MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's turn now to a veteran political analyst who can pull some of these threads together. Ron Brownstein is an opinion columnist for Bloomberg and a senior political analyst for CNN. Ron, good morning.
RON BROWNSTEIN: Hey. Good morning. Good to be with you.
MARTIN: So as we just heard from Tam, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are spending time in states you would not think they'd be worried about - Alaska, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Montana yesterday. Does that effort line up with what the polls say their party needs?
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. Look, I would say what the president and the vice president are doing is defensive but not delusional, right? I mean, the - it's two sides of the same coin. I mean, the opportunity for Democrats in this election is that President Trump's approval rating has declined not only among groups that moved toward him in 2024, but among core Republican constituencies in a way that was not true in 2018.
And so it is a sign of weakness that the president is having to fortify places like Alaska and Ohio and Iowa and Texas, much less Kansas and Nebraska and Montana. But it is also a reality that there is a pool of Republican voters in these places, people who have voted Republican in the past, who may be disillusioned in his second term, and maybe - he may be capable of prompting the polls. The flip side, of course, is that even in these places that he won, he is almost certainly below 50% in approval today.
MARTIN: So on another note, big super PACs, like the Congressional Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc., are pulling away from congressional reelection campaigns...
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
MARTIN: ...For Representative Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey and Marianette Miller-Meeks in Iowa. How do you see that?
BROWNSTEIN: I see it as an extension of what we just talked about - that Republicans are trying to draw a firewall, but they are trying to build the firewall pretty deep into red territory. I mean, any place that Trump won narrowly, any House district in particular that Trump won narrowly in 2024 is going to be very hard to fortify.
You know, I mean, his - the key dynamic that drives modern midterm elections above anything else are assessments of the sitting president. I mean, views of how the president who is actually in office is performing matter a lot more than views of the party that is out of office. And that was true in 2018, 2010, 2006. And as a result, if Trump is - his approval rating is probably 10 points, maybe 15 points lower than his vote in some places today, and that's just a really deep hole for Republicans to climb out of any place that he won only narrowly.
MARTIN: So does that mean they're moving out of districts that they think are marginal? Is that the idea?
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MARTIN: To sort of focus...
BROWNSTEIN: I think that's right.
MARTIN: ...To move that money into places where they feel like...
BROWNSTEIN: Well...
MARTIN: OK, I can shore up the base or maybe I can boost my turnout.
BROWNSTEIN: They're moving the firewall deeper into red territory...
MARTIN: OK.
BROWNSTEIN: ...Is the bottom line in both the House and the Senate.
MARTIN: So the Brennan Center for Justice, which is a law and policy think tank, says the amount of super PAC money and dark money pouring into Republican campaigns is...
BROWNSTEIN: Right.
MARTIN: ...Breaking records this cycle - dark money meaning they don't have to disclose where it came from. Any sense of how that's influencing what voters are thinking?
BROWNSTEIN: This money is really being spent, above all, to get voters to focus on cultural issues where they still have hesitations with Democrats rather than their overwhelming economic frustrations with the performance of Trump. Voters draw an unusually direct link between his specific policies - particularly the war, the tariffs, the Medicaid cuts, the ACA cuts - and their economic distress. And Republicans in Congress have left their fingerprints on those policies.
MARTIN: Well, to that end, last question I have for you, you know, on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance at a campaign rally insinuated that Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico...
BROWNSTEIN: Yep.
MARTIN: ...Is gay, clearly intending that to be a negative. Republican mailers are also describing Democrats as socialists - radical socialists - even when they don't identify as such. You know, some of this isn't new. Like, I remember - you and I both remember 1986, when Linda...
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MARTIN: ...Chavez running against Barbara Mikulski called her a San Francisco Democrat, that there was - you know, she said it was just because she was a liberal, but that was not how it was seen. But does this tell you something about the tenor of our discourse now?
BROWNSTEIN: Well, again, so, you know, in terms of its immediate tactical, electoral strategy and implications, it is an attempt to basically shift voters in these red-leaning places back toward cultural divides, where more of them probably side with Republicans than Democrats. It's really hard to get voters to focus on, I think, anything other than their economic distress when they are feeling so squeezed economically. I would say, I think, that in this election, trying to change the subject is just very hard. It's just very hard when people are feeling this level of economic distress. And again, you may be able to do it, but the places where you would do it are pretty deep into Republican terrain. There's a lot of room for the wave to wash over the wall before it reaches that destination.
MARTIN: That is Ron Brownstein, opinion columnist for Bloomberg and a senior political analyst for CNN. Ron, thanks, as always.
BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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