Masket: Yeah, I think a fair number of Democratic candidates have tried to learn from Mamdani. Not necessarily that they want to adopt his policies, but, like, they saw that he was a very effective campaigner, for one thing. They and also found, I think, very effective ways to talk about affordability, to make it very relevant to people’s lives. Democrats can certainly read the polls; that’s—that’s at the top list of people’s concerns.
Most Democrats, whatever they’re talking about, will try to tie it to affordability. And theoretically that, voters will resonate somewhat with that. But one thing that really struck me about the—the 2025 elections—is that Democrats did pretty well across the board, right? With a lot of different elections. Yes. A lot of different styles of candidate. Even at a time when the party itself is very unpopular.
A lot of Democratic voters really hate the Democratic Party leadership in a way that we’ve not really seen before, and I think you’re going to see, like, a lot of midterm challenges in the primaries next year. But regardless, most voters are thinking about the election as they have in recent years: Is are you supporting or opposing what Donald Trump is doing? And they see the Democrats as they’re the pushback, regardless of whether they like the party. It’s the only one out there.
So you can still, at least in these elections lately, you can still win something with nothing. That doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do about the next presidential election. And I have no idea what they should be doing, but at least in terms of congressional stuff going on right now, yeah, as long as there are… [opponents] of the other party from an unpopular, aggressive president, that seems to be helping them.
Bacon: People say presidential polls really don’t matter. I’m a little skeptical of that, only because in 2013 the polls did show Hillary Clinton doing pretty well, and she did end up winning the primary. I think in 2017 the polls showed Biden ahead, but the race still felt pretty open.
So do you consider this—do you consider the Democratic primary right now to be wide open?
Masket: It is very open. Yeah. To a degree we probably haven’t seen since ’08, maybe even longer. Yeah. I mean Biden wasn’t a slam dunk, but he was the best-known candidate going into 2020. People had generally warm associations with him as Obama’s vice president. But there is really not an heir apparent in the party right now.
And to the extent Newsom has support, it’s because he’s had his name out there more than anyone else. But over the coming year, with all these congressional contests going on and some gubernatorial contests going on, there’s going to be a lot more names out there. And at this [point], I would be very hard-pressed to say who the obvious choice is for Democrats right now. I think it’s very open.
Bacon: And just to finish, I think you’re doing a book of the Republican Party or you just finished one?
Masket: I’m just finishing up a book; it’s the Republican sequels to my last Democratic book. Looking at Republicans between 2020 and 2024.
Bacon: Did they not learn anything or they didn’t care what they learned?
Masket: It’s not a learning from loss situation. It’s we refuse to learn or it’s we’re going to deny that the loss occurred. It’s hard to learn a lesson from a—from a loss you don’t acknowledge. What they did was more of a doubling down situation. Just regarding 2020 as a fluke for a number of reasons and instead going more in on the Trump direction. My book is called The Elephants in the Room, plural. On the Elephants.
I spent a lot of time focusing on local Republican leaders, local county party chairs across the country, who, interestingly enough to me, a lot of them were very uncomfortable with the idea of nominating Trump for a third time in 2024.
They generally liked his first term. They liked what came out of it. But they saw this as: This election could be close. He has a lot of baggage that other candidates don’t have. We have a number of very qualified people, and Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and others. Maybe we should be thinking about someone else.
And the fact is their Republican voters, primary voters, wouldn’t hear of it. They were just all in on Trump from very early on. And there was no amount of organization or persuasion that their party leaders could do to steer them in a different direction. So a lot of it is about the essentially leaders, the party can’t decide, so to speak.
Bacon: Yeah, because the average county party at that level thought they needed a different candidate, purely based on the chances of winning with somebody new. Seth, this was great. Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it.
Masket: Thanks so much, Perry. It’s great talking to you.