Trump Blinked ... Again

Also, a deeper look at the Democrats' prospects in red state Senate races.

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Who could have seen this coming?

The United States and China on Monday took a step to defuse the trade war threatening the world’s two largest economies, agreeing to temporarily reduce the punishing tariffs they have imposed on each other.

The move by the United States, after President Trump had repeatedly declared that he would not lower tariffs without concessions from China, represented an acknowledgment of the costs of an all-out trade war with China. Despite the White House’s bluster, the Trump administration ultimately backed off, for now, from the steepest tariffs, and agreed to hold more formal talks with Beijing after companies and consumers started showing signs of economic strain.

…. In a joint statement released earlier in the day, the United States and China said they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days and continue negotiations they started this weekend. Under the agreement, the U.S. would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30 percent from its current 145 percent, while China would lower its import duty on American goods to 10 percent from 125 percent.

The outcome of the frenzied weekend of negotiations in Switzerland brought tariff rates close to where they were before Mr. Trump ratcheted them higher on April 2, which he billed as “Liberation Day.” However, the talks did not appear to yield any meaningful concessions beyond an agreement to continue discussions.

Make no mistake: this is a full-on surrender by Trump. He imposed onerous tariffs on China, began negotiations on a trade deal out of the impasse he created, and ultimately decided to return to where things were before he imposed the tariffs. He got absolutely nothing in return for pausing the tariffs he unilaterally imposed. Moreover, levies on Chinese imports remain in place (which is a tax on the American people), and, in the meantime, the slowdown in trade created by tariffs should lead to short-term shortages on products imported from China.

In addition, because the US and China only agreed to a temporary pause in tariffs, the business uncertainty that Trump has foisted on the global economy will continue.

So to reiterate a point I’ve made before: Donald Trump is the world’s worst dealmaker.

The Democrats’ Senate Dilemma

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

Last week, I wrote about the Democratic Party’s chances of winning back the Senate … and I’m taking off the paywall so everyone can read it. Though, hint, hint.

Today, a piece in the Bulwark examines the same issue and concludes that more moderate policy positions are essential to Democrats' winning back the Senate in 2026.

There is near-universal agreement among Democrats that the party needs to expand its tent and appeal to more moderate and independent voters. What’s far less clear is what exactly they are willing to do to make the Democratic label more palatable to those types of voters.

… Another option is to simply bank on voters being so turned off by Trump that they turn to you. This may have worked in certain contexts. But the record is fairly mixed. Ask Mitt Romney if Trump’s toxic politics eventually ruined him. Ask Barack Obama if the Republican “fever” ever broke.

And yet, if you survey Democrats now, these appear to be the predominant tactics the party is relying on to win back control of Congress. Thermostatic politics may work in the short term. But the fear in some quarters is that the thermostat won’t help if the house is on fire.

You should read the entire piece because the excerpt above doesn’t really do it justice.

Lakshya Jain, one of the smartest political observers in the business, follows up with a similarly provocative argument.

My issue with these arguments is that we have plenty of evidence that shows even the ideal Democratic candidate can’t usually outrun the partisan lean of solid red states. The stars must be perfectly aligned for Democrats to win in red states, and that candidate quality, particularly with the Republican candidate, probably matters more than policy positions.

By point of comparison, let’s consider what happened in 2018 — Trump’s first midterm. That election was a Democratic wave, with the party picking up 40 seats and control of the House of Representatives. In the Senate, however, Republicans picked up two seats. Though considering how brutal the Senate map was for Democrats, that was actually a pretty good outcome.

Most notably, seven Senate Democratic candidates prevailed in states that Trump won in 2016. In solid red states like Ohio (R+3), Montana (R+11), and West Virginia (R+20), Democratic incumbents held their own. In three states that flipped to Trump in 2016, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Democratic incumbents kept their seats. In Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema became the first Democratic Senate candidate to win an election there in three decades. In Nevada, a state Hillary Clinton won in 2016, Democrat Jacky Rosen knocked off incumbent Republican Dean Heller.

What can we glean from this data dump? To me, the obvious takeaway is … there isn’t an obvious takeaway.

Thermostatic opinion almost certainly played an outsized role in why Democrats did so well. Democrats won the popular House vote by nearly nine points, which undoubtedly helped them in blue and purple states and made certain red state races more competitive.

But a good environment alone wasn’t enough for Bill Nelson in Florida (a R+2 state) … though arguably it helped Sinema in AZ (R+5) and probably made Texas more competitive (Ted Cruz beat Beto O’Rourke by 2 points in a state that was R+8). It also couldn’t save Democratic incumbents in three red states — Joe Donnelly in Indiana (R+9), Claire McCaskill in Missouri (R+9), and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota (R+11). (It’s worth noting that all three of these Democrats lost to strong Republican candidates in 2018, and two of them, Donnelly and McCaskill, had won six years earlier, largely because they faced off against fatally flawed Republican candidates.)

Some red-state Democratic incumbents, like Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia, could outrun their states' partisan lean (and were lucky to face off against weak GOP candidates). But in a much worse environment for Democrats in 2024, Brown and Tester lost, and Manchin didn’t even try to run.

Let’s fast forward to 2022, when Democrats picked up one Senate seat, and in a political environment that favored Republicans. In Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan was probably the ideal Democratic candidate in a state that has moved further and further to the right. JD Vance was a lousy Republican candidate, yet he still won the race by 6 points. Senator Raphael Warnock was the only Democrat to win a statewide race in Georgia in 2022. Is it because he took more moderate positions on key policy issues? It’s true he de-emphasized abortion, though he did that to reassure Black voters, not moderates and independents! But ultimately, the most significant boost to his candidacy was that he ran against a terrible Republican candidate, Herschel Walker. The same is true of Mark Kelly, who prevailed against the dreadful Blake Masters in Arizona, Catherine Cortez Mastro, who bested the underwhelming Adam Laxalt in Nevada, and Maggie Hassan, who beat the way too MAGA Don Bolduc by nine points in New Hampshire, which was a D+1 state.

How Can Democrats Flip The Map in 2026?

One of the key arguments we’ve heard since November 2024 is that the Democrats’ key to winning in red and purple states is to embrace more moderate positions that appeal to independent and centrist voters. I don’t mean to dismiss the importance of such efforts, but they are not a panacea, and the benefits of taking more moderate positions are vastly overstated. I don’t care how much a red-state Democrat triangulates, some races simply aren’t unwinnable.

There’s an argument that if national Democrats moderate their position on key issues, like immigration and trans rights, then it could help red-state Democrats get past the party’s toxic brand in those places. But ultimately, the party can only move so far to the right on any of these issues. Democrats will still be the party of abortion rights, gun control, and civil rights. They’re never going to be the party of mass deportation, and there is a collective action problem that makes it impossible for Democrats to walk in lockstep on issues affecting the LGBTQ community. There’s a reason Republicans keep winning the vast majority of Senate races in the Deep South and the Plains states — their policy positions are simply more in line with the electorate.

For Democrats to win in red states, the stars need to be perfectly aligned in their favor. They need a strong candidate who has a broad-based appeal. They need the Republican candidate to be so unappealing that they win cross-over voters, and they need to run in a political environment that is generally positive for Democrats. Even then, it may not be enough to overcome a red state’s political lean, particularly in Senate races, which tend to be more partisan than gubernatorial fights.

If the last few Senate cycles tell us anything, it is that the Republican brand is far more toxic in swing states than Democrats’ (of the seven swing states in the 2024 election, Democrats hold 10 of the 14 Senate seats and the governor’s mansion in five states).

Can that advantage translate to redder states? Maybe with the perfect candidate, like Louisiana Democrat John Bel Edwards, who won two races for governor there and is far more conservative than the national Democratic Party. Maybe the same can be said for Mary Peltola in Alaska, or even Tester and Brown in a better political environment (which should be true for Democrats in 2026).. But make no mistake, the Democrats who can win in red states are basically unicorns. Even if all four of the aforementioned candidates run for Senate in 2026, the deck would still be stacked against them.

I’ll point to one more example. In 2020, Democrats recruited Montana Governor Steve Bullock to challenge incumbent Republican Steve Daines. Bullock was arguably the perfect candidate for Democrats. He’d won three statewide races in Montana — one for attorney general and two for governor. He raised significantly more money than Daines, but ultimately, he lost by 10 points — 6 points better than Joe Biden in the state- but it was still a hefty defeat. Sometimes, even the perfect candidate is not enough to secure victory.

In the end, Democrats' hopes of winning the Senate in 2026 will primarily be determined by Donald Trump’s popularity (or lack thereof), followed by the party’s ability to recruit strong candidates and the extent to which Republicans shoot themselves in the foot by nominating extreme and radical candidates. Adopting more moderate policy positions might help in some places, though it’s far too soon to say, and arguably, it’s likely to be the least determinative.

One More Thing …

Democrats moderating their positions on cultural issues could also be a good example of fighting the last war. Republicans ran on immigration and trans rights in 2018 and 2022, with much worse outcomes for their candidates. Voters weren’t focused on those issues. Maybe they worked better for Trump in 2024, or maybe voters’ concerns about inflation and the economy weighed more heavily and were more determinative of voter decision-making.

It’s quite possible that by 2026, Trump’s deportation extremism hurts the GOP, or that voters will be more focused on the economy or health care, and that immigration and trans rights won’t play a significant role. For Democrats, I’d spend more time focusing on candidate recruitment and less worrying about the party’s position on trans athletes.

Musical Interlude

I can’t believe I forgot to commemorate 5/8/77 day last week. That was the anniversary of what is arguably the greatest concert in the history of the Grateful Dead.

But I’ll also give a shout out to Buffalo, 5/9/77. It’s not as good as Cornell … but it’s in the conversation.