Amna Nawaz:
A big week ahead in Republican politics, as President Trump’s fight to reshape the Republican Party comes to Texas tomorrow to try to take out another incumbent senator. And Democrats weigh how to move past 2024 losses with the midterms fast approaching.
For more on all of this, I’m joined by our Politics Monday duo. That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.
It’s great to see you both.
Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:
Hello.
Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:
Good to be here.
Amna Nawaz:
Quick recap, as I know you have all been following this as well.
President Trump has now, over the past few weeks, helped to oust Indiana state senators who opposed him, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict him in his impeachment trial, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who opposed some of his policies.
President Trump is now heading to Texas tomorrow to back the attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is trying to unseat the incumbent Senator, John Cornyn.
Tam, what is the president’s message here and is it going to work in Texas?
Tamara Keith:
It certainly could work in Texas.
The president is never more powerful than he is in Republican primaries in red states, and that is what he has proven in all of these cases, is that, among Republican primary voters, he has a lot of sway. However, the universe is much bigger than Republican primary voters, and some of the actions that he has taken as president recently have caused backlash from within his own party.
Because many other members of Congress, in fact, are running in purple states, purple districts, and don’t want to have to run on President Trump’s retribution campaigns.
Amna Nawaz:
Amy, Democrats like this. They want to run against Ken Paxton in Texas.
Amy Walter:
Yes, they do, yes.
Amna Nawaz:
Tell us why.
Amy Walter:
Yes, well, he’s got a lot of political baggage, not the least of which he was indicted and impeached in the state. He has personal baggage, and he’s a terrible fund-raiser.
So, Texas is a state that is very expensive to run in. This is going to cost the party a lot of money. Even if they were to succeed, they’re going to have to pour and divert money that was supposed to go to states where they feel like they have a better chance of winning or where they could hold on to incumbents that are in trouble and move it there.
I think last week was also the perfect example of Donald Trump’s ability to make the campaign in 2026 more about him and less about what actual voters are interested in, and certainly what Republicans who are up in 2026 would like him to talk about, whether it’s going after members of his own party, whether it is the ballroom that he’s still fighting for the funding there, and then this anti-weaponization fund.
Literally, if you asked what could the president do to make life harder for his own party, I would point to last week and say, that.
Amna Nawaz:
Well, Tam, you have been out talking to swing voters for a new project. What do they think about all of this?
Tamara Keith:
Yes, the project is called Swing Shift, and I’m talking to about a dozen swing voters who have agreed to keep talking to me over the next three years.
They are not bringing up the president’s retribution campaign. They don’t really care about what’s happening in Republican primaries. They’re talking about gas prices. They’re talking about grocery prices. They’re talking about the cost of living. They’re talking about wanting to have a better future for their kids.
They have real concerns about the state of the country. I asked them for a word or phrase to describe the current state of the country. All of these voters have voted for President Trump some time over the last 10 years. But they describe it as chaotic, a hot mess, divided. Three people said divided. Two people said chaotic.
This is — there’s a great well of dissatisfaction about the current state of the country.
Amy Walter:
Yes.
And I think this is the other thing to really keep in mind when we talk about the Republican base. There’s the MAGA base, of which Donald Trump is the king. There’s no doubt about that. And the MAGA base turns out in primaries.
But there are a whole bunch of people who either identify as Republicans or voted for Republicans who don’t identify as MAGA. They don’t — they’re not necessarily anti-Trump. They just don’t center their identity around him. And it’s those voters that we’re seeing in polls who are the least enthusiastic for voting.
And so what Donald Trump has done, essentially, both with this retribution campaign, but also with not focusing on the economy and the things people are saying they care the most about, is he’s winnowing his base down to its absolute smallest core.
And the rest of those voters are now outside of that. Now, are they going to show up in November? Maybe. Are these Republicans going to vote for a Democrat? Unlikely, but he’s not making it easy.
Amna Nawaz:
Amy, let me stick with you on this, because we saw the Democrats finally release this autopsy report from the 2024 election loss last week in all its sort of unfinished, heavily notated form.
Amy Walter:
Yes.
Amna Nawaz:
This — as we have talked about before, this is supposed to be a good time for Democrats. They’re supposed to be carrying momentum leading into this midterm election. How are you looking at them right now?
Amy Walter:
And, well, let’s start with this. First, an autopsy or a look back on what went wrong is not going to be the reason Democrats win or don’t win in ’26 or ’28.
But I think what it highlighted is the growing frustration among party regulars, activists about the head of the DNC. DNC has been having so much trouble raising money. They have been outraised by multiples of I can’t even tell you how many, by the RNC.
And here’s the thing. The throw weight, the financial throw weight of the party is not what it used to be back when I started doing this. They were everything. Now you have super PACs and billionaires that can fill that void.
What the DNC and the RNC can do though, that makes them very important, they set up the rules for how you get nominated to be your party’s person to take the presidency. They set the dates for when we have primaries and which states go first.
And they have the rules about the delegates. If voters within the Democratic sphere and the activists in that Democratic sphere don’t trust the DNC to do this well, that is very dangerous going into 2028 if people within the Democratic Party are fighting amongst themselves about how the process works.
Amna Nawaz:
Tam, what do you make of it?
Tamara Keith:
Yes, I mean, a document that lacks a conclusion about what went wrong is a great metaphor for how things are going right now.
Amy Walter:
Yes.
Tamara Keith:
Democratic voters are dissatisfied with the Democratic Party.
So this autopsy is not necessarily a surprise. It’s sort of more of the same of the way Democratic voters perceive the party. What I will say, though, is, there were well-crafted autopsies that came after Democrats lost in 2004, after Republicans lost in 2012. And then the parties nominated people that were definitely not contemplated by those autopsies.
The 2012 autopsy saying that Republicans needed to do immigration reform and really try to win over Latino voters, and then they nominated President Trump. And, obviously in 2008, President Obama kind of came out of nowhere as well.
So at this point in the cycle, neither of them had burst onto the scene in a way where people would have thought, oh, well that is the solution to this party’s problem.
Amna Nawaz:
Tam, before we go, less than a minute left, but I have to ask you about this, because last week we saw some rare defiance among Republican lawmakers here in Washington, leaving before they acted on the president’s priorities.
We know a lot of that concern was over that new anti-weaponization fund, concerns about who’s going to get that money. Do you see that as new pushback? Is that something we’re going to continue to see from them when they return to town?
Tamara Keith:
I think that Republicans in the Senate are going to have to figure out how to solve that problem, because Democrats are going to put up for a vote amendments that get them to weigh in on that.
And I don’t know of many Republicans who want to run on a $1.8 billion slash fund, money from which could go to people who stormed the Capitol on January 6.
Amna Nawaz:
Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, great to see you both. Thank you so much.
Amy Walter:
You’re welcome.
Tamara Keith:
You’re welcome.
