Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:
No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”
But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.
Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).
Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.
But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:
“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”
Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.
Possibly the most interesting part of this poll is the poll on Party ID (i.e. shoring up your base). Bush’s early advantage in the polls was due largely to his partisan advantage among republicans versus weaker support among Democrats for Kerry. Notice the erosion of support for Bush and break toward to Kerry, especially among Democrats. Clearly due to Kerry standing up for himself and hammering Bush in the debates:
Numbers read Bush/Kerry +/- Bush
poll dates: 9/17-21 9/22-26 10/1-3 10/15-19
Republican 91- 4 90- 3 90-3 89-7 -1
Democrat 8-85 10-81 9-85 7-88 -2
Indep. 40-41 46-38 42-39 43-43 +1
Notice that Democratic support of Kerry has equaled Republican partisanship for Bush (89% Rep. vs. 88% Dem.). If we assume an overall Democratic Party ID advantage on election day similar to 2000, Bush is in bad shape. Notice also independent undecideds breaking +4 (39 to 43) for Kerry to +1 Bush (42-43) since just prior to the debates.
In past elections, the Republicans had higher partisan loyalty than Democrats, but party ID advantage sometimes gave Democrats the victory — if their base turned out (as in 1992 and 1996) but victory to the Republicans if their base turned out in greater numbers (2002).
If partisan loyalty is really equal in this race as this poll indicates, then that is very bad news for Bush indeed, UNLESS you assume that party ID has shifted by about 4 points to the Republicans since 2000 because of 9/11 (as Gallup states to justify their poll weighting). We’ll have to see after the election who’s right.
I don’t know how accurate this poll is overall, but this clearly shows a trend to Kerry and also indicates a very tight race – actually a dead heat. Not at all what is being promoted on CNN & Fox News.
By the way, can anyone figure out what Pew means by a “battleground” state? They say they’re using a new group of them, but I couldn’t find what states they’re talking about.
Ben Ross — thanks for the analysis. I couldn’t figure out why, after having what seemed to me consistent and believable results over the last few months, Pew suddenly diverged from other polls and its own prior results, showing a 7-point lead for Bush. That had me worried more than Gallup and the others, which tend to be all over the place anyway. Your focus on the volatility among the low-income and lower-educated is interesting and probably explanatory.
This is a promising result, although Pew Center polls have yo-yoed around in ways hard to explain. Still, the trend seems at the moment to mostly be pointing in our direction, although it’s so close it’s hard to ascertain what changes are real and which are statistical “noise”.
Andy— There are LOTS of polls, and surely some put Kerry down in the battlegrounds. For example, if the spreads of the latest Zogby internet poll were the spreads on election day, Kerry would be in trouble. Matthews is not a pollster, and seems to pick his polling data in a haphazard manner. Moreover, he uses broad summaries of the numbers to support whatever story he thinks fits as the narrative of the race.
My take is that Kerry is up in the battlegrounds, and the last round of Zogby internet polls were the only datapoints I have seen that contradict this view.
Matthews is a total chameleon. Actually, he is worse than
O’Reilly because he pretends to throw a few more bones to the dems. I can’t believe this guy was employed by Thomas P. O’Neill. Look at his lineup! Andrea Mitchell? I haven’t heard her say a positive thing about Kerry in months. Red Sox win and now Kerry wins!!
The education breakdowns on this poll are extraordinary. The college-educated and some college categories have been quite stable while the high school or less category has fluctuated wildly. The entire change from the last poll is due to high school or less going from 47-37 Bush to 46-41 Kerry. The pattern for income is similar, although less extreme, with the greatest fluctuations in the less than 20,000 category. I suspect that this labile behavior is due to small sample size because of the difficulty of reaching low-income respondents which increases both the sampling error and the estimation error of the weighting coefficients.
Note that since the last poll Kerry improved by 2% among whites and by 1% among non-whites, yet he imrpoved 3% overall. Thus much of Kerry’s improvement is caused by the latest sample containing more non-whites.
It would appear, based on these observations, that in the polls Sept. 22-26 and Oct. 1-3 polls that showed Bush ahead, low-income pro-Kerry voters were underrepresented among the low-education respondents. The Sept. 17-21 and Oct. 15-19 polls that show a strong Kerry lead among voters with less than $20,000 income probably are much closer to the reality throughout the period.
This is striking evidence of the problems caused by the lack (for good practical reasons) of income-weighting of respondents in a year when voting behavior is very income-dependent, and education is not usable as a proxy for income because voters of the same income and different education levels vote very differently. See my posting on the new Wisconsin poll.
Only because the Pew poll gives more detail than other polls can we criticize it in such detail. I suspect that looking at other polls would turn up similar anomalies.
Andy Knox, have you been watching the same Chris Matthews on Hardball as I have?? The bias for Bush is unbelievable!! I gave up on Matthews when he constantly was crowing over how Cheney really got Edwards good, when he said he never met Edwards until the debate. Even after it was shown that Cheney had met Edwards several times, Matthews was still saying Edwards really got kicked by Cheneys’ statement.
I noticed that Bush had been enjoying a significant lead among white Catholics in the previous three Pew Research Center Polls. In the most recent poll the results are almost reversed with Kerry up 7% among white Catholics. Is this just an anomaly? If not, what accounts for the improvement? Was it the last debate?
Can someone please explain to me why these polls all have Kerry in the lead yet when I watch Hardball tonight they are saying Kerry is down in BGround states?
Please don’t say Hardball is a conservatively skewed show, I think Mathews really does a good job of keeping an even hand.
But out of curiosity why is it that many shows list Bush as having these leads yet when I go to Liberal leaning websites they all list Kerry. Which one do I believe?