The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 16
Apr. 21, 2025
A very Happy Easter season to all of our subscribers.
This week:
- Trump voters have no regrets
- Democrats keep attacking Trump on his strengths
- DNC vice chairman announces a party civil war
No regrets: Democrats and their surrogates in media have tried their darnedest to make it seem as if Trump voters are regretful — that they are as surprised as everyone else at what Trump is doing in office, and that they “did not vote for this.”
To be sure, Trump’s supporters are indeed surprised in most cases by what he has done in such a short space of time — just three months as of yesterday. But they are not at all regretful, as CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out recently, based on polling data from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As it turns out, approximately 3 percent of Trump voters would either vote for someone else or not vote at all if given the chance to redo the election — roughly the same share of Kamala Harris voters who say they would change their mind. So the truth is, it just isn’t happening.
Democrats: That’s not to say no one has concerns. The poll shows that the recent turmoil in the stock market — almost all of it caused by the administration’s moves and the president’s rhetoric — has for now put Trump’s numbers into the red.
But the poll also confirms that he remains blessed in his rivals. Democrats, it turns out, are determined to attack Trump on his most popular and best issues, while apparently laying off of his potential weak points.
Immigration is the one issue in this poll on which Trump has a positive rating. Having campaigned openly on a platform of aggressive mass deportations, he is now following through. A majority of the public (50 percent in this poll) generally approves of Trump’s immigration policy, likely because of living through the chaos of four years of effectively open borders under the Biden administration. And yet the issue where Democrats are on the offensive is this very issue — specifically, the return to the U.S. of a deported Salvadoran national, formerly residing illegally in Maryland, accused of wifebeating and MS-13 membership.
It is entirely possible that Trump is on the wrong side of the law here and the Supreme Court eventually makes him deport this now-famous “Maryland man” somewhere else. Yet even then, he is on the right side of the issue politically. That Democrats have chosen to focus their fire on this issue is a sign of how badly they have lost the plot.
Although this poll does not speak to it directly, Democrats have also been choosing their targets extremely poorly when it comes to government waste and transgender ideology. Together with immigration, these represent three examples where they have taken the short end of an 80-20 issue after (or perhaps just because) Trump took the long side of it. We have previously pointed out that this is a classic form of political messaging long advocated by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a close Trump ally.
On the other hand, where Trump is clearly struggling — on trade (36 percent approval), now that his tariff announcements have roiled the markets and created a new conversation about a potential recession — Democrats are in some cases even feebly agreeing with him, as with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). It may be that she has uniquely poor political instincts among all Democrats — this is not the only evidence of that — but the opposition party is struggling badly in terms of messaging, substance, and public approval.
Hogg plan: As if that weren’t enough, Democrats are also launching their own little civil war from within their own party.
Do elected Democrats really want their party’s infrastructure to be used to primary their own incumbents? Democratic Party vice chairman David Hogg thinks it is a threat they will just have to live with — at least when it comes to Democrats in safe states and districts. His reasoning, spelled out in interviews over the weekend, is that the current Democratic leadership needs to be broken, since it is so unpopular.
The obvious problem: Why would any incumbent pay dues (that is to say, raise money for the party, as members are expected to do) if its machinery is going to be turned against him in a primary? But this is exactly what Hogg now proposes and apparently intends to effectuate.
Hogg wants to throw out the old guard, arguing that “this is a healthy process for our party.”
It is also just the sort of process that every established power-player in the Democratic Party now has to worry about. Even party leaders not directly threatened by a primary — particularly House and Senate Democratic Leaders Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) — still have to be worried about how this is going to affect the Democratic members of Congress who elected them to their leadership positions.
This is a nearly unprecedented sabotage effort from inside a major party, and it does not bode well for the party’s efforts in the 2026 midterms.
The Vance effect: Vice President J.D. Vance (R) was a surprisingly effective choice as Trump’s second running-mate, and now he is also easily the leading candidate for the 2028 Republican nomination. But why is it so important for Trump to have a successor?
One reason is that, in Vance, people see a future for Trumpism. Win or lose in 2028, the elevation of Vance makes it impossible for anyone to “wait out” Trump or his era. It means that, for at least one presidential cycle and perhaps for many more, Trump’s ideas live on. Republicans will not be going back to the more fusionist, internationalist, and interventionist ideals that characterized the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and especially George W. Bush.
That means Trump, as long as Vance remains relevant, avoids being a lame duck despite technically being one.
Governor 2026
Iowa: The announcement by Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) that she will not run again has created a wide-open race for her office. Reynolds, the least popular governor in America according to Morning Consult’s polling, leaves behind a state that is far more reliably Republican than when she first took the wheel in 2017. The only Republican to announce so far is state Rep. Brad Sherman (R), but both Attorney General Brenna Bird and House Speaker Pat Grassley have also expressed interest, among many others.
The only prominent Democrat to express interest so far is state Auditor Rob Sand (D).
Senate 2026
Kentucky: Rep, Andy Barr (R), who has a lifetime 79 percent American Conservative Union rating, is officially in the race. Barr is already being slammed by the conservative Club for Growth, which would presumably prefer former Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R), who is already in the race.
With Gov. Andy Beshear (D) already declining to enter the race, Democrats seem unlikely to field a top-tier candidate.
