THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Charlie Cook has been doing election forecasting since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign. The founder of the Cook Political Report, an institution in D.C., he recently retired from his life’s work and now writes an informative newsletter called “Charlie Cook Politics.” And he’s been declaring that he hasn’t ever seen an election quite like this one. So, now that Election Day is finally upon us, we talked to Cook about all of it. He explains why he largely believes those astounding New York Times polls showing Democrats leading in seven key Senate races, how many Senate and House seats he expects them to win, and why the election will be partly decided by disaffected GOP voters. We also discuss how Trump’s unpopularity is making this midterm so unique, probe Cook’s concept of a “red undertow” in this election, and dig into whether Democrats have a new opportunity to repair relations with rural and small-town America. Cook also details why he expects the GOP to get an “ass-whupping.”

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Donald Trump erupted in a deranged rant at a reporter who dared to ask why he’d cancelled several of his rallies (which he then reinstated). Trump sputtered at being pressed on his fitness and viciously insulted the reporter’s appearance. “You are disgusting,” Trump snapped. “You look like hell.” This comes as Republicans are leaking word that his rallies hurt more than help in swing areas, meaning he’s totally toxic in non-deep-red America. Meanwhile, other Republicans are letting it be known that they’re looking ahead to a post-Trump world, with some bracing for Trump to blame them if they lose big. Still others are leaking word that the election could be “brutal.” That’s all pretty embarrassing given his frequent claim his rallies are saving them. We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte about why Republicans seem to think his rallies have lost their juice. We also discuss what his ebbing powers portend for a post-Trump GOP, why the Senate is still on a knife’s edge, and how MAGA seems disoriented these days in the culture wars over gender.

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Donald Trump is in a dark mood about the midterms, reports The New York Times in an epic piece. Numerous administration insiders confide that he’s raging at naysayers and negative press. And they’re also leaking that he’s “increasingly cloistered” with “acolytes” like Natalie Harp, as the Times puts it, adding this: "As the elections approach, Mr. Trump is feasting on a media diet of fawning press coverage, disparaging clips about his perceived enemies, and helpings of flattering photos and 'A.I. slop,' as one official put it." That extraordinary passage shows how his aides are placating his anger. Yet new CNN polls show Democrats with leads in the key Senate races that will determine control. So we talked to political scientist Tom Schaller, author of a good piece for the Public Notice Substack on MAGA culture. We discuss whether those CNN polls are right, why Trump is convinced his influence over GOP voters will save the party, how a big Democratic night could break Trump-MAGA cultural power, and how that could allow Democrats to expand their coalition in coming years.

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After Vivek Ramaswamy ran that vile ad attacking Amy Acton in the Ohio gubernatorial race, Donald Trump aggressively defended it. That sent out a command to MAGA to get behind the ad. But now Republicans just leaked an internal poll to Axios showing that the ad is backfiring in humiliating fashion: It is making voters more likely to pick Acton over Ramaswamy rather than less. On top of that, Republicans fear this could hurt the party in the Ohio Senate race, too. That’s striking, because if Democrats win that contest, they’re a lot more likely to win the Senate. We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, author of a good piece on the ad fiasco. We discuss how the backlash to the ad caught Trump-MAGA off guard, how this saga shows Trumpian politics to be running out of gas, and why the Senate map looks very promising for Democrats.

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In a remarkable move, Fox News just shifted numerous House races toward Democrats. Fox finds them pulling even or favored in really Trumpy places like Kentucky’s 6th district and North Carolina’s 11th district. Fox also shifted the Ohio Senate race to “Lean Democratic.” In both cases Fox cited recent polling—including its own—as the justification. These bombshell incursions into deep red territory made Trump’s tirade at a Texas rally Tuesday look truly delusional. Trump bizarrely suggested his Iran war is a stupendous success that’s making our country “an absolute fortune.” He even weirdly implied his juvenile changing of geographic names—like “Lake America” and the “Gulf of America”—shows genuine American success and dominance. Trump really believes these things have broad appeal! We talked to Michael Cohen, who wrote well on the ongoing GOP retreat for his Truth and Consequences Substack. We discuss how these tirades explain the GOP’s struggles, the deeper reasons Democrats are able to contest such red territory, and what to expect in the final stretch.

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Donald Trump is stewing about elections big time. He raged at Senator Lisa Murkowski for opposing his dumb effort to rig the Alaska Senate race, fumed over imagined voter-fraud in the upcoming midterms, and seethed that the right’s huge loss in Brazil was “rigged.” It’s no accident that this unraveling comes as the early-voting data looks so dubious for the GOP that even some MAGA data analysts seem rattled by it. One leading MAGA figure admitted she’s refraining from posting the early-vote numbers because they’ll hurt the right’s “morale.” Another acknowledged that the electorate looks far too nonwhite for the GOP and urged Republicans to “step it up.” A third fretted that Trump’s campaigning is backfiring. We talked to Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who closely tracks early voting at his Hopium Chronicles Substack. He walks us through the massively encouraging signs in the data for Democrats, details what we can conclude from it and what we can’t, talks about why the Senate could still stay Republican, and ponders how Democrats should close this out.

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Donald Trump seethed wildly at NBC reporter Monica Alba after she asked him tough questions about his support for that vile ad attacking Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton for supposedly lying about her past. Alba pointed out that Acton’s childhood involved “serious sexual abuse allegations,” prompting Trump to bark “quiet!” at Alba, rage that she’s being “fresh,” and belittle her as a “horrible little reporter.” It’s notable that Alba is relatively young given her level of success, because Trump is always most vicious towards young female reporters. This all comes as even Fox News figures are growing very uncomfortable with the ad and Trump’s backing of it, as Media Matters documents. We talked to Nicole Hemmer, historian of the right-wing media and the conservative movement. We discuss how Trump uses young female reporters as foils, how he and MAGA are deploying open misogyny as a Hail Mary in the midterms, how this is rooted in older right-wing formulations, and how he’s still trapped in the cultural moment of 2024.

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In dense and convoluted remarks, Donald Trump defended that disgusting ad in the Ohio gubernatorial race. The ad from Republican Vivek Ramaswamy featured the mother of Democrat Amy Acton calling her a liar. But it quickly emerged that Acton was apparently raped by her step-father, the mother’s husband. The move backfired spectacularly, as numerous Republicans, including Ohio governor Mike DeWine strongly condemned the ad and GOP panic over the race erupted. Even MAGA appears divided. We talked to Jim Swift, a senior editor at The Bulwark, who wrote a good piece on this fiasco. We discuss the deeper reasons Ramaswamy decided this ad would energize the MAGA base, how it could cost Republicans the Ohio gubernatorial and Senate contests, and what this ugly saga says about the depravity of Late-Stage MAGA and the growing mainstream backlash to it.

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Donald Trump just unleashed a panicky string of posts—see here, here, here, and here—in which he frantically urged Republicans to vote by mail early. Amusingly, this comes after he told Republicans for months that mail-balloting is fraudulent to pass his SAVE America Act. Now that his efforts to nix vote-by-mail have flopped, he’s prodding Republicans to adopt it—effectively admitting his attacks on vote-by-mail were a scam to help him rig the election. Mail voting is an essential piece of pre-election-day voting, so his “fraud” nonsense could be discouraging GOP early voting, too. So what does the data say? To find out, we talked to Michael McDonald, who tracks the early vote at the UF Election Lab and on his Substack. He explains why the data suggests Democrats and independents are far more energized than Republicans, what we can extrapolate from it about the election, and how Trump screwed himself on early-vote-by-mail. We also discuss the latest New York Times poll showing Democrats leading by 11 points and Trump at a new low, which suggests the bottom is falling out for him.

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With less than two weeks until Election Day, the Michigan Senate race is more or less on a knife’s edge. Amid all this, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has had some hugely viral moments lately, tangling with a MAGA plant over a question about the Muslim Brotherhood and battling with JD Vance over the vice president’s vile attacks on him. We think El-Sayed is developing an interesting way of doing politics that seems attuned to the information wars of the Trump era. Will it work in a swingy state that’s coming down to the wire? We talked to El-Sayed about the state of the race, the affordability crisis, his high-profile viral battles, and how it all reflects his deeper theory of politics in the Trump-MAGA era.

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Donald Trump’s approval just sank to an abysmal 33-66 in the new Washington Post poll, a record low in Post polling. The survey also finds Democrats leading in the battle for the House by eight points. Meanwhile, the new NBC poll also finds Trump below 35 percent and puts the Democratic lead at 10 points. The polling averages also suggest a Democratic lead pressing double digits. Small wonder that Republicans are leaking to Politico that they blame this debacle squarely on Trump. One says Trump is clueless about what “voters care about,” adding: “It’s insane.” Others are sharply criticizing Trump’s super PAC operatives, revealing that they’re trying to shift blame onto Republicans and away from Trump himself. That’s deeply embarrassing given Trump’s constant claim that he’s giving Republicans a huge lift. We talked to Madison Andrus of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She discusses how wide the map is getting, what the role of Trump’s unpopularity is in putting deep red areas in play, and why Democrats are bullish about pulling off a sweep of House districts in South Texas.

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In recent days, Donald Trump has exploded over James Talarico’s Senate candidacy in Texas. In a long, tortured tirade, Trump repeatedly called him “James TalaFREAKO” and raged at Karl Rove for supposedly wanting Ken Paxton to lose. He even ordered Fox to stop airing Rove. In another tirade, he fumed that Paxton is the “greatest attorney general” in Texas’s history and angrily wondered why Talarico hasn’t been defeated already. Meanwhile, in a striking exchange, a Fox anchor and a GOP Congressman appeared rattled as they wondered aloud why Texans appear prepared to vote for Talarico despite him obviously being a woke leftist whackjob. Translation: Why, oh why, aren’t MAGA-GOP smears working? We talked to Texas-based Democratic strategist Nancy Zdunkewicz. She explains the deeper reasons why attacks on Talarico aren’t sticking, walks through the state of play in the race’s final days, and grapples with whether the tightening polls amid the GOP’s avalanche of home-stretch spending should worry Democrats.

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The new national poll from Fox is absolutely awful for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. It finds Trump at a record low approval, shows him absolutely cratering with independents and Latinos, and even finds him underwater with noncollege whites and non-MAGA Republicans. It also finds Democrats expanding their lead in the generic ballot matchup to nine points and shows them with commanding leads among many key voter groups. But what if the polls are wrong? Republicans are betting on this, and it’s the topic of a big and serious debate among many observers. So we talked to Natalie Jackson, a polling expert who founded the Centerline firm and wrote well about this debate as a columnist for National Journal. She puts the Fox numbers in historical context, explains why the big question is just how good a night Democrats will have, walks us through the debate over polling accuracy, and details how polling firms are trying to avoid a big miss.

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Earlier this week, Donald Trump made some audacious claims. He insisted at length that his rallies are having a “tremendously positive impact” on Republicans’ chances in the midterms, because it causes their support to “go up.” He also insisted costs are plummeting. But on Wednesday, the new Consumer Price Index report demolished that claim by showing inflation getting worse. Meanwhile, numerous Republicans leaked to Politico that the House is all but lost. And critically, they cited Trump as the main overarching reason for this. As one lamented: “Trump has made this election all about himself.” Another griped that “the biggest problem” is Trump’s “unfavorables.” That wrecks his boast about his rallies, too. We talked to MS NOW’s Steve Benen, author of a good piece about the hollowness of Trump’s bragging. We discuss why Trump’s public standing is uniquely bad, look at how the GOP’s latest money moves show Republicans believe the bad polling news, and dig into the true state of the Senate map.

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In a remarkable piece, The Atlantic reports that Donald Trump is privately furious over his inability to force Iran to stop the war. As one adviser notes, he is “used to snapping his fingers” to control Republicans and the media, so he is now “losing his mind that Iran won’t listen” to him. This comes as his new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, turned in a debut performance that’s drawing serious fire from the right. White House officials are sharply criticizing it as “brutal.” One right-wing media personality harshly mocked her as not “serious,” claiming that “she’s auditioning for a job on Fox News.” These stories are connected: They both reveal Trump as an emperor-has-no-clothes figure who can’t fathom why his control over events is deserting him. We talked to Mark Jacob, who skillfully dissects White House follies in his Stop the Presses newsletter. He explains why having someone like Zacharia as White House press secretary is a deadly serious matter for the country, how institutional cowardice persuaded Trump of his omnipotence, how that’s now cracking up under him, and why all this will make him even more dangerous.

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Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark recently held a focus group with people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 that took an extraordinary turn. After being shown Trump’s vile taxpayer-funded ad, in which he rages about expelling “globalists” and “Marxists” and the “fake news media,” they were revolted. They called Trump “despicable” and “power hungry” and a “narcissist” who spews “nothing but lies.” We think this suggests Trump may be alienating right-leaning voters not just over costs, but with his totalitarian-dictator rule as well. So we talked to political theorist Paul Crider about the possibilities this focus group raises. We discuss his new piece arguing for the creation of a broad anti-corruption, anti-authoritarian coalition, dissect new GOP panic about losses in deep red areas, ask whether Trump’s dictator-megalomania is turning even those places against Trump, and examine how Democrats are creating a new politics in response to it all.

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Donald Trump rages regularly at Fox News. But Axios now reports that there’s more behind this than meets the eye: White House and GOP operatives have privately pressured Fox for months to change how it’s covering Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. The problem? By giving El-Sayed airtime and covering him in a somewhat factual way, it’s made it harder for Trump and the GOP to smear him as a crazy radical jihadist. Translation: Don’t let voters learn the truth about this guy; it’ll make it harder for us to beat him! That is so deeply humiliating. But it also gets at a bigger story about how the manly men of MAGA get so whiny when the electoral going gets tough. We talked to Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of The Contrarian. We discuss her new piece on the flimsiness of MAGA machismo, probe the deeper reasons Trump can’t allow the truth about El-Sayed to be told, and dissect a new Pew poll showing Trump’s approval down to an abysmal 30 percent.

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In today’s episode, nonpartisan political forecaster Kyle Kondik makes some critical points about Donald Trump’s approval rating. First, it may be so low that he’s even underwater in House districts that he carried by double digits. Second, unlike in 2018, his approval is underwater in red states with big Senate races. Indeed, the latest polling averages have him sinking below 35 percent, a key threshold. And Times polling finds him upside down in five Senate-race states he carried by double digits. Taken together, it’s clear his public standing is unraveling. Meanwhile, GOP leaks are growing deafening. One GOP operative said: “If the bottom continues falling out like it has been, this will be worse than 2006.” Worse than the GOP’s epic 2006 losses under George W. Bush! For the straight story on the state of the House map, we talked to Kondik, managing director at Sabato’s Crystal Ball. He explains how Trump’s low approval is expanding the map for Democrats in surprising ways, interprets the latest GOP spending in deep red areas, and why he thinks Democrats might end up with 230 House seats.

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Donald Trump unleashed a long, crazed tirade this week about Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate candidate in South Carolina. He attacked her with the vicious slur “tranny” not once but twice. He smeared her with numerous lies about her positions, insisting she is for “Defunding the Police” and “Transgender for Everyone.” The source of Trump’s rage is obvious: He fears the race is unexpectedly competitive. Indeed, two GOP-aligned pollsters—Trafalgar and Inside Advantage—recently found the race to be within one point. This is very bad news for Trump, and worse, Republicans plainly have their own polling showing something similar: A major GOP Super PAC just poured $5 million into the contest. The odds here are very, very long, especially once GOP money starts flowing. But since Trump clearly fears the race, we got a download on it from Jalisa Washington-Price, a veteran South Carolina Democratic operative who runs the pro-Andrews PAC Fresh Start. She explains the demographics of the state, why national Democrats should invest here, why the road ahead is very difficult—but not impossible!—and where this race fits into the recent history of the South.

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Donald Trump has been holding rallies in red states, and in a pair of articles, The New York Times reported that his crowd sizes have been diminishing. This triggered an epic tirade from Trump: He raged that his rallies are “PACKED” and claimed they are “HOTTER” than ever. He even accused the media of dishonestly ignoring their “thunderous applause” from “thousands and thousands of people.” This comes as Republicans themselves admit that the rallies actually reveal the weakness of the Trump-GOP position, which is requiring Trump to desperately energize his most loyal supporters to salvage races in deep-red areas. As one Republican told CNN: “This is a five-alarm fire.” We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who’s been writing well about Trump’s struggles with his unpopularity. We dig into the latest polling showing red-state Senate races trending Democratic, discuss whether GOP-leaning voters will really be able to support Democrats, and look at how MAGA may be getting deenergized by Trump’s failure to vanquish liberals in the culture wars.

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