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

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

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

Thanks for hanging out and talking politics with us.

An exciting week.

Bad news economically for Donald Trump, but good news for Greg Abbott.

He's been able to kind of parlay the success of the vouchers into the rest of the successful session.

We'll talk about the dynamics, though, because it's not as smooth, maybe, as I led you to believe.

There are definitely some hiccups happening in Austin these days.

- Really?

Yeah.

Surprisingly, the session has turned into kind of a bit of a mess.

That's how things are.

Yeah, we're 100 days in and just, you know, chaos, right?

Yeah.

So we'll we'll explore some of those details.

But let's first talk about the economy, which obviously got bad news this week.

The U.S. economy declined by about 3%, which was lower than the growth that happened the prior quarter.

That's bad news.

But obviously there's additional bad news.

And that's the import surge, which actually hurts the US economy, dragging down growth.

Consumption slow down to about 1.8%, which is not terrible, but lower than the 5% it was last quarter.

So obviously not great economic news for Donald Trump.

We've explored this in a bunch of different ways.

Is this a spinball outcome?

Donald Trump is saying more or less like, we should just wait and it'll get better.

Are people patient enough to do that?

I don't think people are patient enough, and especially because, a majority of the electorate was primed in the past presidential election that once Donald Trump became president, the economy was going to be good again.

When you're changing industrial policy, that is a four, five, ten year plan because it changes the basic premise of, you know what, we should have our own manufacturing here.

It's fantastic.

No one says the opposite, right?

However, the way that he's planning to do that, it's a little bit more complicated and you cannot fast track it in the way that he's attempting to.

So, I mean, obviously would be great, to have manufacturing here, etcetera, etcetera.

But there is a lot of complications into that.

You know, just thinking about machinery, just thinking about all that stuff that needs to be in place.

And also in par with global consumer trends.

It makes things very, very, very difficult.

So true.

We'll see eventually and see if he's right or wrong.

Yeah.

And like some places are having a manufacturing renaissance Houston is one of them right.

There are plants being built by Apple and by Nvidia.

Like that is not something that's going to take, a short while, like you said.

In fact, I actually saw reports this weekend in the Houston Chronicle said that this is something they had already planned, but they planned for like a 6 to 7 year window.

Yeah, 6 to 7 year window.

There's a good chance probably that Donald Trump will be president by then.

That'll be a subject for a totally different show.

But like that's a too long for him to wait for sure.

Politically.

And also Republicans are definitely getting nervous.

So we'll talk about this as we go, because it is in the context of having to write a new budget, which also has lots of cuts in it.

So there's a lot of uncertainty happening right now.

And the president can't just kind of will it into existence.

I think that the messaging has been inconsistent and also probably isn't really hitting well, almost like his tweets to try to get to where Sanders or the University of Colorado drafted higher, saying NFL owners are stupid for not doing it.

I don't think that's the best strategy here, but obviously the president just got his own, approach to this.

Well.

It did sort of work.

He got drafted.

And maybe he knows something about football that I don't know.

And I'm probably.

That is true.

He watches a lot of cable news.

Yeah, that's where that that's where that lives.

But let's talk about something that you and I are both true experts in.

And that's Canadian politics.

Absolutely.

100%.

Canada had elections this week.

The Prime minister, Mark Kearney's Liberal Party won the snap elections, which, honestly, six months ago was not expected at all.

It was seen to be a referendum on Trudeau.

The expectation was that liberals were going to get shellacked.

They actually didn't.

They did extremely well, even to the point where the minority leader, Pierre, help me with the French on this.

I know you're I know you're, an expert on oui.

Wait wait, wait, I just said this.

Obviously, you could speak French.

So, Pierre Poilievre.

Paul.

How?

It's, Poilievre.

Okay.

And they he's political career.

He's 100% over, like, it's.

Like, lost his seat.

Like.

That's amazing to me.

So not only of course.

Yeah.

Did the liberals win but like, he literally lost.

So I guess my question is, without getting into every detail about how the Canadian sort of system works, the expectation was that this was going to be a referendum on Trump, right?

The Canadians were math absolute national, a surge against Donald Trump's efforts to try to like, take Canada, I guess.

51st.

Laura Canada to be the.

50.

First state.

Right.

And it obviously didn't work.

So I guess two questions are really apparent.

And one is, are moderates back?

Are centrists in vogue again?

And the second is if this is a referendum on Trump, how does it affect the kind of trade policy with the U.S., which obviously is bubbling over at this point?

I think he's going to have important implications, especially for trade policy, because now, they have Mr. Carney has a mandate, to protect.

Yeah.

Canada's, moral value in the trade world.

So that's that's the first issue.

The second issue is that the way that Canada it's political system, it's a parliament.

So there is more voices than what we are custom here in the US.

Two parties there you have even you have a marijuana party that got 133, votes, in the election.

Where was that from?

Like.

And you have the Quebecois, you have the New Democrats.

So it's a little bit more complicated, but it certainly creates a way for people's frustration to be voted, out in the voting booth.

So that creates more dialog and a very clear mandate on what Canada needs to do in a coalition.

Right.

Because the majority party may not have a majority.

In fact, we don't know that yet.

But they'll have to cobble together a kind of votes from the Marijuana Party and all the other parties.

Which seems easy enough.

You just wait til 420.

And then you tell them you need to join us.

So yeah, I, I think that's a great point, right?

That they can kind of speak with a more unified voice, and a unified voice says, don't mess with Canada.

Exactly.

And and that creates a political or political movements or our political systems all over the world, work like a pendulum.

Right.

So we're now living in the U.S. what happened in 2020?

Right.

And we see that swing back to the right.

Yeah.

And then eventually that pendulum has to come down just for the loss of gravity.

Yeah, yeah, it's coming down.

And in Canada we saw that in steroids.

Right.

Why?

Because Donald Trump's, intervention gave, the victory to the liberals.

So interesting.

Right now, the question is, as we've been mentioning, right.

Will it happen here in the US?

The likelihood is.

Yes.

Right.

The terms are obviously bad for the kind of president's party.

And so I expect we'll see some of this, especially if this economic news.

Cycle absolutely.

Bad.

But the question really is what is the Democrats strategy.

We've had lots of questions.

I'm sorry.

What?

Yeah.

Who?

That is the real question.

And we'll talk about this actually, two because Beth O'Rourke is back.

But the news just sort of.

Hinting he might run.

So we'll get to that in a second, which is a different strategic question.

But the strategic question that the Senate's going to have to face is that Dick Durbin, the senator from one of the senator from Illinois, has announced he's not running again.

He's been in office for five term, which is a very long time.

He's also the number two Democrat in the Senate.

Basically, he's the kind of, whip and, he's on the Judiciary Committee.

This is, a blow to the Democrats institutional memory.

But it does, I think, play up this question that's been happening the last couple weeks, and that's that there's been internal tension inside the Democratic Party leadership about what to do.

Should they back these people who have been in office for a very long time and kind of understand the dynamics of DC and maybe even national politics?

Or do they do what David Hogg, who's a 25 year old vice chair of the DNC, right.

He was one of the activists surrounding a school shooting in Florida and has become kind of very famous for this.

He's saying, basically, Democrats should move forward, right?

We should definitely have like a new generation absolutely coming.

And that means that you're going to basically have them.

He hinted they should primary a lot of those Democrats who've been in office for a long time.

The chair pushback saying, we're not going to try to take out our own.

That doesn't make sense electorally.

But the message is still there, and that's that.

There is a tension between kind of old and young in the Democratic Party.

So, you know, they'll be a replacement.

Some people say Brian Schatz is the senator from Hawaii is going to get that spot.

But Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota has also indicated she might want to run, maybe it's the case.

Two Patty Murray from Washington wants to be in that spot.

That would have some slight generational change.

But generally speaking, what Hogg is asking for is like a real wholesale change, like replacing with very young members.

I don't know if that's the right strategy here, but obviously Democrats are still looking for that moment.

They're still looking for that sort of that message.

It's going to be the proper thing to tackle Donald Trump with.

But and the right messenger too, is also still in question.

So I think I mean, Durbin said it right.

Very clearly he said, I know in my heart it's time to pass the torch.

He's 80, yeah, politics in the fast in the last while he has been there 40 years, or 30 years or whatnot have changed dramatically.

Yeah.

So I think that has a very interesting point.

And that interesting point is if you don't renovate the marketing, if you don't renovate the strategy, you don't have anything to sell to the voters.

And clearly, clearly, voters are not buying what Democrats are set.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

And you know, Chuck Schumer has said he's going to run again.

And so of course likely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that that's the divide right.

So you're saying yeah some are saying no.

And I think that's the kind of real conundrum Democrats find themselves in.

And they still haven't found that messaging yet.

It's worth noting that it's only been 100 days, as a programing note, actually, we're going to talk all about the 100 days in our assessment of that for the whole show next week.

But we know that obviously it's been a clunky 100 days, and Democrats are still trying to search for what that kind of messaging is to counteract.

The problem is, of course, that they need to come up with that sooner than later.

And absolutely, that is any delay is going to create some political friction.

So that's, I think, one kind of, concern they have, another concern they have is this.

Week what.

Should pop up on the Trump Organization website.

But hats that read Trump 2028, alarming a lot of people who, as we kind of joked about earlier, think that maybe Trump might run, I should know to say they didn't say which Trump.

I just says Trump for a lot of Trump.

So yes.

So it's conceivable - Don Jr.?

Yeah.

Very right.

We're watching you, Ivanka.

Maybe even.

Yeah, that's a possibility.

So, anyway.

- Barron young.

Young still.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah.

He won't be old enough yet, but, who knows, right.

Yeah.

Maybe they could change the Constitution in the meantime, right?

You know, but that freaked a lot of people out.

So is this just kind of trolling politically, or is this, like, like a real effort to balloon test this, to see if people are going to bite on that?

I mean, people can buy all that they want, right?

I think that the constitutional rules are very clear.

Yeah.

There's been some, I guess, analysis in terms of how this could be done.

But obviously I have done a lot of analyzes how I can get a six pack, is never going to happen.

It could happen.

He could happen.

I think you're wrong.

I like the path you've set out.

But you're not going.

To to do anything.

He's not going to, you.

Know, period.

So the whole point is, rewrite the rules, as they say, in, in, in, in the, in the Trump Organization's website.

But it's something that it's how Trump does politics side in terms of being a disruptor in terms of trolling.

And obviously, for the Trump Organization, in terms of making some, money on the side with these, with these hats or not.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

I mean, the buzz around it was big, you know, that, like a lot of the supporters are going to have one of these hats just to mess with people.

And maybe it doesn't go farther than that, but but it works.

I think you're exactly right.

And this is again gets back to our prior point, which is the Democrats have to swing at something that's like a hittable ball, right?

Yeah.

You don't swing it a pitch outside the zone.

It's not going to get you right.

The base hit that you need.

The curse of the Cubs.

Yeah, yeah.

No, sorry.

My friend won't.

Speak of it.

Yeah.

If you don't speak it, it won't be true.

Okay.

Also, we broke that curse, so.

Yeah.

Yeah I mean yeah.

Yeah, you're right like that.

That's the problem is like, if you if you let it curse you, then it will.

And so Democrats are basically letting this curse them.

And I think this round was better.

But it won't be the last time something like that happens.

So obviously we're going to have to kind of watch this and see how it plays out.

The other thing too, I was going to say is that, like Donald Trump's legislative record is pretty abysmal, right?

They haven't done much at all.

They only signed like five bills into, into law.

All of the other things have been either just bluster, it's been a tweet, or it's been an executive order.

These all have power and impacts, but it's not the same as legislating.

So in a way, you know, what the Democrats are trying to wait for, I think is something tangible to shoot at.

And so this is some way that figuratively, you know, kind of what they'd like to have.

So we'll see how that plays out.

And obviously the Durbin loss here is big for the Democrats is sort of the right of unity.

But it's not going to change the dynamic of power right there.

Democrats are going to win Illinois, even though there might be some kind of tension about how to get there.

So we'll see how that plays out.

In a midterm, it's coming all too soon.

My yes, I know.

Let's watch and talk about taxes.

Obviously the ledge is in session, so we're monitoring that every day and every night.

One of the things that happened this week was interesting and ties to national politics.

And that's a Donald Trump told Greg Abbott and announced that he was going to back every GOP member who supported the voucher vote.

What do you make of the fact that Donald Trump is once again weighing into the voucher fight in Texas?

But, I mean, he's something that he supports.

It's part of his, I guess, national campaign to return education back to the states, even though 80% of education is already back in the state.

Right.

But it's it's just a way of saying that.

And, and politically, it's also very interesting because in his, post on on Truth Social, he said to my friends, including, the speaker of the House representing both.

Right.

So that gave him represent the speaker of the House, a huge.

A great point.

Huge, huge political capital.

And then he's just mic drop and say, you're going to do.

Yeah.

What I'm telling you to do.

I think it's fascinating.

Yes.

Totally.

Because Donald Trump weighs on this and it gives Burrows credibility.

It gives him punching power.

Absolutely.

Especially especially against, Dan Patrick.

And that's going to be a real the real fight as the rest of the session.

Yeah.

It's not going to be necessarily between Republicans.

Although there's some of that.

Democrats honestly have just marginalized themselves.

And I say that on purpose.

And so really now the fight is between the House and the Senate, as it often comes down to, especially this late time of the cycle in the session.

So I do think that that gives Burroughs a bit of punching power.

And I know that you guys are both fellow bearded.

Right political.

Watchers.

So that is obviously plus.

But I think to the contrary of what you say, I think that there is not going to be enough animosity.

Yeah, there is going to be now we have been, knighted by Donald Trump.

Yeah.

So now we're going to play nice.

They're all in the round table.

Exactly.

So now things if there is things to be smoothed out, I think that Balls and Patrick are going to be sitting down having a, coffee or something like.

That, like the breakfast or.

Yeah, exactly.

And just saying, like, what do you want to do here, here.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Shake hands, get it done.

Maybe so, and move things more smoothly.

I think that's true.

And you know, as the session unfolds more, we'll kind of get to some of these things.

But there are some things that there are differences on.

So I think that those differences might be magnified at a time where Burrows can stand up for the House.

And yeah, although Democrats have been kind of struggling to kind of get closer to the a victory on any piece of legislation that's not sort of a priority for Republicans.

The it's still the case that they're, they're they're having to have Burrows stand up for them to Patrick, which maybe they will, maybe they won't.

But yeah, we'll see how this plays out.

But that to me is the most interesting of these tensions.

So that's one thing.

The other is that, as I've said before, that Texas politics is now national politics.

We don't have the distinctive brand of Texas politics where members can vote their districts.

Right now, they're all basically we talked about some we talked about a couple weeks ago.

Now they're all fundamentally kind of pulling in that same direction because leadership is telling them to do that, even if maybe it's not so much in their favor and their districts are against it.

They're getting kind of red flags from school districts saying, you know, enough is enough.

Those things are all problematic for them.

But Donald Trump says Greg Abbott says so they do it.

I think that's one thing that has serious implications, because of the kind of partizanship and polarization that happens.

The other is that Texas has, oddly, now become a kind of single issue state.

Right.

The voucher thing is really kind of taken over the session and really the election.

So for the last eight, nine months, that's really all people have talked about.

Now that Abbott has this, the rest of this is sort of just gravy.

I mean, there's some things he's going to get in, some things he's not going to get just because of the dynamics of the session, but he's got what he needs.

So honestly, if for him he can just say, look, you know, it's been great.

You know.

Let's, you know, roll out the champagne, you know, take a victory drink and then everybody goes back to what they're doing.

So I think that there's a moment where Abbott is sort of just says, okay, yeah, we're good with all of this because we've got the one issue done, promised and really demanded to get done, but they're still legislating.

Obviously, one of the things they're legislating on is about, the state's abortion ban.

Correct.

There has been serious concern about the dynamics of this, the specifics of this, when it comes to what doctors are and are not able to do legally.

The interim had many, concerns.

And you had this as a point of contention during the campaign where a lot of women were saying that these sorts of issues were too unclear and may cause harm, and in some cases, very much did.

Those stories were heartbreaking.

The goal of the legislative session, in part, was to clarify this.

The Senate passed a bill 31 to 0 in a bipartisan, totally unanimous fashion that clarified the medical exemptions in the bill.

And really, the good news is that it effectively has been sort of supported by everybody.

Under the changes, some specific things include it's, allows for doctors to perform an abortion if the patient is experiencing a life threatening trauma capable of causing death.

And, the bill also requires doctors to receive training on the revised law, which also was good.

Right.

So there have the the Brennan's, Amy and Steve pressing for this, for a while because they see what everyone saw, which was that there's just this lack of clarification.

Now they finally kind of get the law, the medical board can follow up and now things seem like they're at least in good shape.

It's all too rare that the left.

Yeah, has this kind of moment of clarity that the.

Ledge and not only the ledge, but also, you know, people that are involved, anti-abortion groups, the medical board, medical organizations, everybody was on the same wagon, which is, something very rare.

Very rare.

Yeah.

Experts.

Yeah, the politicians themselves, the parties.

I mean, there's obviously agents who weren't as happy.

And both sides.

Yes.

But even somebody like Sarah Eckhardt, right, who's been the most liberal senator, if not the most liberal senator, says, you know, not happy to vote for it per se, because she doesn't agree with a lot.

But this makes things less cruel and more clear.

So as a result, that's a that's a win.

That's legislative win.

I can't remember the last time that happened.

I don't know.

I have to say I'm too young to remember.

That.

That's true.

And he blocked out the last session anyway.

Right.

We don't need more of that.

That's, But look, I want to make the case that things are necessarily going smoothly.

This is a family squabble.

There are going to be just like Thanksgiving dinner, some mashed potatoes thrown.

People aggressively, sometimes passive aggressively, cutting their turkey a little too hard.

The green beans.

Exchanging.

Ugly glances at each other.

Republicans and Democrats are fighting, in part because Republicans are fighting other Republicans.

And what I mean is that you have a group of insurgents in the Texas House who have declared open war on GOP leadership.

This is a group of Freedom Caucus members like Briscoe, Cain, Troy Tinderholt, Steve Huff, who, who have been, very vocal about their dissatisfaction with Burroughs from the start.

They wanted cook.

They didn't get cook.

They got Burroughs.

And so they're mad about it.

And the madness, the madness, their anger has spilled over into essentially killing what we call the RNC calendar, the like, the local and consent calendar.

These are bills that are totally consensual bills.

Sometimes a little tax hike because of a local municipal issue.

Sometimes it's a like a like a ceremonial issue.

We talked about.

Managing white whitetail deer population, for instance.

Yes.

Like really important stuff.

Yeah.

But important because these things are.

Important for the deer.

Yeah, right.

The deer are very much a deer.

The deer lobby is like all over this, but like, that's all I write.

Like, these are things that are really important for local government and for some of these members whose districts need to have these things change.

So like this is aren't earth changing, you know, policies, but they are important to have the insurgent group basically said that they're going to kill every local and consent calendar, which is to say, every bill here will die until it's the case that all the GOP priorities are passed.

That's a logistical complication regardless.

Yeah, but in any case, there's concern from Republicans who say, look, time is short.

We got a lot to do.

We can't have you killing the calendar every single week.

And Democrats are looking at and saying, like, what did we do?

Right.

People like, you know, like, like, like Harold Dutton are saying, you know, this is the way to handle this, right?

And it's happened before in past sessions in various ways, but never to this scale.

So what do you make of how this has come about and what it might mean for the remainder of the session?

Well, obviously it introduces more complications.

And if there's some of the priorities that the governor wants to see, pass those are going to come in a special session.

Yeah.

So they're just angling for a number of special sessions.

If they don't do what they're supposed to be doing.

Which is very little appetite for.

And I think even among like Abbott and Patrick, I mean, Patrick is a different sort of take on this, but I doubt Greg Abbott wants to have another special.

It just creates more possibilities of things going wrong and or being kind of terrorist if things don't go right, as you say.

I think Governor Abbott wants to see the gravy.

Right?

And if there is no gravy, then the turkeys, you know, very dry, very dry, you will eat it.

Yeah.

And he has a turkey with the pouches, but, you know, a little gravy goes, yeah.

Good.

Just make it like a little more interesting.

Yeah.

So I think.

That hungry like eat.

It's, it's a, it's a different way.

It's pushing the envelope to one way that, eventually, politics in the state legislature are going to become, unbearable.

Whenever, for example, Democrats take control, Democrats will take control when, who knows?

But this is going to happen because it has happened before in Texas.

Texas is a one party, state, and eventually Democrats are going to be in power.

And the question is, are they going to return the favor?

And if they return the favor again, that's bad for the state.

It's bad for policymaking.

It's bad for, all of us, here in this great state.

So it's going to have a lot of implications.

Yes.

It's a small group of, of of Republicans.

But now that Speaker Borrows got that quote unquote endorsement for Donald Trump, right?

I think he has a little bit more of political capital and say like, okay, like we need to get this thing done.

And these aren't members who are have a lot of traction anyway.

And so now, obviously, yeah, the kind of fact that Burrows can pick up the Trump phone and say, get the White House immediately and get them to call, it would actually be pretty interesting.

And the other Republicans that want to pass legislation that.

No one wants these dead.

Yeah, they have to have this go.

Yeah, yeah.

So we'll see.

Speaking of Democrats taking control, none other than Beto O'Rourke this week implied that if the people want it, he would run for Senate.

Yes.

Obviously there's a long history here we don't have time to go into because we've talked about this so many hours over the past couple of years.

But basically in 22, he loses to Abbott by 11 points.

Before that, he lost to Cruz and 18 by a three points.

But he raises big money.

I think this is probably not a good idea for Democrats.

I think, honestly, Democrats need him right where he is, which is raising money, raising the profile of the party, keeping people engaged, making sure the base is happy.

We don't, as Democrats, that the Democrats in this state don't have a lot of kind of like leaders, right?

They don't have people who are sticking around like MJ Hagar.

Right, right.

Christina Tzintzún Ramirez, who moved on to do kind of more national politics, even Colin Allred already, they're all one and dones.

They need people to really invest in the party, raising money, keeping the base happy.

That's what O'Rourke is doing.

They don't need him front and center.

But then the big question is, who do you run?

That's a different podcast.

That's for the different show.

But Democrats are still trying to find that person.

I just don't think it's him.

But maybe the he's the only option.

If so, that.

Would be interesting because the next midterm could be 2018 redo 2.0 and maybe, maybe, Democrats have a chance.

But before we go, which is one, keep a big shout out to our friends in the US Virgin Islands.

That, Yeah.

Yeah.

- WTJX Right.

Yeah.

Thanks for listening and watch.

Absolutely.

So for these week, that's it.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and.

I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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