Front Burner - Trump's uphill road to the midterms

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

In just over five weeks, Americans will head to the polls for the midterm elections and the contours of the vote are taking shape.Republicans are defending narrow majorities in Congress. Trump’s approval ratings are underwater, with the economy and cost of living a central concern. In some Republican races  candidates are beginning to put some distance between themselves and the president.But what larger questions are Americans being asked to confront this November? Is this a referendum on Donald Trump? On the economy? On the war in Iran? Or will this be about the Democratic Party's attempt to carve out a coherent identity post-Biden? Alex Shephard is a Senior Editor at The New Republic. He's our guest today. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts 

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Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. In just over five weeks, Americans will head to the polls for midterm elections. Republicans are defending narrow majorities in Congress. Trump's approval remains underwater. The economy, and particularly the cost of living, is emerging as a central concern. And in some Republican races, candidates are beginning to put some distance between themselves and the president. So what larger questions are Americans being asked to confront this November? Is this a referendum on Trump, on the economy, on the war in Iran, or will this be about the Democratic Party's attempt to carve out a coherent identity post-Biden?

Today, Alex Shepard is on the show. He's a senior editor at the New Republic. Alex, how's it going? It's going good. Good. Glad to have you. So, as I mentioned, we're just over five weeks out from Election Day. On one hand, there's like this familiar midterm story here, an unpopular president, economic dissatisfaction, a governing party. defending pretty narrow congressional majorities, but also this is Donald Trump and this is not a conventional presidency. So what ultimately do you think this election is going to be about?

I mean, I think it sort of is about the conventional story of prices going up and concerns about the economy growing, amplified by choices the president has made. So those are choices both in terms of the global trade war that is causing prices to rise. There are choices that include the Iran War, which is also causing especially oil prices to rise. Prices have soared since the start of the Iran War, and they're up almost a dollar and 50 cents since the end of February alone. A rapid surge, and the price of diesel fuel is straining businesses

and threatening to raise costs across the economy. I think it's also about choices like, for instance, you know, blowing up the east wing of the White House to build the giant ballroom, right? And I think people, and, you know, the president's obsession with the Kennedy Center, among other things. It's been a dump for years. It's lost money for years. I can turn it around, fix it.

But if I do the job, I think the Trump administration, including Bobby, but the Trump administration should be recognized. It's not just that the president's actions are making a volatile, situation worse, but it's that as attention seems to be as it always is in kind of, you know, bizarre or bizarre areas or things that only Donald Trump cares about. Pew found earlier this summer that 42% of registered voters described their congressional vote as essentially a vote against Trump compared to 22% who described it as a vote for him. I mean, would it be fair to say that this, these midterms are a kind of referendum on. Trump himself. Yes, although I guess I'd put a heavy asterisk on that and that it doesn't always come out that way when you talk to voters. I think you can usually get there. I mean, a lot of times people will start by talking about their concerns about high gas prices, right? Or just like the

general sense that the economy has been getting worse for really since the moment. Liberation Day occurred and what was that, April of last year. And those things obviously have to do with the president too. And I think there's this sort of another story that you can smuggle in there, too, that we can discuss later, which is that the Democratic Party itself still has a kind of brand problem that I think makes it hard for voters to say, like, I am voting for Democrats for affirmative reasons, which is part of the story as well. But I think in general, when you talk to voters, yeah, they, they, a lot of them who voted for the president think that they made a bad decision now. A lot of people are just, I think, sick of the Trump era,

which is now in year 11. And I think that there's also just a sense of just like, yeah, of exhaustion with life under this presidency in two ways, right? Which one is just the economic battering that, you know, the average consumer has taken. And then two is just the sort of psychological battering, I guess, that people have taken just with all the other stuff that that goes along with the Trump president. But the weird thing about this is also that when you look at ads the Democrats are producing and like a lot of the stump speeches, It's mostly about cost of living stuff. They don't really talk about Trump that much.

They're certainly not running on an aggressive, you know, we're going to get this president into line kind of message. How are Republicans dealing with the cost of living stuff? I mean, I know Republican candidates in places like Iowa and Michigan are calling for measures to bring prices down. In some cases, they're distancing themselves from Trump's handling of the war. Just talk to me a little bit about how well they have been threatening. that needle. Yeah, so there's, there's sort of two buckets here, right? There are still a fair amount of Maga, hardcore Maga loyalists who either say this isn't a problem or the Democrats would make it

worse. You know, we're still dealing with Biden inflation, that kind of thing. Or even they're echoing, I think, the president's own message, which basically violates every, everything you usually learn about political messaging, which is just to say high prices are a cost, you know, the cost we must bear for this war whose aims we've never actually articulated. I have to say, you have a little higher, you have a higher game. It's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done. Remember that it's a little more. It's even if it was, frankly, even it was a lot more.

So that's happening in one group. But yes, especially in the Midwest. Well, and I would say in places like Rio Grande Valley and parts of suburban Miami, you're getting candidates who are not just pushing concern about Trump's immigration policies, which are affecting heavily Latino areas. Republican Congresswoman Maria Salazar from Trump's home state, now home state of Florida, out with a new ad tonight. Mr. President, some of your fame,

immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. The same Hispanics who help you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed to today. But they're also trying to say, yes, we need to do more here, right? The president has made some choices that are not helping the situation. And, you know, we'll give us another chance, essentially, and will govern better. Don't give power to the people who cause the problems that we're fixing.

Give us another chance or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years. The problem with this argument is that the two biggest drivers for the economic malaise that we're seeing right now are the tariffs and the war in Iran.

And Republicans aren't running on plans to fix either of those two things. And I think in general, voters, at least the voters that I've spoken to, they seem to kind of grok this, for lack of a better term, that they get that, you know, this is politics, right? There isn't a clear economic plan. And the problem is, right, that Donald Trump's the president. He's not going to just say, oh, yeah, you know what? I was wrong about the thing that I've, you know, my one consistent political belief for 50 years has been that tariffs are good. He's not

going to back down on those, right? And, you know, I think the situation in Iran, Trump is sort of now trying to say, yes, you know, if you reelect Republicans will end the war and win it. But, like, that's not a, that's not a midterm message. We have Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We're going to win that war very soon. That'll be over. And the gas prices will come tumbling down. So nobody else could have done that.

Nobody else. Everything the Republicans are doing right now, I think, just makes it easier for Democrats to not have to answer their own thorny questions about what their economic policy. is, right, about how progressive they'll be on economic and social issues, because they can just point at the incoherence of Republicans right now and the lack of trustworthiness because, you know, somebody running for a house seat can say whatever they want about bringing prices down, but they can't actually do it because they're not going to go in and say, yeah, we're going to, you know, we're going to assert congressional authority over tariffs. It's just not going to happen.

The question of corruption has also been running through these. midterms. Of course, we've seen all kinds of scandal and allegations around Trump's businesses, foreign investments, cryptocurrency, personal stock trades, government contracts, presidential pardons. And I see U.S. Senator from Georgia, John Osseth, making Trump and corruption really like the centerpiece of his reelection message. The depth of corruption and self-dealing and self-enrichment by the Trump family during this term is something that we have never, ever seen in the United States. At no point in our republic, have we seen anything like this?

He's beating that drama, it seems, every time there is a microphone or camera in front of his face. And I just, what have you made of his messaging on corruption and the degree to wish this is proving to be a successful message? I think a lot of people have been looking at Aosov's campaign is kind of the, I don't know, trailblazer for a kind of normy democratic campaign, right? Aossoff is occupying a lane that sort of is between progressive and establishment, lanes for a black fair term. That's not quite a third way. You know, he's not a centrist,

right? He's some, some, a secret third thing. And he has been pushing this for a very long time, this idea essentially that you should foreground to Trump, that Trump's corruption isn't just about Trump, it's, you know, it is seeping into every cabinet secretary seemingly and even to large portions of Congress as well. And I think this is in some ways part of the Democrats' best message for from a kind of generic voter sense, which is just to say the government is corrupt, right? These people are serving themselves and they're not serving you and we need to come in and clean house. And I think, you know, Asoff has shown, in some ways, I think he's taking lessons that a lot of Democrats have willfully forgotten from the first term, which is that it's okay to talk about

Trump, right? It's okay to mention his weird relationship with his personal assistant. It's okay to discuss the fact that his family is, you know, raking in hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars based solely on the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States. And it's okay to talk about the president, right, that this is people's lived reality is that the president is a person making these decisions. And it shouldn't be bad to. do that. And I think, you know, part of this, I think is part of a larger shift in the Democratic side to a, you know, a message, a kind of messaging that more aggressively goes after political corruption and, you know, corruption among corporate society. So I think that's one of the more

interesting things here. And for all of them, I think it's also fascinating because, you know, this is maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. But I think. I think people have looked to him as an interesting sort of 2028 candidate, somebody you could kind of bring together various wings of the party for quite a long time. And because he's running so far ahead in Georgia, he's been able to kind of run a national campaign essentially while running for re-election. And that I think is one of the more interesting things that's happening there. Yeah, yeah. We'll get to that too. He's definitely connecting this theme of corruption also to material.

issues in people's lives, right? Like, why health care is more expensive or why your groceries are more expensive, which is also, I think, working. Gas is up 30% since inauguration. Diesel, 47, coffee, 35, ground beef, 23%.

They doubled your health insurance premiums and slashed Medicaid to cut taxes for their corporate donors and the ultra-rich. They made you pay more for everything, and took us to war on lies and spent most of last year trying to cover up for the world's most famous pedophile while the crook president and his crook family raked in billions. A lot of it, I think, is about this sort of pivot. Because I think one of the problems that Democrats have is that when you talk to a lot of voters and they'll be furious about what's happening now, but they'll still kind of have a knee-jerk response, which is just to say, well, I hate both parties.

you know, politicians from both sides are bad because, you know, of my health care is crazy, right? Like they did Obamacare, like nothing's happening there. And I think the thing that Aosov has been doing that is so interesting and effective from a messaging standpoint is just to pivot, right, to say, yeah, you're frustrated about, you know, the price of a gallon of gas being so high. Here's why, right? Like, here's why the health care system is so screwed up. And, you know, it's often political corruption, but it's not always political corruption. And I think these things also pivot it back to the areas where voters trusts Democrats the most. So that's health care and kind of, you know, governance, let's say, a regulation of the economy. And, you know, given the larger

economic situation right now, that message, I think, is working really well. But, you know, you're also, you're seeing it in other places, too. I think Abdul Al-Assad, and Michigan is doing something that's similar. It's more tailored to Michigan voters specifically. The distraction from Michiganers are really worried about, they're worried that they can't afford their gas because of this trade war with Canada or because of this hot war with Iran that they got us into. They're worried that they can't see a doctor because they're about to lose their Medicaid. They're worried that their kid is being priced out of playing baseball. But in general, you know, a lot of Democrats are still, I think, steering away from this in part because I think

that they fear, you know, getting into a thing where it's essentially becomes a back and forth where Republicans will say, well, Nancy Pelosi, you know, trade stocks too. And part of that, I think is that Democrats are still very slowly adopting a larger anti-corruption message, one that, you know, would involve, for instance, a ban on all congressional stock trading or, you know, mandatory blind trusts for any, you know, anyone serving in the House, the Senate, or the executive branch, you know, who has a net worth of over a million dollars, things like that. And very few people are talking about that, but all stuff, again, I think has been kind of a pathfinder here. When you're leading a business, you're always thinking about doing more.

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With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at Viking. Let's talk about the congressional map. Republicans have a 53 to 47 Senate majority right now. Democrats need to gain four seats to take control. There's some really compelling races on that map. There's Troy Jackson, challenging Susan Collins in Maine. As we're talking, we talked about John Ossoff in Georgia, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown, trying to return to the Senate in Ohio, Abdulai Syed in Michigan, who you just mentioned too. James Tellerico, taking on Ken Paxton in Texas, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, Mary Paltola in Alaska. When you look at that collection of races, and I definitely did not go through all of them, what jumps out to you? I think what jumps out of me for the most part is just that every one of these races that you mentioned is making Democratic operatives insane right now. I mean, they're all really, really tight nail-biter races and every decision that's being made in every single, one of those races from how advertising money is being spent to how they specifically answer the

question about trans girls playing in girls high school sports, you know, is like a call, basically making everybody go crazy with anxiety. And there are just so many of these races, though, that you're like, okay, the Democrats seem to pick up four. They, they can, they, if all of them come good, which I think is a legitimate possibility, just given how crazy the, the, uh, overall situation looks for Democrats right now. I think it's a really good situation to be in for the party as a whole, even if almost every conversation I have about one of these races involves somebody being very anxious. I think the other thing about it that is interesting to me is that for the most part, all of these people in tight races are running very different campaigns that are

tied to specific issues in Iowa, Alaska, Maine, whatever. But that, they're all having to thread a needle essentially of, I think, creating distinction between both the Republican Party and their opponents, but also with the larger kind of quote unquote Democratic party that's in voters' minds. And, you know, some of this, I think, is coming via how they respond to questions about social issues. But I think as we're seeing with Al-Siyadh and Aosuf in particular, is that there's also, I think, an economic way that Democrats are responding to this as well, to sort of say, like, not, I think explicitly, but to sort of indicate that, you know, yes, you were frustrated with the sort of secrecy surrounding Joe Biden's presidency.

You're frustrated about the way that, you know, Democrats have handled economic questions before. We are part of a new kind of generation of anti-corruption Democrats are focused on, you know, concerns about monopoly, right, but also about transparency in government. And, you know, I think it's been fascinating to look at the ads as well because almost all of the ads that are being run and these involve something where the candidate is going out of their way to say, I'm not like those other Democrats, you know. And sometimes it's that they're more progressive, but, you know, and sometimes it's that they're more conservative. And sometimes, again, it's that they're, you know, trying to push this idea that they're, you know, they've seen your frustrations with the party and that they'll be different. On that note, you know, we've done all sorts of episodes about the future of the Democratic Party about its factions fighting over control and leverage. The AOC Mamdani Democratic Socialist wing versus the Hakeem Jeffries Chuck Sumer, more centrist wing.

Do you think that as a party, they're coming closer to figuring out what they want to say? Yes. I think that I think if you look at Aosov and Al-Sai in particular, you can, not. neither of whom are Democratic Socialists. Al-Salle is more progressive in a lot of ways. Both of them, I think, in the question of how the party responds to this sort of long-standing bond between Democrats and the state of Israel is very interesting, a slightly different approach there. I think in a lot of ways, yes, although part of it for me is interesting because you can start to see the sort of lanes of the 2028 primary, you know, figuring themselves out.

But one of the, I think in a macro sense, like, I think the answer is absolutely not. I mean, maybe if they look at these specific races and take lessons, but I think the way that it's shaping out right now is that, you know, you could look at like somebody like Rob Sands, right? It was running a relatively moderate campaign for governor in Iowa right now. Like he could win and else. I could win and you're going to have seven DSA members in the house. And I think, meanwhile, you know, Chuck Schumer, Jeffries, I think are more concerned about

how precisely they're going to respond to, I think, fairly significant questions about, you know, just how aggressive they should be in doing oversight. But on specific issues, I think the party has not made a ton of progress, right? I think that while it's clear that there are specific candidates like El-Said and Alsaf who have articulated, I think, a position on, for instance, how the United States, what the United States' relationship with Israel should look like. I'm just saying that we should treat Israel the way we treat any other country that did the same stuff.

I don't think that Democratic Party brokers are comfortable with those answers at all, even if that's where voters are. And I think, you know, in a lot of ways they've been given a gift in that, you know, if you talked to Democrats, and I talked to plenty, you know, in the immediate aftermath of Trump's victory in 2024, I think there was a real sense that they were going to be in the wilderness for a long time answering, I think, significant questions about their foreign policy and their economic policy and trying to learn lessons. And, you know, I haven't gotten a real sense that they've taken any, like, huge takeaways from this, but they don't have to because Trump launched a global trade war

and he launched a war in Iran that's going badly. And, you know, I think they will, um, they should escape back into power in the House, certainly. And, you know, I think things are shaping up for, uh, narrow and perhaps even a three-seat majority in the Senate as well. Um, and I think that's sort of when the rubber meets the road for a lot of this stuff. But, um, but I think, you know, for the most part, if you're looking for those answers, it's iterative.

It's in specific campaigns. I look at Aosov and, and LSAID quite a bit in this way, because I think that they're pushing the party on economic and foreign policy questions that aren't being pushed elsewhere. And I think, again, if you look at a lot of the other battleground races for the most part, you know, candidates are trying to shy away from a lot of those questions for sometimes for good reasons. And I think sometimes for reasons that, you know, if you say one thing about, say, Israel, your donor base might dry up. You know, you might suddenly have problems with the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or other things. And so I think there's still a lot

of a lot of caution, I guess, on thorny questions. And, you know, that's good politics, but also it means that we're shaping up for, I think, what's going to be a very exciting and interesting presidential primary season, which will start, like, God, in, like, four months. I want to zoom out here for a moment. Over the last year or so, there have been all kinds of challenges to the election system itself brought about by. the Trump White House fears even that the midterms could be stolen or corrupted in some way. There's also been a wave of mid-decade redistricting, much of it driven by efforts to reshape the map before the election. I just, what are you most concerned about as we get closer to

November when it comes to really like election integrity and representation? I think mostly just chaos. You're seeing this a little bit with what's been happening in Missouri lately where there was a sort of last-minute effort to redraw the maps, and it's been denied repeatedly by the Supreme Court. He's had to sort of step in. You saw this a little bit with reports about this database that the United States Postal Service was building that could have led to tens, probably hundreds of thousands, maybe more of ballots being thrown out. Now, both of those things have been kind of fixed, right? Like that there are attempts to bring chaos to the elections and then the legal system stepped in and in keeping with this sort of bend but not quite

break, like aspect of the American judicial system under Trump, they sort of protected the integrity of these things overall. But I think that there are plenty of people who for either self-interested reasons or reasons to try to please the president, I think our goal. to work to try to cause as much chaos as possible. But also one of the ironic elements of this election cycle is that, you know, after the Supreme Court tore up what little was left of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights era bill that mandated basically, you know, certain types of, that basically you would always have, that black voters would always have some bastion in states in the American South, that Republicans got greedy, right? They, in many cases,

drew up maps that I think would have given them safe majorities in many, many states, and then were told either by Trump loyalists or other leading Republicans to pump those numbers up. And they started to draw districts where they had, I think, you know, maybe a six or an eight-point voter majority as opposed to, you know, an insublish. safer versions of the same maps where districts would have, you know, there'd be fewer of them, but they would have, you know, 13 or more point advantages. And what we're seeing is that this could be an election in which Democrats have a nine point advantage. They might have an 11 point advantage. And suddenly these districts that were drawn up to try to give Republicans, you know,

just a little bit more of an edge in places where they already had a significant edge, those races are looking pretty tough. You're seeing a lot of districts in, for instance, in South Florida, right, where voters are very angry, understandably, about the Trump administration's immigration policies. But I think that what we're seeing here, which is interesting to me, is that efforts to essentially try to steal the midterms in an advantageous way may actually backfire for Republicans. Now, what this administration will do, especially given the fact that, again, like, Trump has been through this before, right? Trump lost midterms in 2018 when, you know, the economy was pretty good in 2018, when he still got pretty badly walloped in a blue wave

election. This one is shaping up to be much worse. He does not, I think, want to be impeached again. And again, I think many members of this administration, as we've discussed, I think, should be concerned about oversight. And, you know, there are, there are things like Democrats will be looking into all manner of malfeasance, right, from people that were pushing energy contracts in certain ways. Like, it's not just cabinet secretaries. It should be worried. It's lower level staffers here. And so I think the other thing to be concerned about is just that, you know, Republicans know what, what comes with congressional majorities, right? Like, Democrats aren't going to be able to pass a bill that it will help make the country more affordable

or stop the trade war from happening. But they sure as hell will be able to investigate government corruption and they're going to do that. Do you think, though, that this administration will be able to throw up enough roadblocks, though, too, like they could also just not listen to any requirements. That seems to be a bit of a pattern they have elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, I think the question with this administration

has always been, and you're seeing more and more of it, right? It's just like how big of a court order will they ignore? And for the most part, they've ignored, they've followed most of the big court orders. But like more and more you are seeing, you're seeing at least in, like you saw this last week, right, where the court orders them to allow Politico and CNN,

an MIS now, journalists back in the White House, they kind of say no for a little bit. Yeah. And then they let them in. I mean, it's a real concern. And I think I talk to, you know, a lot of people who work on like Democratic campaigns on the legal side who are basically just, they've been doing nonstop war gaming on these questions for months now. I still think it's going to be tough to do for one big reason, right, which is just that like this is going to be a huge way of election. Can they play a game of whackamol like on that level, right?

This is this will be more complicated in some ways than what they even try to. to do, you know, when when Trump attempted to have do a coup, basically, in January of 2021. And I am skeptical of that, and I haven't talked to anyone yet who is like basically laid out. I mean, I've talked to people who have laid out the kind of worst case scenario, essentially, of Republicans refusing to certify this election, all laugh January 2021. And that's possible. I mean, there are various concerns, I think, that are, to me, much more pressing, which are just like, what do you do if a state?

essentially decide, like Georgia, for instance, refuses to certify any of its Democrats, the Democrats who win there. There are a lot of things that I think people should be worried about on that level. The idea of a sort of whole-scale theft, I think I'm skeptical of, or just a refusal. Like, people have talked for a long time about Trump's potential to declare a state of emergency that he uses to seize ballot boxes, someone other thing. I'm just skeptical of it in part because the enthusiasm around this presidency right now is at record lows. I mean, I have been traveling around mostly the sort of, you know, middle south and the northeast, but like in places in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina that I've been going back to again and again for the last 11 years,

where you would see Trump signs everywhere, like everywhere you turned. you couldn't avoid them. There's nothing now. Like you'll occasionally see, you know, banners for, you know, MAGA leaning or MAGA Republicans who are running in individual races. But like a lot of the Trump enthusiasm is just gone now in a way that did not seem possible, right? I mean, the only time that it seemed comparable to this was like in 2021 when I think there

was a lot of sheepishness around support for the president for good reason. And you know what? Like there's history is littered with examples of unpopular authoritarians who hold onto power anyways. But, you know, I think one of the underrated things here is just that Trump's entire political career has been premised on the fact that he has, let's say, you know, between 20 and 30% of the electorate that has just been with him, you know, every step of the way. And those people are just not there right now. Because that's sort of, you know, we're heading towards a president who has an approval rating in the 20s in the midterm. Like, well, this is, you know, we're talking about historic lows here.

Like, I think, you know, 2006, when the Democrats, you know, retook the House and Senate, for a while has been like what Democrats have said that they, you know, aspire to. And I think that that's kind of like the median of what the possibilities are for them now. Like there's a, you know, even with all of the gerrymandering that we've seen, I think there's a real possibility for a historic way of election right now just because of how much malaise there is in the country, again, for for self-inflicted reasons. Alex, you're going to have to come back after the midterms. And we're going to have to see if you're right. Yeah. I mean, it could be like we'll have bigger problems if I'm, if I'm wrong about a lot of this other stuff. Okay, well, we'll talk about those too. Thank you for this, as always. Thank you.

All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Pawson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.ca slash podcasts.