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

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

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston, where we are freezing cold.

Yes, a lot of people obviously are in the same boat across the country, but also across Texas.

We'll talk about how the grid held up and who gets the blame and credit for when things go well and things go poorly.

We'll also going to talk a lot about Iowa was also frozen, right?

We had a first caucuses this week of 2024 the presidential election officially kicks off.

And so we'll talk all about who won, who lost and, you know, who's just hanging on.

But first, actually, we are in the midst of a really interesting period in political history because we're going to have the next couple of months that are going to be thick with controversy and crisis and problems.

Joe Biden's going to give a State of the Union speech.

We're going to have to have a final resolution on the budget.

We're having conflict in the Middle East.

It's going to be a really busy couple of months.

And we left off kind of last week talking about how Congress kind of wasn't getting much done.

They're only able to kind of kick the can.

But actually, happily this week, they were able to accomplish something.

It's not a done deal, as.

In theory.

Yet.

No.

So good.

We don't want to count our chickens before they're officially hatched.

But it looks like that Congress is effectively putting together a pretty good framework for a $78 billion tax credit aimed at businesses and low income families.

We said Congress can't legislate, but I think they were inspired by the Texans playoff run.

So, you know, good for them and maybe good for all of us.

But Ron Wyden of Oregon and and Jason Smith of the House of Missouri have put together a pretty serious package that gives business incentives and give some child care credit expansion.

What do you make of the fact that they've come together in a bipartisan way and are able to do this on an issue that both Republicans and Democrats have been talking about?

Right.

Well, I think it's, you know, the classic Christmas miracle in January.

Right.

And if you remember that.

Right, if you remember, that movie was due to a road closure, some people get stranded in an abandoned church during the storm and they have to work together and, you know, sort of pass some dilemmas, etc., etc..

So I think.

All right.

Is they watched the movie and say, this could work.

But it does work.

It works.

Yeah.

But I think I mean, I think it's a very interesting thing, especially when you think about the child tax credit.

Yeah.

Because during the pandemic this was implemented and during the pandemic it showed, right, that family, especially low income families, are going to receive this tax credit.

Poverty was significantly reduced.

Yeah.

So you have millions of kids are going to be benefited by this.

So I think it's a fantastic idea and it's already paid for.

On the one hand, and then you throw in, you know, expired business tax benefits that also were implemented during the pandemic that are going to be related to research, capital deductions, etc., etc.. And that is going to create at least, I guess, you know, a little bit more of enthusiasm in the economy and also help people out of poverty.

So I think it's great.

However, okay, you had me and then you had sort of the the whoever.

You know, it's a very bipartisan agreement.

Right.

People sat down to the numbers.

It works perfect.

But we are in 2024.

And the question is, if some Republicans in the House are going to give a win.

Yeah.

To President Biden in a presidential election year.

Yeah.

And.

Yeah, that's that's a tough that's a tougher thing to to swallow.

But obviously, I think to me, the same kind of question came up and that's when and how Joe Biden would take advantage of this.

Right.

They need some wins and they need actually for people to feel those wins because economically, it's still an issue that needs to be something people like can touch and can talk about.

And as this point, the polling shows that people aren't that like and aren't that like enthusiastic about how the economy is doing, even if sometimes the economy is on a number basis doing better.

The good news for the Biden administration and for the Biden campaign is that they've got a ton of money to spend to convince people that it's true.

And we know actually from political science literature that presidents can talk their way into a good economy.

They can talk about how things are improving.

They can talk about the state of the market that actually does increase spending or it increases savings.

And so there are ways that the president can actually use like his huge war chest, which was another big piece of news this week.

The Biden-Harris campaign raised more than $97 million in the final quarter of 2023, and they have a whopping $117 million cash on hand, the biggest of any Democratic candidate in history, which is really stunning to see what is happening with this amount of money.

I mean, we are definitely in store for the most expensive campaign in history, and that is coming after the most expensive campaign in our history.

So the sticker price for running for president is going up.

But it's clear that there's something happening here.

They're raising a lot of money, despite the fact that the polls show that the Democrats aren't that enthused about Joe Biden.

Right.

But, you know, when you look at the I think it's a game changer for the Democrats, especially for President Biden, Vice President Harris.

I think it's a game changer because that's a lot of money.

Yeah.

And especially in a climate in which, you know, former President Donald Trump seems to be, you know, the almost Republican nominee for the November election.

But the most interesting.

I think we can drop the almost.

But we'll talk about that in a second.

Okay.

Okay.

You're not sure of it?

Yeah, I'm not sure.

But anyways, I think that Iowa's blown out of proportion.

We'll talk about.

Don't tell that to Iowa.

They won't like that.

The caucuses.

Not Iowa.

Iowans we love.

Yeah.

The caucuses you're not sure about.

Okay we got that.

So you know recent polls have shown that you know there is no clear winner.

Yeah.

The country's 100% divide.

Really divided.

50% support Former President Donald Trump, 48% supporting president Biden.

Yeah.

So everything is within the margin of error.

Yeah, there's no clear winner.

There's nothing.

And what we showed before is or what we know from previous election is that Joe Biden in a head to head to Trump, yeah, he won.

So right now he's one zero.

Yeah.

Okay.

So.

So you're saying that.

Yeah.

Okay.

They can try to recreate that kind of atmosphere.

And I think get the.

Win again.

I mean, I think that and, you know, given the current situation with Donald Trump on 91 counts in all his legal troubles, you know, there is a case to be made.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And I think too, that like the polling is odd because like, the campaign hasn't really started yet.

I mean, the Republicans have been running for a year, but the Democrats haven't, right.

Joe Biden has been pretty quiet, frankly, smartly so.

Like as we said just a minute ago, the more the president kind of pops his head up, the more partizan the outcomes become, especially on legislative matters.

So he's better off kind of laying low until you need to strike.

But honestly, $117 million is going to give him a lot of flexibility in terms of striking.

The other thing too, is that, remember, this is not just an election about who's going to be president.

There's also a bunch of Senate seats down ballot and House is in the balance.

So there are a lot of these opportunities where the Biden administration can spend some money in places where, for instance, they might not win, but they can see some down ballot success potentially for Democrats.

So Texas is a good example of that, right.

Spending a little bit of money here might go a long way.

They're going to have competitive races in Montana, hard state for Democrats to win Arizona, which is trending, but definitely is still a tough race.

West Virginia, they're probably going to lose, but some money may help chip that.

So there's a lot of things that money can buy.

Right, Right, right.

And so for him, at least, there's an opportunity to be able to move that needle.

So we'll see.

But let's talk about a state that isn't on that list, but is on everybody's list this week.

And that's Iowa.

We are talking about the election in 2024.

This is Iowa.

This is the caucuses.

It's go time.

Right?

Right.

You said that.

Yeah, the caucuses are overblown, but Donald Trump destroyed his competition.

Right.

We said last week that he was going to have to really make sure he hit his numbers.

And boy, did he He won almost every county except for one county.

And he lost that one county by one vote.

Yeah, that's insane.

He passed the 50% threshold.

He beat everybody by 30 points.

Ron DeSantis comes in a distant second, followed by Nikki Haley just trailing him by a little bit.

What does this mean for all of these players?

Well, I think, you know, on the one hand, you can see the cup either half full or half empty.

Yeah.

And I'm kind of half empty in this situation.

I see.

Okay.

I'm always very positive.

You're always optimistic.

So.

So explain.

Yeah, but in this case, you know, when you look at the results, Donald Trump won with 51% of the vote.

Right.

That means that 49% of Republicans don't like Donald Trump.

Yeah, right.

Good point.

So when you look at at that, you see the Republican Party 1,000% divide.

Yeah, right in the middle.

Yeah.

And so, like, we don't know who Donald Trump is, right?

Like, they know who he is and they've chosen to vote for somebody else for some different reasons.

Right.

But yeah, I think you make a good point.

But it's also the case that the party has really rallied behind him.

So in political science, we talk about the notion of whether the party gets to decide the nominee.

Right.

So writ large, what the theory says is basically the party apparatus, like the local precinct chairs and, you know, members of Congress who endorse right where the money comes from, it's all like very much the kind of old guard of the party.

They rallied around Donald Trump and it worked.

So the party seems to be on board with Donald Trump.

But you're saying that there's a divide and that.

absolutely.

That divide going to look like kind of going forward?

Well, I think it's going to be even more pronounced, right?

Yeah.

Why It's going to be more pronounced because when you look at Georgia, well, first of all, Georgia represents, you know, of the 155 million votes that were cast in the 2020 election, only 110,000 people went out and vote.

Yeah, that's nothing but a small .07 percent.

Right.

So basing your analysis of base in Donald Trump is going to carry every single primary.

It's like, yeah, you're making the number in .07 percent and it's not representative at all.

This would be like more people at the Texans game than there.

absolutely are.

Who voted for the Iowa caucuses.

That means that only around 50% of almost 720,000 people registered Republicans in Iowa went out and vote and, you know, Iowa doesn't have a very good record.

Right?

Only two presidents have won the Iowa caucus and become nominees.

That was Bob Dole of Kansas in 96 and W Bush in 2000.

So, you know, Iowa is interesting, but for me, the silver lining here is that we're talking about grievance politics at its best.

We the Republican Party, that is completely in the middle.

And also that translates to the Texas Republican Party where we know that the Texas Republican Party is also cut in half.

Yeah, definitely drinking that trump wine.

Yeah.

At least half of them are.

Yeah.

But I want to talk for a second about the good job that Donald Trump did because unlike the way that it went down in 2016, they really did steer into the skid in 2016.

They had no organization, no people on the ground.

They had so little money that they spent.

They just kind of went in basically on the air war.

But it turns out that they got smart.

They figured out that they needed to get people on the ground.

They had campaign organized in a very clear way.

They had offices set up.

They had these kind of commit to caucus events, which became like a prized little nugget.

People had these like special gold hats that they would wear.

And it became like a kind of, you know, moment for them.

And I think that's a smart way to engage the grassroots.

And it, of course, only affected 100,000 people, but it was enough to win.

Yeah.

So that's one thing.

I think they got smart about campaigning.

And if that plays off in other states where his organization can generate that kind of stable win, then I think he's going to be basically the nominee if he's not already the nominee.

The second thing I want to say, and I just want to get your take on this and that gets to the question about how like effective the party is about rallying around him.

So he's pretty used to winning evangelical Christians and non-college educated voters.

But exit polling also showed that he is winning among independents and among college educated voters.

Now, that might mean that you see some of those voters shifting back from there, like vacating the party, specifically him in 2016 and sort of in between.

So do you think that we're seeing a new Donald Trump?

He did more small events.

He didn't have as a kind of, you know, big, you know, national speeches as much anymore, of course, spending a lot of time in court.

Right.

So that limits your time.

That's a different problem.

But but so just thinking about all of the other, like to his credit, he's doing well.

Like he's doing what a president would do.

And that's the kind of thing that's really going to get him to the ultimate finish line.

Right.

So, you know, it's he's selling a product, right?

Yeah.

The question is.

He knows how to do that.

Exactly.

Yeah.

The question is if that product is going to work in different markets.

Right.

When you look at Iowa, for example, the electorate doesn't reflect in any shape or form.

The U.S.. Electorate.

You know, its majority, as you say, evangelical and white, older, yeah, etc., etc., etc.. Yeah.

When you go to New Hampshire, I think that's going to be the first step, the first test, and that's where we're going to see how well he's going to do in states, right, that are more reflective of the US demographics and obviously of the US voters.

New Hampshire is like a big suburb.

It's like college educated, you know, you know, typically older voters.

So Nikki Haley says it's a two person race, that it's going to be kind of her and Trump ignoring DeSantis.

That's odd because obviously she came in basically third, but she wants to count on New Hampshire to do exactly this.

To sort of bring in this other fold of the Republican Party.

Is this gonna work?

I don't.

Know.

I mean, but but the question here is, is, you know, Donald Trump is selling, you know, product X, right?

Ron DeSantis is selling product.

Little X is the same thing, right?

Without Trump, it sounds like a bad nickname from Trump.

But yeah, I mean, yeah, but.

But it's it's it's, it's basically, you know, the same rhetoric.

Yeah, the same policies, the same everything.

So if you're a Republican voter, right.

And you don't like Trump, yeah.

Therefore, Right.

It's less likely that you're going to support DeSantis.

Yeah.

What are you going to do?

Yeah, if you're a hardcore, you know, Republican, it's either you sit it out or you vote for Haley.

Yeah, because Trump is money.

I was going to say, yeah, like, you know and.

Supports Trump is like, throw me a line.

Yeah.

No, it's probably pretty wise for him to do that.

Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, also dropped out.

Yeah, the path for everyone else to win narrows, and that includes Nikki Haley.

Obviously.

We'll see how this shakes out.

But to me, the damage is done, the effect has been accomplished and Donald Trump will be the nominee.

Like, I don't see any way around this, Right.

Unless I don't even know.

I mean, I'd say in last I don't even know what that would look like.

But he's knocked off all these people, right?

Yeah.

Vivek Ramaswamy has dropped out.

Asa Hutchinson's dropped out.

Everyone who tried to go to his right or mimic him or who tried to, you know, sort of say that, you know, he was going to he was a he's a cancer on the Republican Party.

And, you know, Asa Hutchinson famously said, you know, I won't pardon him.

And he got booed at debates.

Right.

Chris Christie now got knocked out.

So I don't see any other kind of path forward except Donald Trump.

So you're you're nominee.

Yes, But Ron DeSantis doesn't have the money that Nikki Haley has.

Right.

So she's got the long term.

I think I think that Nikki Haley has, you know, a fair shot.

Interesting.

I'm not saying that she's going to win or anything.

Yeah.

But I think that she has a fair shot.

And again, is when you look at these numbers, especially in Iowa, is to me, the Republican Party seems to be like, yeah, yeah, we like Trump, but we don't like Trump.

Gotcha.

So it's there is room.

Yes.

If you said Nikki Haley has $600 in her bank account, it's like, yeah, whatever she's done.

Yeah, but she doesn't she's got a lot of a lot of money.

And DeSantis does not have that money.

And the DeSantis campaign is just a mess.

Yeah, they're floundering a bit.

No, no, this is not going to help.

Let's bring this kind of question back to Texas, because Donald Trump got the vaunted Ted Cruz endorsement.

Yes.

He said he was going to wait to endorse until it was fairly clear who the nominee was going to be.

And he assumes that it's going to be Donald Trump.

So he endorsed Donald Trump.

What do you make of that?

Is that going to hurt Cruz domestically here in Texas, or do you think that this is just kind of expected and people can fall in line behind?

Right.

Well, I think I mean, it's going to happen with his base right, in this election.

Yeah.

But it's going to hurt him with you know, obviously with Democrats.

Yeah.

Because if you want to sell something, you know, here in Texas for Democrats or progressives or, you know, middle of the road Republicans is to be anti-Trump.

Tying that together.

Yes.

yeah.

And, you know, Cruz favorables are pretty low, but this is certainly going to hurt him in that tie, as fresh as it is now, is definitely going to be an issue.

But again, I mean, I think Ted Cruz is a very, very, very smart politician.

Yes.

And, you know, he has the polls especially of, you know, his voters.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

So I think it's very important for him to get the base very, very, very riled up.

It's all about turnout right now.

Exactly.

And this is so.

You know, we can say anything about anything.

Right.

But what counts is how many people go out.

And vote, who shows up.

And I would ask you about this because, look, we both agree at some point Donald Trump should be the nominee right now for you, it may take a few extra weeks for me.

Donald Trump's poppin' the Trump champagne Fair enough.

Regardless, by the time they get to the Texas primary, it's going to be the case that he'll be the nominee.

Right?

So not much energy in terms of turnout in the Republican side, but we've got a lot of down ballot competitive races in the Republican side of things.

We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks.

But that to me is interesting because that lower turnout actually gives a benefit to people who are aligned with Trump because those voters vote right.

They come out all the time and they're activated.

Right.

Whether it's Paxton, whether it's Abbott, whether it's Dan Patrick.

Right.

They are connected.

And so I think that a lower turn, it actually means you're going to see some upsets of incumbents in a year where maybe otherwise you wouldn't see it.

So I think that the low turnout potential of having Trump at the top of that ticket might make some serious changes down ballot for Texas.

That's interesting.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's talk more directly about Texas.

This is party politics.

I'm Brandon and this is Jeronimo.

Obviously, the big news of the week is that we're all very, very, very cold.

Yeah, when it's like cold, but maybe not that cold.

Happily, there have been fewer problems than into 2021 when the massive winter storm knocked out the power Texans all over experience zero wind chills.

We had some frozen roads, but nothing like what we had a couple of years ago, so that's good.

The grid held up also good.

My question is, I guess, does Greg Abbott and kind of the powers that be get credit for keeping things on, even if maybe they'd never got necessarily kind of harmed by having it go off?

Right.

So what do you think about that?

I mean, is this something that they can brag about to say, like the state's doing well and we've got the infrastructure to put the money where our mouth is, right?

Well, I mean, I think.

Yes.

But, you know, they're going to if I were them, I would advise to just dial it a notch down.

Right.

Don't set expectations too high in case.

Exactly.

Because, I mean, the question here is, is, you know, this was not Uri winter storm Uri by any shape or form.

Yes.

Right.

You know, we had roller coaster temperatures.

We were below zero, then above zero, then a little below, then above, etc., etc., etc..

So that change, right.

The dynamic of how these extreme weather events affected the infrastructure.

Yeah, we didn't have any precipitation.

Right.

And that's what caused the whole mess during Uri, right.

Bringing power lines down trees etc..

Dirt roads.

Yeah.

So on pipes you name it.

Right.

So it's a different kind of animal.

Yeah.

So you know it's Yes.

They get credit right.

But Yeah.

Right.

It was not the same thing.

Yeah.

We have sunny days.

Yeah.

So here, you know solar power, you know, play a very important role that compensated the lack of wind production.

But, you know, sun came out.

Yeah.

Solar powered batteries were charged.

Sure thing.

Things like Yeah all of the above strategy seems to be work.

Yeah so.

Yeah.

And no one has to get blamed especially when it comes to the kind of question about natural gas versus renewables.

Right.

As you said, I think that was important and got kind of, you know, shuffled aside because nothing bad happened.

But I think that's a win for Texas, despite the fact that there's if it went a different way, it would certainly have been worse.

Right.

I actually want to talk about a couple of other things.

The first is about the bus.

We've talked about the governor strategy of bussing migrants in the border to other places.

The governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, begged the governor to have mercy not to send people to Chicago.

Was blisteringly cold, way colder than here.

The governor decided to do that, but only because the roads were bad.

As a humanitarian story, do you think that this is something which has resonance across the country or do you think that this is something the governor could just kind of continue to do without much sanction from that sort of perspective?

Well, I think, you know, I mean, it's a very tough question, right?

I mean, just, you know, with perfect weather conditions, so on and so forth, having, you know, bussing migrants, using in a political game.

It's you know, it's.

Dicey to begin.

With.

It's dicy.

Right.

Given the weather conditions, I think it's the right thing to do.

Yeah.

I mean, you cannot send people to where they're going to be not protected from the weather.

It's it's just not, you know, a nice thing to do.

Yes.

So it's a humanitarian question.

Yeah.

Also, if you recall from the tropical from from the winter storm that Ted Cruz famously bailed on Texas, went to Cancun, left the dog that's famous, that's history.

We'll certainly see that in 2024 come up.

But he tweeted out again that, you know, we should wrap our pipes, cover your plants, stay off the roads, and if you get too cold, come with me to Cancun.

Like, it's sort of funny in a way, right?

Like, I get that he's trying to make light of it, but there's a serious side of this, right, Because hundreds of people died in that storm.

And, you know, obviously, there are all kinds of implications financially to this kind of a thing.

So do you think that Ted Cruz being a good sport about this or is he just tone deaf about the way that these things play out on the ground?

No, I mean, once again, I think that, you know, Ted Cruz's communicating with his base.

Right.

And that's it.

You know, so, you know, so he's talking.

Yeah.

I mean, it's like, yeah, you know, people are going to say, Will it hurt him?

I mean, are there people who are like, you know, look at this and say that this is a, you know, terrible thing to say, especially in context right now?

We forget it because it's been two years.

Right.

Right.

But voters are going to be reminded of this, right?

I call and I'll read at least the very least it's already kind of previewed that that's happening.

We've seen Roland Gutierrez talk about this like this is going to be an issue people will talk about.

absolutely.

Absolutely.

But it once again, is the people that are going to be infuriated from the get go that we're not going to vote for Ted Cruz.

Maybe so.

Yeah.

So it's, you know.

Hence, again, the sort of controversies, these scandals sort of don't matter as much, right.

You cause.

You're the.

Experts that that's interesting to see, but we'll see.

Yeah.

Because I'm curious about this because they're such a visual art, right?

Him walking with the bag.

Right.

It became this kind of meme, right?

Yeah.

I'm so I'm curious to see how this plays out.

But he didn't seem that bothered.

Also, who who's not bothered?

Let's talk money.

Greg Abbott.

This week it was disclosed because the financial reports are due took a $6 million check.

One single check from Jeff Yass who is a billionaire from Pennsylvania.

He he's also a massive school choice aficionado.

This is according to the AP campaign, the single largest donation in Texas history.

It didn't come from a Texan.

It came from somebody out of state.

But maybe that's the way of Texas, right?

We've talked a long time about how Texas politics has become national politics.

So it's unlikely that you're seeing the sort of home grown and you don't get to be a prodigious fundraiser as big a pro raiser in history as Greg Abbott by not taking people's checks.

Right.

Money talks of the ledge.

That's just always the way that it's been.

So I guess the question is, do you think that this is something that's going to have negative repercussions for the governor taking this huge check on this one issue from this one billionaire from out of state who wants to see this policy implemented?

Nope, Perfect.

That's all we have to say.

But I do think this is a kind of coda on that, that the governor's war chest is a political badge of honor.

So having it bigger almost no matter what, is something.

As common, is more.

National level and money's money.

Yeah, that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your point.

Yeah.

On that note.

A C note.

A see note?

Oh okay.

On that C note.

That's it for this week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.