Frank Bruni: According to much of what I read and hear, Bret, the midterms aren’t going to be just any old blue wave. They’re going to be a blue tidal wave. No, wait, even “tidal wave” doesn’t go far enough; a tsunami is coming. Or you can call what’s about to happen a “red undertow,” to cite an increasingly popular phrase.
I’m getting seasick. More than that, I’m getting concerned about excessive confidence among many political analysts and Democrats, who envision a smackdown so fierce that Republicans will suffer crucial defeats in places they never expected. Texas. Iowa. Kansas! (That’s over-the-rainbow optimism.) I’m all for hope, but it seems to me that some of the people pining for President Trump’s comeuppance have been sucked into a hopium den.
What’s your take? Isn’t there still plenty for Democrats to worry about?
Bret Stephens: My gut tells me there’s going to be a big blue wave, for all the reasons that should be obvious: affordability issues; the disgust, particularly among Hispanic voters, with the heavy-handed tactics of ICE; the Trump family’s naked profiteering from the presidency; plus what might be called Trump Exhaustion Syndrome among all but his most stalwart supporters. Even if it weren’t for all that, whichever party out of power usually tends to do well in the midterms.
But my brain demurs. Remember that striking Des Moines Register poll, right before the 2024 election, that showed Kamala Harris winning Iowa? In the end, Trump easily won Iowa and outperformed his polling numbers in every single swing state. Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t see any reason to think polling is more accurate than it was back then. Also, it’s not as if the Democratic brand is in such good shape.
Frank: I do remember that Register poll. And on Tuesday, Politico’s Playbook reminded me that the roughly 74 percent chance that Nate Silver gives Democrats to win a Senate majority is reminiscent of the 71 percent chance he gave Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2016.
Bret: Somebody needs to update the old saw about the three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and polls.”
Frank: Amen. But it’s not just the unreliability of polls that troubles me. As our news-side colleague Theodore Schleifer reported in The Times this week, Elon Musk has pumped more than $250 million into the Republican midterm effort; about $75 million of that is for voter turnout efforts alone. All in all, Republicans have much more money than Democrats and are blanketing television and social media with negative ads.
Anecdotally I hear about Latino voters afraid to go to the polls because what if the storm troopers of ICE are there? And Trump has no boundaries, no shame, so in these final weeks, he’ll surely continue his efforts to thwart certain voters and warp the results. On top of which, there aren’t that many swing voters anymore anyway. Is a wave — be it tiny, tidal or titanic — possible in the context of all that?
Bret: I agree that there aren’t all that many swing voters, but one of the reasons Trump won in 2016 and 2024 is that he was able to draw so-called low-propensity voters to the polls. Something tells me those voters aren’t going to show up this time, in part because they are disappointed by Trump’s performance, in part because they just can’t be bothered to vote in a midterm election.
Frank: It’s hilarious that he’s using rallies to urge voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Unlike him, Republican Senate and House candidates can read his approval numbers — and are conspicuously not urging voters to pretend any such thing.
Bret: Purely as a matter of political tactics, I’m not sure the president is altogether wrong. No Republican is going to be able to safely distance himself from Trump. G.O.P. candidates need the MAGA vote.
But leaving the politics aside, I hope to see Democrats win every competitive Senate race save for two or three. I’ll leave it to you to guess which ones those are.
Frank: Well, one of them is easy — Michigan. I know how you feel about the Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, and I understand and respect why. But you and I differ in our tolerance for Republicans who are willing to launder Trump’s incompetence, corruption, sadism and autocratic aspirations, and the alternative to El-Sayed is Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, who has done the classic Trump-critic-to-Trump-flatterer moral collapse. He cannot be trusted to push back against Trump. For me, that’s nullifying.
Bret: And what does it say to you that El-Sayed is the preferred candidate of both Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson?
Frank: It says nothing good — and speaks to the political perversity of our times. Look, I’m no El-Sayed fan, and I’m less of one with each passing week. He needlessly and petulantly derides reporters, acts as if legitimate questions are insults, and continues to project an off-putting arrogance. But for me, these midterms are about building a high, thick wall against the potential cataclysm of Trump’s next two years. El-Sayed is a brick in that wall.
Bret: Trump will be a figure of the past in two years but El-Sayed could be the future of the Democratic Party for decades. And it’s a future that makes me very, very uneasy, not just on account of his views on Israel but because he is an avatar of the Democratic Party’s leftward lurch as a whole. These days, the politicians I admire are those who are able to say no to the worst people in their own party. This is why I admire Democrats like Hillary Scholten, the Michigan congresswoman who defied some heavy political pressure and refused to endorse El-Sayed. And it’s why the other Republicans I hope to see win their Senate races are Susan Collins in Maine, because she’s that endangered species known as the moderate Republican, and John Sununu in New Hampshire, because he’s capable of thinking for himself.
On the other hand, seeing Ken Paxton lose in Texas, or Sherrod Brown regain his old seat in Ohio, would be delightful and delicious.
Frank: I think you’re going easy on Collins, who voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard, voted to confirm Russell Vought. Not sure I see a Maine skiff-load of moderation there.
Bret: Collins voted to convict Trump in 2021 and has voted against his initiatives more than any other Republican.
Frank: Um, that’s a low bar.
Bret: The one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind, Frank.
Frank: Also, I think it’s presumptuous and cynical to believe that El-Sayed’s election would mean he’s the future of the Democratic Party — though, with all his trademark modesty, he himself has suggested as much. I think his election would mean that at this particular moment, with Trump further degrading the country every day and Rogers saying nothing of significance about that, many Michigan voters wanted to send a stern message to Washington.
Bret: A message they’ll soon come to regret.
Frank: I can’t say with any confidence where the Democratic Party will be in 2028 or 2030 or 2032. I can respond only to the circumstances of 2026, when we can either green-light Trump’s continued crimes against democracy and common decency and sanity or make sure he’s contained until he’s pried from the Resolute Desk. One election at a time, Bret.
Bret: I understand how powerfully people feel they need to rebuke the president. Rightly so. But this line about “democracy being on the ballot” in November is a bunch of hokum. What’s really on the ballot is whether, goaded by Trump, Democrats will allow their party to be turned into a mirror image of what Republicans became under Trump: ever more ideologically extreme, ever more zero-sum in its political thinking. It’s bad enough to have one crazy political party in this country. We absolutely cannot afford two.
Frank: We’re mired in a senseless and profoundly costly war in Iran. Trump’s defense secretary wants to livestream an execution. Trump’s family and friends indulge in a previously unimaginable magnitude of corruption so they can amass billions atop their billions. And you say that what’s on the ballot is the trajectory and soul of the Democratic Party? I honestly don’t follow that.
Also? There’s ample evidence in this midterm of Democrats turning away from extremism. Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee in the Senate race in Alaska, may win because she’s not extreme. Ditto for Rob Sand, the Democratic nominee in the governor’s race in Iowa. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the Senate race in Texas, is not campaigning as a classic progressive. The list goes on. El-Sayed is not emblematic; he’s a thread in a pretty diverse tapestry.
Bret: Iran aside — a subject we’ll have to tackle in a future conversation — we don’t disagree about much connected to Trump. But the image you’re painting of the Democrats just isn’t one I’m seeing. From New York to Florida to Colorado, democratic socialists are winning important Democratic primaries. The mayor of New York, beloved by so many young Democratic-leaning voters, just issued an Oct. 7 statement that nearly every Jewish New Yorker I know viewed as a moral obscenity. With some of the notable exceptions you mentioned, moderate Democrats are running scared of their own left flank, especially in the bluest states. I’d love to think the future of the Democratic Party lies with its Roy Coopers and Josh Shapiros, but I’m afraid it’s more likely to be with its Gavin Newsoms and A.O.C.s.
Frank: I agree about that Oct. 7 statement, which was gratuitously divisive and provocative. And — to your point about the party — more Democrats should have said so instantly and loudly. Mayor Zohran Mamdani cast himself in a terrible light, and he also reminded me: He’s so very young. (Thirty-four, to be exact.) Feeling the need that he obviously did to tack on all that sins-of-Israel material to what should have been a straightforward remembrance of the victims of Oct. 7 is immature on top of being wrongheaded. You don’t need to promulgate your whole philosophy just because you have a tight grip on the mic. Save it for another day of the year. There are 364 to choose from — 365 in a leap year.
Bret: I’m glad we’re ending on a note of agreement. Something else to agree on: America lost one of its true originals last week with the death of Mike Ditka. Barry Bearak had a terrific obituary, containing details of Da Coach’s life I knew nothing about before he rose to glory with Da Bears. This one stood out:
He was recruited heavily to play football by Pitt and Penn State. At the time, he thought he might one day become a dentist, and Pitt alumni convinced him that their dental school would be easier to get into.
Reflecting later on his career choices, Ditka said: “The dentistry thing wouldn’t have happened. I mean, think of Dr. Ditka. Me looking into people’s mouths? I think I’d rather knock teeth out than put them in.”
Good thing some of us are put on this earth knowing what we’re meant to do — and not meant to do.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post Blue Wave? Blue Tsunami? Or Just Blue Sprinklers? appeared first on New York Times.
