Donald Trump hasn’t been this unpopular since he incited an insurrection. But he’s still at least a bit more popular than an entity called The Democratic Party.

In this episode Matt and Brian discuss:

* Do Democrats deserve any credit for Donald Trump’s political woes?

* How should we square Democrats’ impressive performance in special and off-year elections with their underwhelming performance in the generic ballot?

* If Democrats change nothing between now and November, would they win big by default, or disappoint, leaving everyone wishing they’d undertaken a more serious rebranding?

Then, since nobody disagrees that Democrats have become toxically unpopular, we get at why? To what extent is it contemporaneous frustration with the weakness of the Democratic opposition, and to what extent is a longer-run disaffection with a party that’s moved left over the past couple decades. Have Democrats really changed stripes? Or are they right where they “should” be, given long-run liberal commitments to a robust welfare state and civil equality?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian argues Dems don’t necessarily need to sweat their generic ballot woes, but can only fix them by picking more fights with Donald Trump.

* Matt thinks Democrats’ uniform moves to the left since 2008-2012 are the culprit.

* Ta-Nehisi Coates on the counterproductive aspects of intersectional political rhetoric: “If you can extend the the temporality out just a little bit of the struggle I think it makes the mistakes not better, but understandable. It’s very, very hard to get any movement of humans to always act right, speak right, talk right. I really, really wish people read more about the civil rights movement deeply because they were fucking up all the time.”

Donald Trump seems to want out of the Iran war AND out of the Department of Homeland Security shutdown. But only if he can get out by being an even bigger asshole.

In this Matt and Brian discuss:

* Trump’s latest, inscrutable, and quite likely corrupt machinations to end his war of choice (or at least prosecute the war without throttling global oil supply);

* Signs that Republicans are catching more heat than Democrats for the DHS shutdown (and the ensuing long lines at airports);

* Whether it was wise or unnecessarily risk averse for Democrats to offer to fund TSA and other non-immigration components of DHS (to avoid blowback from weary travelers).

Then, does the fact that Democrats have maintained unity in this fight for the past 40 days redeem Chuck Schumer at all? (No.) If not, does it suggest that the Senate Democrats who lost confidence in him aren’t really that interested in fighting after all? Will this kind of fighting help Democrats improve their abysmal approval numbers and lagging generic-ballot numbers? Or are they simply unpopular because they’re out of step, policy-wise, with the electorate?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Brian argues that the real problem with Democrats’ policy agenda isn’t that it’s too far left, per se, but that it will, once again, crowd out the more pressing matters of democracy protection and accountability for fascism.

* Matt on the most perverse reason Trump hasn’t quite chickened out of the war.

* Perception of partisan ideology, by party ID.

Democrats are caught in a new and somewhat troubling fad, in which they promise working-class people extremely broad tax cuts, which, in practice, would make expanding the safety net all but impossible.

In this Matt and Brian discuss:

* The Oscars!

* What are these policies, where do they come from, and what would they mean, in practice, for other elements of the Democratic agenda?

* Is there tension between Revenuemaxxing™️ and Billionairemogging™️, and can it be resolved?

* Given all that will need to be rebuilt post-Trump, should Democrats embrace fiscal responsibility, or might there be some advantage to playing chicken with Republicans over the future of the American welfare state?

Then, Donald Trump seems pretty panicked about the consequences of his misbegotten Iran war. But not enough to chicken out. At least not yet. Why is that? What are the peculiarities of the global energy market that might explain it. If he’s waiting for global oil futures to hit crisis levels, what kinds of developments in the war might send it there? And can we count on Democrats to oppose war funding?

All that, plus the full Politix archive are available to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

* Matt on quagmires.

* Brian on how the Iran war exposes the shallowness of the U.S. elite.

* The Yale Budget Lab on the Van Hollen tax plan.

* Matt Zeitlen on the oil shock. (Spoiler: it’s bad.)