Transcript of 48 Days Until the Midterms: Is a Blue Wave Coming?

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From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. With fewer than 50 days until the midterm elections, a major new poll from The Times suggests that Democrats have a real shot at winning control of both chambers of Congress as an unpopular president insists on making the election all about himself. And yet, serious obstacles remain in the Democrats' way, including a half-billion-dollar financial advantage for Republicans. Today, I talk about all of that with 3 of my colleagues: national political correspondent Shane Goldmacher, White House reporter Maggie Haberman, and chief political analyst Nate Cohn. It's Wednesday, September 16th.

Hey, everybody. Hello.

Hi.

Hello.

Maggie, Nate, Shane, welcome to the first midterm election roundtable for the general election. We really like to slice the salami really thin when it comes to the superlatives for these records.

This is like the assistant to the assistant regional manager.

Exactly. That's what this roundtable is.

Appreciate it.

It's good.

The first midterm election roundtable for the general. By which I mean, the primaries are over, both parties have picked all their nominees, and now in 48 days to be exact, control of the US House and the US Senate will be determined in hundreds of elections across the country, which is gonna be the subject of our conversation today. Nate, I wanna begin with you.

Please.

Because as we sit here on Tuesday, the Times just within the past few hours released a major new poll about these midterm elections. Top line, what did you all find?

Top line, we found Democrats well-positioned to make major gains this fall. They led Republicans by nearly 9 points in the race for Congress, and that's wave territory, which is the kind of election where one party sweeps the other party out of the most competitive states and districts.

When's the last time we had a wave election with the kind of numbers that this poll found? 9 points up for Democrats.

It's almost exactly the same as the Democratic margin from 2018, Trump's first midterm election. And it's larger than other recent wave elections in recent decades, like 1994, 2006, or 2010.

1994, just as a reminder, was the year that Republicans swept into office. Newt Gingrich became House Speaker, a huge historical moment for Republicans. In 2018, a huge historical victory That's right.

Now, how this big national advantage translates into control of the House and the Senate is a little more complicated, but you would absolutely say that the Democrats are favored to take the House, and they would have a real chance to take the Senate as well, where they have a real uphill climb. But with this kind of national advantage, they would have a serious chance to put the red states they need into play.

Okay, Shane and Maggie, please react to this pretty important new development in the way we think about these midterms? Shane, you go first.

I mean, I just sit with this poll for a second, which just has so many bad data points, both for Donald Trump and for the Republican Party. We asked a series of questions: which party do you see as more elitist, more extreme, more corrupt? All are bad for Republicans. And I think the elitist one is a particularly rough one. This is a term that the Republican Party has used to cast the Democrats as outside the mainstream. And the idea that voters see the Republican Party under Donald Trump right now as more elitist.

Can you translate that?

Why elitist?

It's tied into the ballroom, potentially. It's tied into the lack of empathy for people's cost concerns. The single worst finding in this poll is cost of living issues. Trump was at, I think, 28% support on the most important issue for most voters. Like, if you had to pick an issue to be really bad on, don't pick the one people care most about.

Yeah.

And so this is the challenge that Trump is facing right now. And he seems disconnected from that reality of how voters are perceiving him.

This poll, Maggie, am I right to say, suggests the fundamental appeal of this president over the past many years is faded, is maybe totally faded nationally?

Yeah, I don't know that you ever want to say totally with him because obviously he's pretty regenerative. And I think we don't always know how everybody is experiencing everything, but There's no question that his actions in office, whether it is the ballroom, whether it is the war, there's no question he is dragging his party down. What's interesting, too, to me about that cost of living number that Shane was talking about is, number one, it is, at least from what I know in my reporting, what Jonathan Swan, our colleague, and I know, is it's reflected in their own polling, in the Trump World Polling.

They notice.

So despite the fact— well, they certainly do. And it's not as if they're not telling the president. He just often hears what he wants to hear, as anybody who has worked for him will tell you. But the other piece that is just striking He's certainly not the first president to misread his mandate. Joe Biden did that too, and it cost Joe Biden. This is costing Trump right now. The mandate was not, go take us to war even though you said you wouldn't, and do a lot of legacy projects for yourself in the form of physical structures, and oh, and P.S., make a lot of money for yourself and your family. Voters can see it.

And yet, I submit to this table, despite the president being a clear, albatross on his entire party. Just a few days ago, at what was billed a midterm convention, perhaps the very first in history, this is what President Trump said. So on Election Day, November 3rd, you got to do me a favor.

You got to get out and vote, and you're going to pretend I'm on the ballot because in a way, I am on the ballot.

He asks Republicans, candidates, voters, To pretend he's on the ballot, intentionally making this midterm all about him. And then he goes even further. Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us all.

so much he can't even breathe.

The president asks this crowd to make a pledge to him, not to the country, not even to the Republican Party, to him. And we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that. And Maggie, what strikes me is, I think it was our colleague Lisa Lehrer who once said that when a president is this unpopular, they usually find a way to let members of their own party in Congress distance themselves from the president. But here is Trump basically saying, here's a bottle of superglue. I am gluing you all to me. That is the midterm theme. That's genuinely politically counterintuitive.

Well, there are some low-propensity voters who do only turn out to support Trump historically, in the 3 elections that he was on the ballot. And that is who they are going for. That is who his advisors are hoping they can juice turnout among to offset other losses and given how Trump has behaved about his party, I don't know how many other choices they have. Now, you can argue that Trump shouldn't have behaved that way about his party in the first place, but this is where they are.

Nate, is Maggie right that this might be the Republican Party's best strategy under Trump? Keep making it about a president who's deeply unpopular?

They don't have many cards to play. Fundamentally, they have to try and keep Republican-leaning voters on board. When the Democrats are up, 8.5 points in the generic ballot, that means that the races that are tied are districts in states that voted for Trump by 10.

So I want to explain that because I think that math gets tricky for people. You're saying there are plenty of places in the country where Trump won the presidency by something like 10 points in 2024. That would, under normal circumstances, make you think that place is completely out of Democrats' reach. You're saying when Democrats just generically are up something like 9%, that wipes out that otherwise intimidating lead and makes any district, whether it's in the House or maybe even the Senate, Exactly.

So if they want to hold down their losses, it is plausible that in a Trump-plus-10 district or state, trying to rally the Republican base, either by trying to rejuvenate people's personal loyalties to the president or by casting the Democrats as too far to the left, is a relatively reasonable strategy to hold down those worst-case losses in red states and districts. And that is especially important in the Senate. For the Democrats to take the Senate, they must win at least 2 states that Trump won by at least 11 points.

Which is somewhat conceivable.

Which is conceivable given this national environment and given that in many of these states, the Democrats have strong candidates. But what that means is that if the Republicans can just keep their folks on board, they can hold down the worst-case scenario here.

And talking about the president may not be the worst way to do that, or at the very least, I can imagine it as part Shane, I want to talk more about the Senate map in particular and the potential path for Democrats, since this is what this poll suggests is now conceivable, to possibly winning back the United States Senate and therefore having control of all of Congress. What does that potential victory look like in November?

Right now, the Democrats would have to flip 4 Senate seats that are currently held by Republicans and hold their 3 most vulnerable seats. Right now, 2 states that are generally more battlegrounds— Maine, held by Susan Collins, and North Carolina, which a Republican is retiring in— these are battleground states the Democrats think they have a pretty good chance, and they're favored in the polls to flip.

Favored in the polls in both those places?

In both of those places. And then you get into this trickier territory that Nate has alluded to, which is a series of states that Trump won by 10, 12, 13%age points. We're talking about places like Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, Texas, and that is actually where the main battleground is right now. And so we started the cycle where the Democrats were dreaming of competing in enough states to even have a chance mathematically at getting a majority, and now that majority is very clearly being fought over, and it's being fought over in red territory. And for Donald Trump, I think there's an emotional response that every problem that the Republican Party faces can be solved with more Donald Trump. But there's not a non-intellectual argument for that too, which is these are red areas where you actually can win if everybody puts on their partisan red jersey. And for Trump, their operation is like, well, at least we gotta get our people out. And we have seen that Donald Trump can get Republican voters out, but whether he can do it when he's not on the ballot nationally, it's gonna be really hard. And at the same time, he's turned off so many independent voters, and Republicans are less enthusiastic about this election.

So the vice is, They're losing independents, and their base is depressed.

Well, you also just raised an important point, which is that we have been hearing since January from Trump's top advisers that he is about to begin next week a— you know, he's going to go everywhere.

A coast-to-coast political circuit.

Yeah, exactly. And that really has not come to pass. And so he has done sporadic events. He has appeared in battleground states here and there. But often these events are tacked onto other trips that he's doing, and he gives the same speech in every single context. And so, he could be doing more. There are a lot of reasons why he's not traveling in general, one of which is that he doesn't want to anymore, and he has made that pretty clear to advisors.

Right.

He also is visibly an 80-year-old man in a way that he was not before. And there are real security risks for him. That's serious. But all of this is to say that he's not doing the barnstorming that we keep hearing he is gonna do, and certainly that I think Republicans feel like he needs to do.

Right. So friends, I wanna bring all this together and ground it in a particular Senate race. And I'm gonna suggest we go to Texas because Texas is a place, to go to Nate's point earlier, that once seemed totally off the map for Democrats. Trump won Texas in 2024, I think by 12—

14.

14 points. Not a place that Democrats rightfully have really much of a chance. And yet, right, Shane, it's quite competitive between the Democrat James Talarico, the Senate nominee, and the Republican Ken Paxton. And I'm wondering how much it has to do with everything this poll has found.

I mean, I think for Democrats to win somewhere like Texas, it has to be all of the above. So if Democrats are favored by 9 points in the congressional races, well, that's not enough. to make up a 14-point gap in Texas before.

Right.

So you need a good political environment. You need a potentially bad Republican candidate in Ken Paxton, who's been impeached by his own party, who has enough scandals that even Republicans are frustrated with him. And then you have a Democrat in James Talarico, who has been from the very beginning trying to run to the middle of the electorate. And so the polls that show him roughly tied or even ahead have him crushing Ken Paxton among independent voters. And so the entire race for Republicans in Texas, and frankly across the country, is, can you make James Talarico out to be a scary liberal who you don't want to represent your red area? And that's what you see on television. And so the Republicans are gonna try to make the race about him, and the Democrats want to make it about your cost of living, your frustrations with the country, your unhappiness with the status quo. And in Texas, you're gonna blame Republicans. Trump and people in your own state.

Nate, I know our poll was national, but what did you glean about the Texas Senate race from it?

I thought there were 2 things in the poll that made me want to see a Texas poll afterwards.

Do you know anybody who could help with that?

One was the demographics. I mean, Donald Trump is very unpopular and Republicans are doing poorly, but they are getting clobbered among young and Latino voters in this poll, among Hispanic voters. The Democrats are up 43 points nationwide. That's not just pre-2024.

With young and with Latino voters?

With Latino voters was 43 points. With young voters was almost 40.

Wow. A group that went disproportionately for Trump in 2024.

A group that almost voted for Trump in 2024. The Latino vote was a single-digit race according to the exit polls. So this is a huge swing. And there is no state, no plausibly competitive state at least, where young and Hispanic voters will do more to help Democrats than Texas.

Wow.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is we did something unusual in this poll, which is that we didn't just ask voters whether they would generically favor the Democrats or Republicans for Congress, but in the states with Senate races, we gave them the actual Senate ballot. Do you support the actual Democratic candidate or the actual Republican candidate in your state? In those races where the Republicans are trying to defend their seats in the US Senate, the Democrats are faring even better when you give them the actual named candidates. Including in Texas. So that's even scarier for Republicans, right? Because while Shane's correct that on its own, a 9-point lead on the generic ballot doesn't get you a Democratic victory in a state that voted for Trump by 14 points, if the Democrats have nominated candidates capable of doing even better than that, it's easy to look at this national poll and see how a state like Texas would be highly competitive or even Democratic-tilting, as many recent polls suggest.

Right.

I just want to say for the record, because I've been hosting this show for 10 years, Done a lot of politics, and I've done a lot of episodes where we all get in a room and talk about whether a Democrat could actually win in Texas, and it doesn't happen, period. It seems like this could actually be the election in which that happens.

Maybe.

I'll say yes.

Sure.

I will—

I'll say yes. I think this is the first time where I think if you just take the numbers on its face, the Democrat would be as likely or likelier to win.

Well, I think in a nutshell, this is the story of how Democrats could theoretically take back the Senate. But when we come back in just a moment, we're gonna talk about all the ways Democrats could turn out to lose the Senate and be much weaker than perhaps this poll suggests. So we'll do that right after the break. Maggie, can you take us to the break?

We'll be right back.

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Nate, Maggie, Shane, welcome back. Beyond the difficulty of winning a bunch of Senate seats in red states— no small task under any circumstances— Democrats have another set of challenges that I know, Shane, you and Maggie have been reporting on a lot, and one of them is money. The other may be ideological, the rise of Democratic Socialists within the Democratic Party this campaign season. I want to start with money. Shane, can you just remind me what the money situation is for both parties and why it seems to be the bigger challenge for the Democrats despite the momentum they have?

Yeah, I mean, when you talk to a Democratic strategist, probably the number one concern that comes up right now is money. That the Republican Party has more money than the Democratic Party.

How much more?

The RNC alone has $130 million more than the DNC. And then the big thing is Trump has a super PAC that has $400 million.

So you're talking about half a billion-dollar financial advantage for Trump.

And we're not done. because Elon Musk is going to spend at least another $100 million. So you're at $600 million, and then those Republican super PACs have another $100 million more. So you're talking about— could be close to $1 billion of an advantage for Republicans.

Holy cow.

In these closing weeks. And so one of the questions has been, would Trump actually spend this money? And he has begun to spend this money. And notably, one of the first places he has spent is in Texas to save that Senate seat. And so In one day in the last week, something like $50 million of TV ads were booked in Texas by Republicans, and there has not been a national Democratic counter. They're hoping that small donors support Tallarico, but $50 million is a lot of money. And that's not just happening in Texas, it's happening all over the country.

Well, before we get to the use of this money in a race like Texas, which I do want to come back to, do you have a sense, Maggie, of why the Republican financial advantage is this mighty? I mean, traditionally, Momentum in a political season translates— I'm going to make up a word here— into moneymentum for that same party. So how do we explain this deficit of polling momentum and voter enthusiasm and dollars on the other side?

Democrats have been struggling with fundraising for quite some time. I don't think that they have ever totally recovered from the very end of the Biden term, where a lot of donors were just really, really angry. People don't like spending money and finding out it didn't get People don't like being told for 2 years that all is well, and then it very visibly, through the magic of sight, was not. And then switching out the candidate. Sorry, hat tip to Friends. That's a Ross Geller line. The magic of sight, not mine. But that is a big piece of it. There were a lot of Democratic donors who were just like, you know what, I don't want to do this. Now, there are also a lot of donors who are less ideological and more business pragmatic, quote unquote, as they would call themselves. They have companies that intersect with the federal government, and they donate to both parties, and they have seen little interest in trying to cross the White House. You know, I could point to Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or people who Democrats have relied on in the past.

They are seeing that there's much more virtue in giving to the president whose revenge is a given if he's mad at you than necessarily spreading their bets as traditionally as they might have across both parties.

So, all of that has added to a massive war chest that Trump just never took his foot off the gas on. He started fundraising— I shouldn't say started, he kept up fundraising—

Never stopped.

Literally the day after the election. And there is so much money sloshing around the system that it becomes its own kind of virtuous cycle, virtuous being, you know, in quotes. But that really is the main reason why. And Democrats don't really have a great message against Trump other than, Fundraising message.

Right.

Other than, we're not Trump.

Shane, we started to get at this, but let's really dig in on how and how well Republicans are spending this $600 million more than Democrats have. And will it in any way blunt the 9-point advantage Democrats have?

We don't fully know how they're spending it yet because these ad reservations are literally coming in day by day. What we're seeing so far is they are trying to shore up vulnerable Republicans mostly. And whether these ads and the funding is gonna be effective, We'll see. Money makes a huge difference in elections. It makes more of a difference in elections where voters are paying less attention. So a House race can be more effectual than a Senate race. And so it can help, especially in the sort of less visible races. Also, when you talk to Democrats, the concern isn't this will prevent them from flipping the House. It will hold down their margins of how many seats they can compete in.

Okay, let's turn to what Republicans certainly hope ends up being another big Democratic vulnerability, which is this summer of socialism. We've covered it a lot on the show. The reality that Democrats have elevated many Democratic socialists and their allies to become nominees in the House, and in the case of Florida, in the US Senate. These candidates have won races by, as we've discussed, putting economic issues like Medicare for All and taxing the rich at the center of these candidacies. And Republicans have responded, as they did at the midterm convention, by basically saying, you're all radicals, you're all socialists, you're all communists, as President Trump likes to say. How is that going, Shane, as a strategy?

The best thing Republicans can try to do is make this election about the Democrats, because if people are thinking about Trump and the Republican Party, swing voters, they're losing. And so their goal is to scare voters, to make them think, okay, well, you might not like this Republican congressman who votes with Donald Trump 95% of the time, but this potential Democrat who you don't know, they might vote with the Democratic Socialists. That's basically their campaign in a nutshell. If you just picked at random a House campaign ad that's running right now from the right, it's using the word socialist.

Give me an example.

Uh, I mean—

Pick one. Yeah, go for it.

All right, throw it to Matt.

You made it happen.

I mean, the actual person who used to be a Democratic Socialist member is Will Lawrence, a more left-wing Democrat in Michigan. And the Republicans are running ads against him right now saying, he's a Democratic Socialist, he's a socialist, he's going to bring in all these things that are scary and that you don't like here in Michigan. And so they're running an ad against him because he, in fact, was previously a member of the Democratic Socialists, but it doesn't matter, right? And now Abdul El-Sayed, even though he's not from that state—

He's not technically a Democratic Socialist.

You know, the entire message for the right is don't elect these Democrats, they're scary liberals.

Right.

So in other words, Republicans, because of the DSA dynamic, get to pursue a strategy that's not a pitch for why you should vote necessarily for them, but why you should not vote for the Democrats. I'm really curious, Nate, if the polling that we have done at The Times tells us whether there's actually potency in the general electorate to use a strategy of making the Democrats all socialists.

Well, I think that the poll provides plenty of evidence that this is, like, the best card Republicans can play. And it also provides evidence that the successes of progressives and socialists this summer has taken at least some toll on the Democratic Party's standing for some number of voters. In the poll, we asked people whether they think the Democratic Party is too far to the left. 50% of people said yes. That was up from 46% in May.

Hmm.

So that language, too far, implies that it's not to their liking, right? Now, the Democrats still had a big lead in the poll, so it's possible the Democrats would be up by 10 if it weren't for the advances of the socialists and the progressives this summer, but it's not necessarily so great of a weight that it prevents them from—

Interesting.

Taking advantage of this environment. And it's worth noting that this is a midterm, and in general, midterms tend to be referendums on the party in power. The actions of the president and the governing party loom much more powerfully in the minds of voters than the theoretical things that Democrats might do. Immigration is such a great example. It was a terrible issue for Democrats during the Biden years because Biden opened the border, and no one was concerned at that time about the possibility of the excesses of what a Trump administration might do. Now it's flipped around. Now people are concerned about the conduct of ICE. And yeah, they may remember that the Democrats weren't great at immigration, but in our poll, the Democrats have a big lead on immigration.

That's really interesting.

And so the Democrats have serious problems. But even if their problems were worse than the Republicans, voters are going to be more focused on what's going on with the president.

The theoretical sins of future Democratic socialist lawmakers are no match for what voters see as the already committed citizens of President Trump.

Now, that said, in the races where the Democrats really have nominated, say, a Democratic Socialist or a candidate who's DSA and friends, like Abdullah El-Sayed, there's plenty of historic precedent for the wrong candidate really seriously underperforming, even in a wave. So it's not out of the question that there could be these isolated races where the Democrats do pay a serious penalty.

Maggie.

There's one aspect too, and I don't want to dwell on this, but that we haven't talked about, which is that, I mean, it is not unusual that you would see a party in power play on fear. We have seen that midterms over and over and over. But there is a factor now that I don't know that we can properly account for, both in terms of polling and how effective it will be, or whether it will bring up backlash. But the broad-scale Islamophobia is coupled with the DSA message. They really—

Here you're really talking about the Michigan Senate race.

I'm not only talking about the Michigan Senate race because part of what— I mean, yes, in terms of the map I am, but in terms of the avatar aspect where one party uses a candidate or a person or an official in the opposing party as a stand-in. You've seen that with Zohran Mamdani. And that came up huge around the 25th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Mamdani, who was 9 years old when they happened, but he happens to be Muslim.

Right.

But yes, it is against El-Sayed in Michigan, who it could be— the Democratic nominee, who it could be most effective against. What used to be a dog whistle, is now beyond a bullhorn. It is coming from the president on down throughout his party in a way that we just haven't seen before. And I don't properly know how to account for that. Again, I don't want to linger on that too much, but I think we'd be remiss if we didn't mention it in terms of the messaging they're doing, because it was prominent at the convention.

I'm really glad you mentioned that, Maggie, because as you said, it could in theory become a sleeper issue for Republicans. I want to mention my own curiosity about a different sleeper issue, and that is Data centers and AI. Here on the show over the past few days, we have done nothing but talk about the sudden crisis in the AI industry, its leaders publicly declaring that things are moving too fast, that they are scared. We know in many districts around the country, especially in the House districts, where there's a data center, there is some group of unhappy Americans. Could this be a sleeper issue in these midterms that we over time look back and recognize potentially as important? After the fact?

It's certainly possible, and it's a fast-moving issue. Over just the last 2 months, I feel like this has gone from being almost irrelevant to now being a major topic of national conversation. So over— and over the next 2 months, I think we have every reason to expect that to continue. As of right now, I don't think our poll offered much reason to think that this is one of the most important issues.

Why not?

Well, maybe the most striking thing to me was how many voters don't even know which party they prefer on the issue.

So the parties don't have an identity around this yet?

Let me put it this way. This issue is not yet ripe for partisan politics. Everyone is sort of deciding where they want to be positioned, let alone where they then fit with respect to the parties on that. There again, I expect this to change and it is changing. And there could be individual races where candidates make this an issue or the local circumstances make it an issue in ways that make us look back on it and say, oh, in X race, that was really big. But at a national level right now, this is way beneath the classical issues.

Okay, you're saying, Michael, hold your horses, come back to me in a few years when— Not even, maybe not even a few years.

We can talk about it in 2 weeks potentially. You know, it's really, I mean, when the poll began, we weren't talking about the safety issues, for instance. So—

Nate, I mean, one of the things in the poll was we asked, you know, what are the most important issues to you? And artificial intelligence data centers barely ranked. But there is a tension between that and what you see the campaigns putting in ads. These are in ads all over the country. And as you're saying, it is scrambled. It's not just Democrats running on data centers or against data centers. It's Republicans. It's Democrats flipping their position and then running tough-on-data-center ads like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, who had embraced as the biggest investment ever just last year, and then now is running, my Republican opponent is pro-data center, I'm anti-data center. And the inverse in Texas, where the governor is anti-data center now and he'd been pro-data center.

So the politics around this all are basically so responsive and whiplashy that it's totally confusing.

The voters are angry, and both parties are, like, trying to figure out a way to take advantage.

Maggie, I just wanna end with this question: do you think President Trump has wrapped his head around the very real possibility that we have established in this conversation that he loses control of not just one branch of Congress, but potentially all of Congress? Has he processed that? And does he have a plan for that, as best you can tell?

I believe that he is aware that this is a possibility. I think that he doesn't think that it's a possibility that impacts him the way it can impact the rest of his government. Most of his advisors will be very candid privately that it will be a disaster. It will mean a total slowdown of whatever they're hoping to do in terms of an agenda going forward. They know it will mean lots of investigations coming from certainly House Democrats, likely Senate Democrats as well.

Standoffs over subpoenas.

Correct. Here's the asterisk there. Trump is operating under a presidential immunity ruling from the Supreme Court that came in 2024. He knows that he is not facing federal criminal prosecution going forward. He has said, and Jonathan and I have reported this, that he is going to pardon any number of people who came within a certain radius of the Oval Office.

To protect them from congressional investigation.

To protect them from anything. It is, it is a pardon. And one thing would be contempt of Congress. So, I don't think we know what it looks like when an entire government does not respond to subpoenas. We have not seen that before. And the only recourse that Congress has is to send contempt of Congress referrals to Attorney General and former Trump personal lawyer Todd Blanche. So I don't think those are going to go the way of long-term criminal prosecutions. So it will be a mess. But the contours of that mess, I think, are an open question. And either way, they don't impact Trump directly the way they might others.

Right.

In terms of Trump's own thinking of this, Again, I don't think he looks that far down the road, generally speaking. He is looking at the projects he wants to get done for himself. I realize we keep coming back to that, but it's really, really true. The Arc de Trump, as it's being called, the ballroom. So that's the best I can give you.

I just wanted to ask a question of you in that, which is like, when I'm watching Trump's behavior around the midterms from afar, it seems like he doesn't see this midterm as critical to his legacy.

He doesn't.

That his legacy is set, and that the legacy is less whether Republicans keep control of the House and Senate, and more if he finishes these projects.

The party's legacy, in his mind, is not his legacy. That is absolutely true. These building projects are tangible and something that people can see, and that he anticipates his name won't be taken off of, as his name was taken off of buildings in 2016 and after. Yes, you are correct. Those are his legacy. His other legacy is how much money he has made and how much richer he is going to be, and they're not going to be able to take that away from him.

Nate, I'm going to give you the final word.

I completely agree with what they just mentioned about the way the relationship between the White House and the Congress is about to change. Stepping even farther back, I think that with this election and in the final 2 months of this election, we are starting to turn a page in American politics. It's going to be a long time until the page turns all the way, but we've already talked about some things that are beginning to bubble up that are gonna really alter the basic political conflict that we've had in this country for the last 10 years. AI is one example of that. And we're also about to have a presidential primary, which will begin essentially when this midterm election ends, that will not include Donald Trump.

And that is a page starting to—

That's a page that's starting to be changed. And the next page is gonna look pretty different when you put all those factors together. And we're just now beginning to talk about those issues, and I don't know what it's gonna look like, but it's gonna be pretty different.

Okay.

Well, with that, Nate, Maggie, Shane, thank you for your time.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you, Michael.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, President Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court for blocking his efforts to restrict voting by mail, focusing his ire on the 3 justices that he appointed to the court: Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch, all of whom voted against Trump in the case. In a social media post, Trump wrote, quote, these are not the people I interviewed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. They are merely a shell of their original selves. Meanwhile, in another legal defeat for the president, a federal judge has ruled that the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington cannot honor Trump with an inscription on the building's exterior, as Trump has repeatedly demanded. Such an inscription, the judge said, would require permission from Congress, which authorized the Kennedy Center's creation and its original dedication to President Kennedy in 1964. In response to the ruling, the Kennedy Center's board voted to shut shut down the center for 2 years of renovations, while Trump himself threatened to block the money required for those renovations. Today's episode was produced by Caitlin O'Keefe and Ricky Nowitzki, with help from Diana Nguyen, Lexi Diao, and Eric Krupke.

It was edited by Rachael Quester, contains music by Rowan E. Misto, Dan Powell, and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Wonderlane. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.

This week on The Wirecutter Show, do you struggle to find delicious and creative ways to get vegetables on the table? What makes good vegetarian cooking great is leaning into the seasons and not thinking of recipes so much as a mandate, but a suggestion. We're talking with New York Times Cooking's Tanya Sichensky about her new book, Veg Everything. Find The Wirecutter Show on the New York Times app or wherever you listen to podcasts.