behavior?

Answer

I get some version of this question all the time (including from Bethany on multiple occasions!). To date, I have resisted putting it in a mailbag because of the topic’s complexity and importance.

But there is no time like the present (and as I have said many times before, the subscribers are always right).

There has been an inherent and understandable skepticism about polls for the last decade, particularly among Democrats. The polling misled us to think that Trump couldn’t win in 2016 and that Biden would romp in 2020. In both cases, the polls underestimated Trump’s support.

So it’s understandable that people are looking for a more accurate alternative. But are prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket the answer? Are they more accurate or even as accurate as polls?

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This morning, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the referendum that passed two weeks ago, which would have allowed the state to redraw the congressional map to give Democrats four new seats. After it passed, there was much crowing by Democrats about how the GOP’s efforts to rig the midterm map had failed, and that Democrats had successfully fought back. We seemed to be on a glide path to winning the House with relative ease.

Well, since that moment, it’s been all bad news.

First, Florida redrew its map in an attempt to add four Republican seats. Then, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, essentially legalizing racial gerrymandering and giving permission to Republicans to eliminate Democratic districts drawn to be majority-minority. And now, the Virginia decision has made a bad situation worse.

After all of this insanity, where do things stand in the battle for the House? Are Democrats still favored, or have Republicans successfully rigged the midterms despite a brutal political environment and a woefully unpopular President?

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