Political analyst Ron Brownstein delivered a painful history lesson to Republican strategist Brad Todd on CNN’s “Arena with Kasie Hunt.”
Brownstein unleashed his bad news after Todd summarized how Democrats and Republican will go about trying to win elections this year in the lead up to the November mid-terms.
“The candidates who are running on the Democrat side hope to have an election about Donald Trump and the candidates who are running on the Republican side — if they're smart — will want a candidate who’s focused on where the voters are and where their lives are and how they can get better,” said Todd. “Focused campaigns that win [look through] the windshield and the campaigns that lose [look through] in the rear-view mirror.”
Todd added that on President Donald Trump's best day, “he's defending people who are forgotten. He's defending blue collar voters, people who that have been missed over by the elites on both coasts. On his worst days, he's focused on Donald Trump.”
But Brownstein pointed out that Trump is a whirlpool dragging down the most windshield facing Republicans on the campaign trail.
“What's the core Democratic argument for 2026? You elected Donald Trump to solve your cost-of-living problem,” said Brownstein, “but all he's done is make it worse with his tariffs, the gas prices and the war, the cuts in federal health care assistance, while he's focused on enriching himself and his family and rewarding his allies. And every day, from tearing down the East wing to the slush fund, to putting his name on money, to putting his name on buildings, he gives Democrats bullet points on that.”
And then Brownstein, a long-term veteran of politics and elections, unveiled his history lesson.
“And what if you're looking at the windshield or the rearview window? The fact remains that in Trump's first term in 2018 and 2020, every Republican Senate incumbent or challenger in a state where his approval was net negative in the exit poll lost — except for Susan Collins (R-Maine) in 2020. She was the only one who was able to swim past that undertow,” said Brownstein. “So, [Trump’s] standing mattered. No matter how hard you swim away, it matters if he continues to do things that diminish his standing with the public, because it's hard for Republicans to escape that kind of whirlpool.”