The biggest mistake is the most obvious one, right, which is Iran.

That changed the direction of this election.

The war and the rising gas prices and diesel and fertilizer, that is what has completely undermined the Republican case.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and that shadow you're seeing, the one stretching out from now to election day, may just be from a gathering blue wave.

By most estimates, Democrats now favored to win back the US House in upcoming midterm elections.

They also now look more likely than not to take back the Senate.

But the thing about waves, they don't always break.

And the thing about Democrats, they have a knack for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

President Trump's poll numbers have hit all-time lows.

Republican candidates have been forced to defend his costly around war and a struggling economy.

In any traditional midterm election year, an unpopular president would be nowhere to be seen.

But President Trump has no interest in hiding.

And given how much the GOP revolves around him, it's not entirely clear to me how he would keep a low profile even if he wanted to.

So today I'll get into some of the midterm horse race because let's be honest, not even the Democrats can believe how well things are trending for them.

But also how a reshaped Congress could affect President Trump's final two years in office.

And yes, I said final.

Joining me, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, Liam Donovan, a seasoned Republican strategist.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

No.

You're supposed to say yes Vladimir.

I know, but I'm saying no.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

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Our people are working to build a brighter future in automotive, greenhouse agriculture, clean tech, environmental conservation, and beyond.

in the business of what's next since 1898.

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And... Amy Walter, Liam Donovan, thanks so much for joining us today.

Yeah, happy to be here.

So first I'm going to turn to you, Amy, because I mean, I'm seeing not just in the polls, but also in the prediction markets that the Democrats are way ahead.

It looks like they're going to win the House and the Senate.

Do you feel as confident as the headlines have been saying and or can the Democrats still screw this up?

I think there are a couple of things to think about when we think about the House and the Senate, because they are really very different.

In the House, Democrats need to net just three seats so that there are plenty of vulnerable Republican districts, enough of those districts that netting three seats is definitely the most likely scenario.

So it is easier to see the path for Democrats taking the House.

The Senate still has to go through some very Republican places.

And the reason I think you're seeing, yes, the prediction markets giving Democrats the advantage in the Senate, but not as high of a percentage as, say, the House, is that in order for the Senate to flip, Democrats are going to need to take states that Trump carried by double digits, whether that's Ohio, Alaska, Texas, and Iowa.

One thing we know at this moment is that there's a significant enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, those who are excited to come out and vote, those who don't know if they're going to actually show up and vote.

But if the elections were today, is it your view as of right now, you would expect that both the House and the Senate are going to flip?

I would say there's still an there's enough of an unpredictability about the Senate that I would not feel as confident as saying that's definitely going.

Do I feel like Democrats have the advantage today?

Absolutely.

Is it a foregone conclusion?

No.

I think Amy lays it out very fair and very objectively in terms of the terrain that this is playing out on.

That's the best thing that Republicans have going for them.

It's that the structure of the map is such that it's easy for Democrats to count to one seat, maybe two, but there's a chasm between a state like North Carolina and the next most gettable seat like in an Ohio or greater, which is states that went for Donald Trump by 11 plus 12, 13, in some cases 14, 15 points.

That is a difficult thing to do, particularly when you're faced off against incumbents who don't have any scandals to speak of.

So I think if you're looking at pure polling, you feel pretty good if you're Democrats.

If you think about the terrain this is playing out on, I think the intangibles make it more likely than I think the markets are giving credit for that Republicans kind of bend and don't break.

Because that's what we're really talking about here is not whether Republicans will have a good night, but whether they'll be able to hold on by the skin of their teeth in enough places to hold that 50-seat majority.

So in Senate races where it could go either way, what's your general recommendation Liam for should these candidates be aligned with Trump or should they be trying to differentiate themselves substantially?

I think that if you in the last three weeks of the campaign are waking up and going, Oh, what should I do?

The answer is, you just need to ride this one out.

Because if you are not independently known, or branded as someone who breaks in the president in the mode of Susan Collins, Susan Collins is understood by the voters of Maine to be distinct from not only Donald Trump, but from the National Republican brand.

That's the reason why she keeps being reelected.

She is in a different position than someone who is otherwise seen as just a normal Republican, who would not only not get much out of differentiating from the president on major issues, but might even lose some votes.

Now, I think there are places where differentiated on key issues might matter.

I think Mike Rogers is a good example.

In a state like Michigan that is across the river from Canada, is dependent on trade with Canada.

I think breaking from him on a specific issue that is of parochial importance, that might make sense.

But just generally, kind of trying to pick a fight with the president is not a high percentage move, particularly not at this point in the race.

So Amy, so far, I mean, Trump has been doing a lot of his own damage in terms of being seriously underwater in the economy, which matters so much to voters.

And his popularity level is at the lowest we've seen it in either term.

As we get closer to the midterms, if you are making recommendations to Democrats who are in competitive seats, is it, you know, just don't need to make any significant waves?

Trump's - Trump is making the story for you?

Or are there things that you think the Democrats must do in the last few weeks to improve their ability to to have the outcome they want?

Yeah, I think there are different kinds of voters here in these different states.

In a state like Michigan or Maine, where Democrats should be doing really well, right?

If you look at just the president's overall approval rating in that state, it's lower than the national number.

And so, you have voters in those states saying they want to see a Democratic Congress, but they haven't been sold yet on the Democratic candidate.

Some of that is because of who the Democratic candidate is.

I think especially in a place like Michigan, there's some reservations about how far to the left he is.

And in Maine, the question is, who is this guy, Troy Jackson, we don't really know very much about him.

We know a lot about Susan Collins.

So, it's convincing Democrats in those bluish or purple states who do want to vote against Donald Trump and who do want to vote for a Democratic Congress to come out and vote for Democrat.

In the red states, the whole key now is whether or not these Republican-leaning voters, people, many of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but who are disappointed in the economy, are upset about the war, don't like paying $5 a gallon for gas.

Right now, many of them are saying, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I don't really like Democrats, but I'm not really sold on what the president's done.

Maybe I just stay home.

Those voters, if they do stay home, that becomes problematic for Republicans, if they show up and vote Democrat.

Now, that is where you start to see all of those red states move toward Democrats.

In other words, that's converting former Trump voters into Democratic voters.

But I think overall, if you're a Democratic candidate right now running in this environment, the number one rule of thumb is do no harm.

You see them running almost exclusively on the cost of living against the war and against corruption.

This idea that the people who are currently in office are using their office to make themselves wealthier and to help, whether it is big business or insurance companies or pharma, even wealthier.

And so what you have in this environment, I think it's a really dangerous rip current here for Republicans, because it's not just about the frustration with President Trump and the economy.

There's also an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment.

These guys are all sort of taking advantage of us and the system.

These people who are part of the system are using the system to make themselves wealthier, and we're the ones that are getting hurt.

And so I think really for Democrats, it is just keeping on that message and not stepping on it by trying to make it more complicated than anything else.

- So you're saying we're not gonna see suddenly transgender bathrooms and sports, they're not gonna appear in the next few weeks for the Democrats?

- Well, they're on ads.

Listen, if you're a Republican, this is what you're trying to do.

You've got to figure out how do we get these folks right now who we know don't like Democrats, but are upset about the economy, aren't crazy about what Trump's doing.

How do we get them off the couch and to just basically suck it up and put their red jersey back on and come vote for us?

How can we get them enraged, angry, fired up?

And they're hoping that those cultural issues may be the one thing that does it.

It's either socialism, right?

This person's going to go to Washington and go vote with those crazy leftists in Washington.

You think that this person's a centrist?

You think this person's going to vote in the best interests of our state?

No, they're not.

They're going to go to Washington and get pulled around by a whole bunch of folks on the left.

And then we know what happens next, right?

We get socialism, we get transgender bathrooms, we have all the other craziness that you get when you put Democrats in charge.

Right now, that message isn't really breaking through because the only thing that's breaking through to most voters right now is how much it costs them to fill up their car.

And that is really what makes this year so different from the last few elections.

Even in 2022, when Democrats were running into the headwind of inflation, what was motivating their voters was this real frustration about the abortion decision that the Supreme Court had handed down, as well as a number of Republican candidates running that year who really were outside of the mainstream.

There's nothing really blunting that headwind for Republicans now.

Now, Liam, I mean, I hear Amy saying that Republican voters aren't angry enough.

Is that, is that fair?

I mean, do you think Trump voters need to be angrier than they presently are?

I think you need to make sure that they're pointing the anger in the right direction.

If you're Republicans, you don't want them to be mad at you and they are disgruntled.

I mean, the mood is sour.

And the question is, can you orient that anger towards something that they dislike?

I think Amy's right.

Like, in terms of the opportunities, the places where Republicans stand to be able to turn things around is, particularly in certain states, I mean, Michigan being the best example with Abdul El-Sayed.

Maine has been a little bit more of a journey with a revolving door there.

But I think this is the first instance that I can recall where the Democratic establishment lost control over the nominating process and has managed to put in place candidates that might survive in a really good election cycle, but are risking seats that they otherwise might win.

So being able to as Republicans kind of cast a broader narrative that these Democrats are that are putting up are at a step with the mainstream, raising the salience of this notion of the DSA and the DSA ascendance within the party.

I think one probably there was a moment where when Mamdani was elected, there was a hope that we now had a new boogeyman.

And think about it.

That's another problem that Republicans have in the past.

They've always had whether it was Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders, AOC.

They've kind of run out of boogeyman this time.

And that has been a vacuum that they've not really solved for.

So I think it's three weeks left.

And so the success of that kind of a strategy is going to have to be like on a race by race basis.

But I do think being able to, as Amy says, sort of activate these voters.

But, you know, you don't want to activate voters and come out and vote against you.

So that is a two step process.

And, you know, in the states where this is going to be decided in the Senate, I actually feel okay casting a wide net, just getting people out.

And maybe they come out and vote for one candidate and drop off for the next.

What you just can't afford is them voting for a Democrat.

So you need to disqualify them and make sure that they don't associate James Tallarico with being this nice young man that they associated with in the context that the comments that he made back in 2020 about not eating meat and about, you know, trans bathrooms and about, you know, whatever the woke question du jour was.

You have to eat meat in Texas.

I think that's almost constitutionally required.

But was it a mistake?

I mean, for Trump to embrace Zoran Mamdani, right?

I mean, because I mean, you're going after communists and not Chinese communists, but communists in America, right?

And then and Zohran should be your poster boy.

And then you invite him to the White House and you mug with him.

And you show up at Gracie Mansion.

He likes him.

> Right.

>This is where Trump is.

I know.

Wasn't that a mistake for Trump?

There is nothing predictable about Trump.

Listen, the biggest mistake, we're going to go back, the biggest mistake is the most obvious one, right, which is Iran.

That changed the direction of this election.

I think with just the mistakes made from the first part of his tenure and his second term, whether it was tariffs, whether it's the fact that the economy is not rebounding in the way that voters wanted to see it, overreach by ICE, that was definitely already taking a toll on Republicans.

But it's the war and the rising gas prices and diesel and fertilizer, that is what has completely undermined the Republican case.

I'll also say, one thing, I talked to Republican pollster early on this cycle about using the socialism term.

And what's funny about social, you know, using that as a term to sort of throwing this around so and so's a socialist, don't vote for these people, they're socialists.

Americans don't really know what that means.

I mean, they hear it and they kind of go, well, I think that's not great.

But I don't really, I don't really know much about it in the same way that if you attach a MAGA name to something, people know what MAGA stands for.

And they have a an idea of what the kind of priorities of MAGA are and what the policies are of MAGA.

Socialists, they know a little bit about Bernie Sanders, but Bernie Sanders hasn't been president.

So they don't really, you're scaring people, you're trying to scare people about a future that they're not really quite sure what it would look like and Mamdani had his first year been a disaster right had crime spiked had there been some really terrible collapse of the economy in New York people start leaving yeah then I think Mamdani would have been a great foil as as Liam said for for Republicans to say oh you want to know what socialists do go check it out.

Look I live in New York and I can tell you that gas prices are much higher under Mamdani.

There's no question in the past month so I mean you got to give credit for that.

Okay just point your finger right there.

Before we close then I want to ask you first Amy then you Liam if we end up seeing that the House and the Senate go Democrat what does it matter in an environment where the executive order is still driving everything where Trump is a unique political figure that certainly will feel personally unconstrained by lame duck status I think you're exactly right this is the first time at least in my time covering politics that a president who had his party in power for the first two years of his term didn't really use that power very effectively.

All of the policy decisions that have been made and the big decisions that have been made have been through executive authority.

So not having control of Congress isn't going to put his ability to push policy decisions through.

At the same time, when you don't have control of Congress, when the other side is able to call witnesses, hold oversight hearings, put people in contempt, it throws a lot of sand in the gears of your executive decisions and ability to get to get those completed quickly and efficiently.

The other thing that I think is going to be critically important for Democrats to appreciate what their voters are telling them right now is we want you to spend the next two years in power, focusing less on Donald Trump and more on changing the system.

This is.

Yes, we want you to put a check on him.

Yes.

We want you to stop the excesses, but we really need you guys to do more than fight around the edges.

We want you to take serious steps to reform a political system that we think is inept, is corrupt, that if they do not come forward with an agenda that addresses that directly, they are going to face some pretty serious pushback, I think, from their Democratic base and activists who said, "We thought you were going to do this one thing, and once again, you've proven inadequate."

So, Liam, answer that for the Republicans, but also, if the Democrats do take the House and Senate, is this also paradoxically the boogeyman that Trump really needs?

Now he has an enemy he can really fight against because it's no longer his folks in power?

I think there's something to that, but I think the more interesting thing from a Republican standpoint watching what Democrats do is if they have the night they feel like they're going to have, if the polls are right and they just really run the table, they get a great night in the Senate, they run up the score, they get a bunch of House seats.

I think to me, it is night and day compared to how they felt the day after the 2024 election when it felt like they were chastened.

They needed to change, they needed to find something the American people liked.

I think validating this strategy and Democrats figuring out, hey, we don't need to change anything, we just need to fight Donald Trump harder, that is going to inform their choices throughout the next two years and heading up into the 2028 choice for their nominee.

I think from a Republican standpoint where the party goes, you know, I think there will be lots of people that maybe were previously Republicans don't like Donald Trump and they're going to think man, voters punish Republicans, because they were too aligned with Donald Trump.

So they're going to learn their lesson.

The reality is they're not going back in time.

We're not going back like we're not one blow out away from Nikki Haley being the next nominee for Republicans is just not happening.

And I think there's a tendency to sort of indulge that fantasy, particularly in the Beltway media.

Realistically, JD Vance is in all likelihood going to be the next nominee.

I do think the bigger night Democrats have, the more you might have different would be presidential aspirants sort of jump in the race.

But remember, we've never had a sitting vice president and those small samples, but we've never had a sitting vice president who ran to succeed their boss and wasn't at least given the nomination.

And so I don't know that whether it's a bad night or a catastrophic night.

I think that Republicans are sort of heading on the same path they are.

Okay, so Amy, Liam said Vance 28.

That's his pick.

I mean, Democrats, do you think I want to know the Democrats?

Are we going to see a from someone from the center or someone from the left of the party in 2020?

You don't have to give me a name.

But you have to tell me which of those two sides is more likely.

I think it's going to be somebody who's figured out that they can take pieces of each one of those coalitions to make the kind of profile that will work across what is going to be a very different electoral map for Democrats in 2028.

You can have a candidate that looks great today for whatever moment that we're sitting in.

Come 2028.

And who knows where we're going to be in the Middle East, what the economy is going to look like, what the president will be doing by then.

2018 going into 2020, it was pretty clear that the strategy really was just do no harm, pick the safest candidates you get, you can get.

This is just going to be a referendum, a reaction to Donald Trump, a back to normal election.

That's what 2018 was supposed to be about.

That was what 2020 was about.

That's not where 2028 is going.

So somebody who presents themselves as yes, they've been part of the establishment, but are willing to challenge the establishment.

That's the kind of candidate that I think will fit well, at least at this point for the 28 nomination.

All right, Amy Walter, Liam Donovan.

I'm sure we'll see each other again before 2028.

Thanks so much for joining us.

And now to puppet regime where cartoonish buffoons, buffoonish cartoons, humiliate themselves in exchange for power and influence.

So yeah, just like the midterms.

Roll that tape.

Alright you two, here's the deal.

Each of you stops attacking the other one's energy.

Only if he says yes.

Oh he will.

Vladimir, what do you say?

No.

You're supposed to say yes, Vladimir.

I know, but I'm saying no.

Didn't you see my truth social post where I said you said yes?

I'm on social media detox.

You see, he doesn't even... Shimmer down there, little Odessa.

You know, if you weren't attacking him, oil prices wouldn't be so high and I wouldn't have... What?

Oil prices are high because somebody on this call started stupid war that lasted way longer than he thought.

You know, I feel attacked by that.

I also feel attacked.

You should stop attacking him.

But he is attacking me!

Well maybe you should have thought of that before you started resisting.

He already took me to Cleveland.

Sorry, what were we talking about?

This is totally useless.

Oh, you think this is useless?

Hey, Vladimir, do you think this is useless?

Yes.

You see, we do have an agreement.

Just like I posted.

Puppet regime.

That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

If you like what you've seen or even if you don't, but you want to write in, Ian Bremmer at the ballot box, please, dear God, do not do that.

But why don't you first check us out at gzeromedia.com [Music] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

And by... Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Our people are working to build a brighter future in automotive, greenhouse agriculture, clean tech, environmental conservation and beyond.

Cox Enterprises in the business of what's next since 1898.

Additional funding provided by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, Koo and Patricia Yuen committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... [music]