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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If I don’t run, will those people go out and vote? And that’s the one thing I can’t tell. I’m going to ask them to.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
That’s President Trump speaking with Punchbowl News in a video posted Friday. Him not being on the midterm ballot may mean his supporters stay home. But for Democrats and voters unhappy with his performance so far, he is very much on the ballot. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins us now. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: We’ll get to the president and Republicans in a moment. But let’s start with a couple of primaries in the headlines. We’ve got Michigan from this past week and Wisconsin coming up in a couple of days. Let’s start with Michigan first.
LIASSON: That’s right. The Democrats are engaged in this very big experiment to see if a progressive candidate can win in a swing state. Michigan is not like New York City, where some democratic socialists that were endorsed by Mayor Mamdani won in very blue districts. Whoever won the primary in those districts was going to end up winning the general election. But Michigan is a swing state, and the person who won the Democratic Senate primary there, Abdul El-Sayed, won because he did very well among young people and white college-educated voters. He didn’t win among other important parts of the Democratic base, like African American voters.
And to win in November, when white college-educated voters are not as large a percentage of the electorate, he’s going to have to widen his coalition. General election voters are older, whiter, less college educated, more moderate. He’s going to have to bring in some independents. And does that mean that he has to change his views on some social issues like Israel, things that worked really well in the primary, but might be a turn-off to more moderate, independent voters in the general? That’s what we’re waiting to see.
RASCOE: And who’s the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan?
LIASSON: Mike Rogers, former Republican representative, was unopposed in the Republican Senate primary there. Republicans say they got the Democrat they wanted to run against, and they are clearly trying to make El-Sayed’s Muslim heritage an issue.
RASCOE: OK. Now let’s talk about Wisconsin. What’s going on there?
LIASSON: Wisconsin’s primary is on Tuesday, and the race for governor there is very similar to what we just saw in Michigan. You have a progressive candidate, Francesca Hong, who is polling way ahead. She is trying to make taxing the rich a part of her campaign, free childcare, very similar to what you’ve seen with other progressive candidates. She wants to raise state income taxes by 1% on couples making at least $431,000.
But the reason why the stakes are so high in the Wisconsin governor’s race for Democrats is not only that Wisconsin is a swing state – actually, it was the closest swing state in 2024 – but the likely Republican nominee for governor, Tom Tiffany, who’s a member of Congress, voted to overturn the 2020 election back in January of 2021. He denied the 2020 presidential election. So Democrats want to be the party of working-class voters. They’re running on issues like affordability and making it easier to buy healthcare and housing and education. But they’re not doing better with working-class voters.
So they have to figure out how they can do better with that group of voters who like some of the Democrats’ economic positions, but they’re turned off by a whole bunch of social issues that Democrats have taken currently or in the past, like abolishing ICE or defunding the police, trans rights.
RASCOE: But, Mara, I mean, at this point, who’s calling to defund the police?
LIASSON: Very few Democrats. But Republicans have been very good in the past at taking positions that are held by just a few members of the Democratic Party and trying to turn them into a whole Democratic Party position. That isn’t unique to Republicans. In the past, Democrats have tried to do this to Republican candidates, too, trying to tie them to the most extreme elements in their party. So Democrats are confident that their economic agenda will help them make inroads with white noncollege voters. Republicans are confident that the cultural issues will work for them.
RASCOE: Affordability and the economy bring us back to the president and how voters feel about how he and Republicans have done so far with control of the White House, the Senate and the House.
LIASSON: That’s right. Despite all the troubles that Democrats are having, Republicans have a lot of problems too. The latest jobs report was not good for the president and his party. It showed that the American economy lost jobs, not gained them. We also still have inflation. That’s leaving the president’s project of trying to get the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates in trouble. As a matter of fact, the latest talk from the Fed is that they might have to raise interest rates to choke off inflation. But what is interesting is that Donald Trump has changed his attitude toward the Federal Reserve a little bit.
He browbeat the former chairman, Jerome Powell, over and over again. He’s not doing the same thing to Kevin Warsh, his new pick to be the Fed chairman, but he is continuing to pressure the Fed in other ways. Despite losing at the Supreme Court, the White House told Fed Governor Lisa Cook in a letter that it is considering trying to fire her again from the Central Bank for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. They haven’t found any support for that in the courts, and the White House hasn’t filed any charges, but they are saying they are considering trying to fire her again.
RASCOE: That’s NPR’s Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much for joining us.
LIASSON: You’re welcome.
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