Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare you for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor at the University of Houston.

We're back after a little hiatus.

Once again, the world has changed.

It's like one of those deals were like, you open up your email inbox after being gone for a week or two, and it's like a million emails.

November.

Super urgent.

That is where we are politically right now.

You have to remember which camera to look into, what microphone to get close to.

It is just a whole new learning experience for us and for politics.

Lots going on.

Obviously, Venezuela is like the top issue that's going on.

What happened?

Did something happen?

Yeah.

This is the strangest thing, right?

We have seen in a very short period a absolute takeover of Venezuela.

The politics of this are, are are monumental and have serious implications for what's going to happen in the next cycle.

So let's start and talk about that.

Because to me, this is the biggest issue.

I think that the administration has been teasing this for a while.

Not specifically this, although they've been giving hints on nicely, but they definitely have been teasing this sort of mess around and find out presidency.

They like this norm because they want other nations to be on guard.

It's Greenland, maybe it's Mexico, perhaps it's Cuba.

It's just, I think slippery slope here politically.

So give me your kind of top level analysis of what you think happened and what it means for American politics.

Well, it's I don't know.

I mean, because on the one hand, you have a very well orchestrated military.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

Pardon me.

Police, Police action operations.

It's like Korea like what?

In Venezuela, that just took out a member of our regime, aka maduro.

Yeah.

Number two, there is no plan for what's next.

Nobody knows.

And I doubt that the white House, given the, contradictions that we have here between Marco Rubio, the president and, Stephen Miller, etc., etc., that anyone has a clear idea of what's going to happen.

Yeah.

So on the other hand, the political, domestic apparatus here are completely sideline it like Congress does not exist.

Yes.

And of well, Supreme Court, everything like that is.

Yes.

Is not even on play.

Yeah.

Where they the ones in the robes?

I. Forgot.

Yeah, but they're just on vacation.

I think with their robes, I was drinking coffee, I don't know, hot cocoa.

So the issue here is, is, is not regime change but he's regime change.

And basically I just one year oil.

Yeah.

And you can do whatever.

Or maybe we want to stop drug trafficking.

Or maybe he's not a legitimate president.

There's like a lot of explanations for this.

It's fascinating to me because I have my students exercise where we look at, the past few times where there's been this kind of intervention from the U.S and internally, I give them kind of the documents and the ways that the administration tries to plan this and tries to convince the American people of this.

In this case, I don't know what that even looks like.

Right.

It's just sort of this we're going to attempt this process because it's a he's a bad person and we need to fix it.

But what comes after that is unknown.

What came before that is very uncertain in terms of the justification for it, which the American people need.

We know that foreign policy interventions like this can go wrong very quickly.

And the problem for the president is that if you start to have a slippery slide here into some more complicated problems in Venezuela than it is going to be a real liability for him.

I don't think that, you know, the current regime, the new interim president Rodriguez, is just going to roll up and say like, yeah, whatever you want.

Yeah.

And sort of agree to like, whatever the demands are and then not do it or to.

No, I think they're just going to wait until November of this year.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then midterms.

Okay.

Hopefully they're going to say we're going to have a Democratic Congress then.

Right.

The person is going to lose power.

And and obviously here is these counter position between lack of affordability that a worried that the president hates.

And then no more, foreign wars.

But I'm starting the kind of a quote unquote foreign war that is not a war.

Right.

Because it's just an FBI or Department of Justice operation with the help of the military.

And I open the doors for China for Russia to say, well, this is my neighborhood.

I do whatever I want in my neighborhood.

Yeah.

So you have the Ukraine, Taiwan, etc., etc., etc., etc.

and then these I take out Maduro.

Yeah, but leave the other people, members of the gang.

Yeah.

Who are all in the same same boat regime.

Absolutely.

100% or even worse.

Right.

And then you're going to do whatever I tell you to do.

Right?

And, and is like, yeah, way.

Well and then sort of after the fact implying that, you know, U.S.

companies will come in and this is obviously a Texas connection, because a lot of these obviously energy companies are based in Texas.

And so he says they're going to go and fix the infrastructure there.

But that's a decades long need, and there's no way they can ramp up quickly.

Only Chevron really has a significant presence there, and everyone else is going to have to either spend that capital or take the time to find a way to be able to re re revert it.

And I don't know if that's going to work in the near term, certainly not before his presidency.

Oh no.

No.

So and again, like you say, I think this is just a waiting game for Venezuela where they're going to say, okay, yeah, we will do whatever you want.

And then, you know, kind of postpone until politically things change in the US.

Well, that's a real liability as well.

And not backing up you know.

Machado yeah.

And the opposition leader, right.

Yeah.

Saying that she doesn't have enough support.

Yeah.

And I think he's maybe she doesn't have support of the armed forces because they're part of the regime.

But most importantly, I think, is because the white House understands that if they back up Marcelo, Marcelo, he's not going to give them away.

Like, yeah.

Here, take my, oil.

Right.

Do whatever you want to do.

Right.

He's going to be the opposite of faith and the white House once you know what the white House want.

And I think that President Trump is very smart.

I'm very good at doing these things.

He's okay.

I'm going to leave you empowered.

Right?

I showed you that I can do whatever the hell I want to do.

I wasn't he.

Yes, yes.

Look, Maduro in in a couple of hours.

Destroy your biggest military, base.

Yeah.

I didn't suffer any casualties or anything like that.

Yeah, I seen.

Him, and I'm still in power.

Like there's no retribution for any of this.

Number two, whatever the UN says is like noise.

What you'd like.

What is that?

Right and right.

I'm going to leave in power.

You can do whatever you want to do.

Just give me the oil.

Yeah, and we're going to be good.

Maybe so.

Yeah, I think that's a great point.

And domestically you make a good connection because politically that's what the white House has to worry about.

Maybe that they're not worried enough about.

But certainly Republicans are.

That is that if you talk about this as an oil grab and to some degree that's been more of the norm in terms of the discussion, then I think it loses its political viability.

If you talk about it in terms of drugs, maybe you could make the case.

If you talk about in terms of democracy, maybe you could make the case, but you're still going to split the monga movement regardless, but at least you'd have some justification that people would see the value.

But if it's just about oil, I don't know if people are making this connection to the kind of quality of life that is the most important political issue.

And here's the other thing.

We know that the scholarship suggests that when presidents saber rattle like, this is a saber rattling moment for sure, but he's also engaging in additional kind of complications where he'll say, like, maybe we'll invade Cuba.

Maybe we'll invade Mexico, like this sort of green green land, right?

Like all these sorts of, you know, this sort of pie in the sky ideas about what they might do internationally are all creating this saber rattling moment.

And saber rattling produces sort of domestic instability in the economy.

It decreases consumer confidence.

It increases market volatility.

There's this sort of plunge in terms of the economic record.

And I think that is a real problem for the white House.

Who wants to be able to address an issue people care about but really can't.

The more that we're talking about a different issue altogether, but also that the issue that they're talking about could potentially hurt and undermine the success that they might have in terms of the economy.

But yeah, and then it's I understand, for example, Cuba.

Right.

Stopping oil to Cuba is just gonna, you know, like kill the economy over there, stopping Mexico for sending, oil to Cuba.

It's also like, just, you know, put the last nail in the coffin for the Cuban economy.

But when you're talking about having military operations in Mexico, that's that's.

Yeah, that Mexico is not Venezuela.

When you talking about.

Well, the next one is going to be Colombia.

Yes.

Yeah.

You're getting yourself into a very complicated maze of not only international, geo political implications, but things that could go very, very, very wrong in that sense.

It's a great point.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, I think that, as you say, that the saber rattling or whatever.

Yeah, has worked very well for President Trump pushing countries to do what he wants them to do.

Yeah.

And you have heard, Secretary of state, Rubio saying Mexico is the first time that he has been working on security issues.

Yeah, like no other time.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

That's a good point.

And I think that there is this sort of story that, like, they can try to adjust the way that international operations go with this as a premise.

So there's a story about Bill Russell, the former NBA player who was reluctant to be aggressive in the paint.

And his coach told him, basically throw one elbow one time and people will get the message to some degree, that's what's happening.

Yeah, I don't know if it'll work or not.

And, you know, the implications and the kind of, the kind of difficulty of accomplishing it, right.

The kind of downside to this, maybe even higher than they expect, but it probably has accomplished at least that goal of making sure people were on notice for what was to come.

Well, not only that, but domestically, in terms of, you know, the stand, the political stand, let's suppose that next term, in the mid term, Democrats win.

And then that the in 2028 Democrats win the presidency, the US is not going to be in any position to take a step back.

Yeah.

Like there is no way because in that moment the world is just going to do a lot.

Yeah.

So this is I think that over the long term what President Trump has done, he's changed the stand once again of the United States, internationally speaking, because you cannot just go back as a nation and say, oh, well, now we're Democrats and we're going to be respect for no, you have to stand your ground.

Right.

Maybe not as aggressively.

Yeah, but now you have to stand your ground.

That has changed.

I think the whole geo world political landscape, starting with the United Nations, that the United Nations is completely relevant.

Yeah, right.

I mean, not maybe and.

Maybe even NATO.

Right.

If it's the case that the same thing continues with, With bringing.

In situation.

Yeah.

So, yeah, the question to me is heard of all this is sort of complicated in terms of foreign policy.

And that definitely has its own side effect.

Right.

Can the president do this or other kind of legalistic questions that have to be pursued?

But in the more near term, the question is the politics of it.

So we said, obviously there's going to be a kind of problem here, but can Democrats do anything about what is going on here?

They have tried to do a few things.

I mean, obviously they can't stop him from doing this.

Stopping a U.S.

president from engaging in foreign policy actions is virtually impossible even before the fact.

It's just too much of a challenge.

It's never historically been the case that there's been enough of an institutional resilience from Congress to stop the president, who wants to do something foreign policy wise.

But Democrats are looking for opportunities here to kind of make the Republicans own this and to have to make these wings of the party the Republican Party, basically say that they support or don't support.

This is one step towards that.

So they're going to hold a host of votes, basically that tie Republicans to it.

They're going to pass a War Powers resolution, no attempt to pass a war Powers resolution.

They're going to demand hearings.

They're going to demand more consistent briefings.

There are ways that Republicans are going to have to own this.

The Democrats can tie them to this.

We're seeing pushback on this, even from people like Rahm Emanuel, who's running for president.

In the former member of Congress and or chief of staff for Barack Obama saying things like, if we're focused on what's happening in, you know, in Colombia, or in Caracas, we're not focused on what's going on in Cincinnati or in Columbus.

And that's where the focus should be.

So for Democrats, I think a lot of them are saying, all right, fine, go ahead.

Right.

Do what you want to do.

But domestically it's going to really, I think, potentially hurt the president.

I mean, yes.

And the the real question here is if they can translate that into a coherent argument.

Right.

So I'm thinking about you know, when members of the executive go and brief Congress.

Yeah.

I mean, just look at the attorney general, right.

Pam Bondi goes to Congress and start yelling at senators.

And frankly, she puts a very good show for what the base wants.

Right?

And what the president wants, which is her constituency.

Exactly.

Right.

But I think that the problem is that that doesn't sell to the American people who want them to talk about the things that they care about.

Right.

It's one thing for the president to say affordability is a as a buzzword of Democratic folks.

It's another for them to yell at senators about an issue that, like, they're not concerned about.

Yeah, but but you need, first of all to have your loyalist, you know, right behind you.

And then you can make that other argument.

But the the point that I'm trying to make is that in this case, senators are not, answering the same thing, right?

In the same it's once again, the, I guess, lack of connection between, the type of politics that the white House and the Trump administration is bringing to the floor, and the type of politics still, like, very civil.

Yeah.

Very calm.

Right.

You've seen, you know, pronouncing the T's and the I's in a very good way that Democrats, that's the Senate.

It's supposed to be a regal body.

Absolutely.

But they're not they're going the wrong way.

That's interesting.

Yeah, that is a good point.

I do think that there is sort of concern and internal consternation about what to do about this.

Right, and whether to do anything about it.

I mean, as I said, there'd have this sort of list of things they're going to try to accomplish, but it might not mean that it's going to work.

And I think that the inability for the Democrats to unify on this is really going to be important.

And so a messaging battle is still underway.

We don't know what that looks like.

We'll talk about this with respect to Texas too.

Right.

Because we have a moderate, you know, who dropped out of the governor's race.

Yeah.

To some degree to clear the path for a more progressive candidate in this writing is on the wall.

We don't have to vote in order for it to be clear kind of where the parties are going.

And so I think that is definitely something to watch out for.

But let's talk about what Congress is up to because they've got it basically.

Yes.

They still occasionally do some work.

They're back after a pretty long hiatus again, checking their email, figuring out like where we were and oh yeah, I forgot we have to pass a budget.

We've got three weeks to do it.

In addition, Doug Lamalfa, who is a member of Congress in California, passed away unexpectedly.

So the margin of, success for Republicans is very small, right?

They only have two seats, essentially to give two votes to give.

And because you've got Tom Massie in there, who is, kind of wayward Republican oftentimes voting no.

And Nancy Mace, who's been at odds with the administration.

And you got, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's retiring.

There's a lot of, I think kind of worry in Republican circles that they just don't have the might that they once had.

In addition to that fact you're seeing, you know, kind of, this effort to try to release the, a bill that would basically fund Obamacare subsidies, that was a rejection of what the leadership in the House wanted.

So you got some Republicans who are moderates who are kind of going rogue, saying, let's try to find some solution to health care on this.

That's happening this week.

They're looking for this mini bus opportunity to try to fund government for a little while.

You're also seeing them reject some of Trump's vetoes.

They're going to vote this week to try to override two of President Trump's vetoes, which would be pretty rare.

Vetoes don't get overridden very much.

And so there is, I think, this kind of growing sense that the white House isn't like, impenetrable and that Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to find a way to move forward on this.

One example of this is in the minibus.

You see that there are kind of some funding arrangements that the white House recommended that Congress was rejecting.

So some of the organizational things, some of the downsizing things are not being followed in the minibus budget.

So they're going to be, as they were, cuts to NEH, cuts to NEA.

These are things that the white House recommended that Congress didn't even do.

They're going to keep it as it was.

So there's a lot of things that like Doge was doing and attempting to do that, or not actually finding its way to the legislation here.

So there's enough pushback, I think, from Congress, on the white House, on some of these other matters, that maybe you'll see this stone start to gather some momentum, but it's still a pretty big stone, and it's going to be hard for it to move fast enough that you're starting to see Congress reassert itself in foreign policy, or even in domestic policy.

I mean, we have to see.

Right.

I think that, the speaker of the House, he has done a great job in trying to save face, even that sometimes he's not, taking into account, or brief, in these important things.

And then he's like, yeah, go out and.

Oh, yeah, the president said the following.

And it's like at the opposite of what they intended.

For instance, one of the things that happened this week was that the president gave this kind of rally speech to a lot of the Republican caucus at the Trump Kennedy Center and said something that shocked a lot of them, and that is that he wanted the Republicans to be flexible when it came to the abortion issue and health care.

So the idea here is basically some Republicans are willing to give some extension of the subsidies, the Obamacare subsidies, but they want it partnered with, a lack of ability for that to pay for abortion funds.

Yeah.

So that's a real just, you know, political conundrum.

And mostly Republicans are kind of hard line on that.

But the president said publicly, hey, let's be flexible on this.

Like what?

Like how are they going to be flexible on this matter?

And obviously, that's the kind of thing that catches the speaker off guard.

And they've got to navigate around this.

And in a moment where the party's already pretty divided internally about Venezuela and about health care subsidies and all the other thing.

So just a lot of complicated things happening.

It's not an easy one.

Yeah.

So, that's definitely, you know, some interesting political, political things happening.

Another thing that happened is that you've got, Mark Kelly, who the senator from Arizona, who was in a bit of hot water, he got, essentially challenged by the white House and by the DoD to or D O War.

The war, I guess, is now technically the way to put it.

But basically they're going to reduce his pension because he was a participant in this, video that was encouraging members of the military to not follow orders by which were illegal, which is just standard protocol, but obviously became a very kind of hot button political issue.

What do you make of this in terms of the politics of all of it?

It's just taking politics out of proportion, right?

Yeah, maybe a totally different sort of.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's it's politics becoming 1,000% personal.

Yeah.

So that's one issue and it's, it's it's very weird because it's kind of a First Amendment, situation.

Interesting.

Right.

Because on the one hand, it's like if you say, the president has to follow the Constitution.

Yeah.

And if not, if there is evidence that the president, is not following the laws of the land and the Constitution, the president can be impeached.

Yeah, that is written right on.

The Constitution is the way it is.

Yes.

It's not that I'm saying anything weird or anything that's right there.

And that's what, you know, Senator Kelly said.

But I think it's it's just taking the political battle into the personal sphere and say, like, you know what?

I'm gonna make you suffer.

I don't know if if, if, if Kelly needs the money or not.

The money or not or whatever it is.

But it's like, boom, I'm just going to do it.

Well, he earned it for sure.

That's one thing.

And the other is that, you know, I mean, there's no irony in politics anymore, but it's ironic that you're seeing the sort of Pete Hegseth and making exact same statement, making the rounds on social media where he's implying exactly what the video said.

So, you know, obviously it's hypocritical in a way.

But to me, the kind of politics of this is that it is, of course, a new venue for how they fight.

Right?

It's very personal.

It becomes much more kind of a sieve for us.

And it was, but also all it does is really raise the profile of Senator Kelly, who's touted, oh yeah, potential Republican potential Democratic presidential candidate.

So this is probably in some ways good news for him despite the money.

Right.

Which I'm so.

Afraid like, but we'll probably make up for in other ways.

He could write one book and make up for it, like right away.

So that's easy to do, right?

Just like, you.

Know, like.

You write him, you write a book and you just cash out, right?

Yeah, yeah.

For sure, totally easy.

Yeah, well, let's talk Texas because there's some, changes there as well.

Mark, Andrew White, who was a running for governor, is a kind of moderate to candidate against, Gina Hinajosa has dropped out of the race.

What do you think is happening here?

Well, I think it's, on the one hand has to do with fundraising, and I think the other part is.

What do Democrats want in Texas what the base wants and how can get they they get excited in terms of having a successful, well, not only primary election, but also trying to, I guess, fall back or support someone that may give Governor Abbott a run for his money.

Yeah, it's a good question.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's right at the writing is sort of on the wall that moderates need not apply.

And I don't know if it means that this is a real sea change in terms of where the party's going, but it's a pretty big signal that this is a progressive party.

And that's where the love is.

And, you know, he, Andrew White, talked about the lack of fundraising, which may be or may not be related to his moderate nature and the politics of it, but for sure, it's the case that the moderates are not doing as as well.

I think it definitely weakens the party's ability to attract moderates.

And although the progressive messaging definitely is sort of the more kind of contemporary message for the Democratic Party, it's still the case that moderates are sort of still uncertain about where their home is politically.

And this is not going to help, I think, resolve that.

Yeah.

Or say, yeah.

The other thing is that it basically lets Republicans have a cleaner path to define who Gina Hinajosa is, right?

Whereas if they had a primary where there was a lot more competition, you could sort of see that churn and maybe have to kind of wait to figure out what to do messaging wise in this case.

But I think that's perfect.

I mean, I think that that works perfect for Democrats.

And it's the, as we have in the literature, in political science, the responsible party model.

Right?

Yeah, it's very clear.

Two choices.

If you have, in this case, moderates or not or this or that, etc., etc., is like, which one is which.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And here you have, you have.

A, you know, and you have B. Yeah.

Like the there is no ambiguity.

The problem for Democrats is that and we said this before that for every Democrat you rally, you rally one and a half Republicans.

Right.

Just the nature of the number of votes is problematic for Democrats in Texas.

But it's a matter of turnout because when you compare the base and the potential, both that Democrats would have, especially in the big in the Texas Triangle.

Yeah, they can make up for what you have in the other places.

Yeah, but it's about turnout.

Yeah.

The question is, if you have these responsible party model A versus B, is it going to be enough.

And we saw in with the Beto phenomenon.

It's a good question.

It's going to be interesting.

Yeah.

Speaking of ideological battles, James Talarico has raised $7 million during this reporting period, 13 million since the Senate campaign was launched.

It's a pretty good amount of money we don't know yet about, Jasmin Crockett's money.

Right.

But Talarico is also up with, new ad that's running statewide.

The ad is interesting.

It's, I think, engaging in a way and certainly demonstrates the, kind of diversity of the Democratic Party.

You've got older women, black females, Latinos, young people who are all crowding around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's definitely kind of trying to pitch this as a unity message.

Will it work I don't know.

I mean, I don't know once again is what kind of message is going to rally the base.

Yeah.

And be persuasive to people who are otherwise not connected, but maybe would be a voters.

That's an unknown factor right now.

I think Democrats are still kind of in the wilderness on that.

And we just have to wait and see what Jasmine Crockett comes out with.

But that's going to be for next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

More party politics next week.