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Good afternoon and welcome to the City of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Tuesday, June 16th, and I'm Mark Ross, retired managing partner of PWC and president of the City Club Board of Directors.

It is my pleasure to introduce today's forum featuring Jesse Arm, vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute.

As we all know, this is a midterm election year, and we've just about made it through all the primaries, given where we are.

And with less than five months till the midterms, this feels like a perfect time to take stack of the electorate and to ask exactly what voters from both parties believe about policies, about America, about the issues that are defining our politics and about themselves and their fellow Americans.

Earlier this year, our guest published results of two separate surveys.

One focused on Republican voters and the other of Democrats.

As a political junkie, I've spent time going through them both, and Im excited for this conversation about the findings and the potential implications for November.

Among other things, the findings urge us to be wary of the narratives pushed by online algorithms and corporate media, and to uncover the actual values of Americans, some of which, frankly, are a bit chilling.

This polling for both Democrats and Republicans provides a compelling snapshot of the challenges facing each party and, by extension, our democracy.

This work, too, has been noticed and has been quoted by a few different New York Times writers.

In his role at the Manhattan Institute, Jesse Arm oversees communications, government relations, and polling.

Before the Manhattan Institute, Mr.

Arm worked as a pollster and project manager at Applecart, a New York City based political consulting and data analytics firm, where he advised political campaigns, advocacy organizations, trade associations and corporations.

He joins us today to discuss his latest research and what it means for communities across the nation, the politics shaping our lives in the future of our democracy.

Moderating the conversation is Karen Kasler, statehouse news bureau chief at Ohio Public Radio and Television.

All right.

A quick reminder for our live stream audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, you may text to (330)541-5794, and the City club staff will try to work it into the program now.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Jesse Arm and Karen Kasler.

wonderful to see you all, and it's great to share the stage with Jesse, who I promise we'll have a civil conversation even though he's from Michigan.

It's a good thing you're here in June and not in November.

Just saying so, but let's talk a little bit about Ohio.

You follow Ohio politics and what's happening here especially we've got two big races coming up in November for governor and US senator.

So let's start with the governor's race.

No matter who wins, we're going to end up with somebody who has never held elected office before, either Republican Vivek Ramaswamy or Democrat Amy Acton.

You've said that, Vivek Ramaswamy you find him interesting and that you find him and Senator Vice President JD Vance interesting.

Two of the most interesting people in the Republican Party right now.

Why is that?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, I just want to say thank you again so much for having me, as you said, welcoming a Wolverine up on stage at the Cleveland City Club is is very big of you all, but it's great to be here.

I was going through the Wikipedia on this place before I came, and I saw like a bunch of former presidents and Rosa Parks, and they invited me.

So I'm, you know, I'm not Rosa Parks, but I'll try my best with respect to Ohio politics.

Yeah.

Karen, I, I am kind of fascinated.

I'll start on the Republican side.

Right.

I think you have two important politicians breaking through here who represent two very distinct paths for the GOP from a policy and positioning perspective.

Okay.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who secured the Republican gubernatorial nomination and, you know, probably has a 50% chance or slightly better than 50% chance of being the next governor of this state is.

You know, controversial in some ways.

He ran a pretty MAGA presidential campaign a couple of years ago.

That was sort of something that helped bring him to prominence.

He was writing books and on Fox News a lot before that.

But he gave a speech a couple of years ago that I would encourage folks maybe watching on the live stream or in the audience to go home and to go check out on their own time at the National Conservatism Conference, where he talked about what he calls libertarian nationalism.

It's a very interesting speech.

And Vivek Ramaswamy is not someone who, despite the fact that he is very much a figure of the Trump era and built in the Donald Trump mode of right of center politics, is not backing away from the conservative movements commitments to free market economics, pursuing technological dynamism, unapologetically embracing the AI revolution, and sees a natural combination between libertarianism and nationalism that can come to the fore within the 2026 or beyond.

GOP.

JD Vance is the vice president of the United States.

He's out doing a real heavy press push in the last few days, just with a new book coming out and kind of being the administration's leading face of the new memorandum of understanding that has been established.

Though we haven't read in detail with the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think Vance is the odds on favorite to be the GOP's nominee for president in 2028, and he represents something a little bit different.

He has really embraced unions and has seen a potential bridge to be built with blue collar, working class Americans.

Donald Trump has brought a lot of them into the Republican Party, and I think JD Vance views that as the natural continuation of where this party should go.

He was someone who expressed reservations at times at the outset of this conflict with Iran and is, like I just mentioned out there very forthrightly and very aggressively pushing, you know, the, the, the peaceful resolution to this conflict in some way, shape or form.

So it's not to say that JD Vance is not similarly excited about the AI revolution.

He absolutely is.

But I think he has a different vision of the role government can play in driving economic outcomes.

Making investments in industrial policy, for example.

Then maybe someone in the Ramaswamy mold does so.

Ohio, to me, really feels like an important breeding ground for what the future of right of center America looks like.

Just briefly, to talk about the Democratic side, I was just going to ask you, right.

And you approach things from a conservative perspective at the Manhattan Institute.

But you also have done polling for Republicans and Democrats.

So let's talk a little bit about Amy Acton, the former head of the Ohio Department of Health.

Yeah, I mean, I have honestly less to say about her just because she's less of a national figure.

She's received less attention.

She seems to be doing well, which is something that is pretty interesting, especially given that she, in her most visible public role to date, was the face of the response to COVID which is not something that in retrospect, people feel we generally managed expertly from the get go in this country, especially in Ohio, which is kind of a liberty minded, you know, default, all things considered, red state, you know, if you have a Democrat who is kind of the face of the lockdowns, in some ways it's surprising that she's doing as well as she is.

I think she's doing as well as she is because of a number of different factors, because a she's not running toward defending those lockdown policies in 2020, nor is she defending a lot of the other progressive ideological excesses that were kind of at a fever pitch in in 2020, in the years immediately preceding, whether it is on issues pertaining to the whole woke stuff.

Right.

I mean, in their ad campaigns against her are really pushing, of course, her actions during the pandemic, which governor Mike DeWine has said they were actually his actions that.

I guess what's interesting about Amy Acton is that I don't see her, at least in the national media hits that I've seen, rushing to defend that record, which is, you know, you talk about some of this poll and we've done on Democrats.

There's this weird dynamic in the Democratic Party right now where the median Democratic voter actually holds a whole host of views, whether it is on meritocracy and die programs or affirmative action programs, whether it's on pediatric gender medicine or medical interventions for children who say they are transgender.

Crime and policing.

There's a whole or immigration.

There's a whole host of issues on which the median Democratic politician, staffer and also, like nonprofit employee that is heavily enmeshed within the progressive political ecosystem is way to the left of the median Democratic voter in this country.

That's what our polling shows.

And then there's this weird dynamic that plays out where you're asking yourself, well, why in general elections, if Democrats were just more moderate on a bunch of policy questions, they probably do better in most states.

Well, now, some of these moderate politicians have done fairly well in the last couple of months.

I'm thinking, well, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, he's not on the ballot, but Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey.

I mean, these are more moderate Democrats who have won.

I think the most extreme Democrats, by your view, would be people like Zohran Mamdani in New York City, who also won.

Yes.

But running in the bluest place in the country.

Exactly.

Look, Abigail Spanberger is an interesting test case, right?

Because that's somebody who ran as a moderate but has governed as a progressive right, and done really aggressive things that ultimately backfired, including embracing really aggressive gerrymander that the courts ultimately struck down and I think was one of the first dominoes, not the first domino, but one of the original dominoes.

That led to a ratcheting up of these redistricting wars that are on net going to be bad for Democrats if they continue, because, as you guys know, in a red state like Ohio and in a, you know, Rust Belt industrial Midwestern state, Americans are moving with their feet.

They're moving out of expensive from a real estate market perspective and a cost of living perspective and a tax perspective.

Blue states and into Sunbelt red states, for the most part.

And if you do the math on that, right, you start you stop thinking about 2026 or 2028, and you look out to 2030 or 2040.

What happens in those years?

Reapportionment, a census?

Okay.

It gets determined how many House seats every state is going to get.

And if everybody's moving with their feet and they're self-selecting, those people who are moving to go to the red states and gerrymandering has just become a total accepted norm in our politics.

Well, what's going to happen on Net?

You're going to have a whole lot more Republican seats in Congress.

And that's not great for the Democrats.

So their incentive is to work towards some kind of agreement or truce or and I realize that, you know, the Republicans are not taking their feet off the gas.

And these restrictions started in Texas, arguably.

Well, the point is, they have the upper hand.

I'm saying if you look out to 2030, so sometimes as this administration is now exhibiting, you've got to give a little to get a little.

They're working on it in the Middle East.

But that is that would be my advice to the Democrats in the context of the redistricting wars.

But yes, Spanberger ran as a moderate, and I think she benefited politically for doing so.

Well, I want to ask you on your survey on Republicans, since you also did win back last year, you said that there's this core Republican base.

About two thirds of the party is that.

And then the rest is these new entrants who you describe as as younger and more potentially open to conspiracy theories and controversial ideas that Republicans in that core area don't necessarily embrace?

Yeah.

So the upshot of that research project, which got, you know, a lot of press, I think sometimes for the wrong reasons, because people rush toward the most salacious numbers that they could find.

And surveys always produce funky numbers.

But if you dig deep enough and the surveys run long enough, because we're a funky country with a whole lot of people with funky views.

But I'll say this the vast majority of the Republican coalition is the GOP as you conceive of them.

Boomer Reganite, low taxes, bomb the terrorists, yada yada yada.

But you hear a lot in media today about a scary new breed.

A lot of people think that the party of George Bush and Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and in Ohio, for instance, Mike DeWine, George Voinovich is over.

Yeah.

Well, some of you in this room may have heard of a gentleman by the name of Nick Fuentes, who is a term he uses as a grouper.

But, you know, any white nationalist, racist bigot.

Take your pick, but kind of leans in to all of that, sort of unapologetic about it.

And look, recently ran some focus groups as well following that big survey project.

And it is true that you don't necessarily have to be like a regular listener to Nick Fuentes like multi-hour long stream where he's going on and diatribes on a daily basis about everything under the sun and talking to his chat respondents who are sending him money for the privilege of asking him a question about the Jews or the blacks or the Indians or what have you.

By the way, he's a big Amy Acton supporter.

He's not a bit he's opposed to the bank.

Ramaswamy.

He's probably he's actually he's actually a big Amy active supporter and has encouraged his followers to agitate or campaign or support her.

A Jewish woman, which is incredibly strange but speaks to the burn it down mentality of a lot of people within this.

It's not a piece of the GOP coalition, not meaningfully, but with it is an online community, and it is a burgeoning online community.

It has an audience well outside the American right and also well outside America.

Okay.

But is it influential?

Is it influencing policy?

We're talking about it right here at the City Club, which is like undignified in some sense.

And I wish we didn't have to.

But the answer to that question is yes.

Look at Tucker Carlson.

Tucker Carlson was a mainstream figure until relatively recently departed Fox News Donald Trump got back into the white House.

Incentives changed.

I'm not saying it's purely incentives.

I think Tucker Carlson's ideology and worldview.

And possibly mental status changed as well in some meaningful ways.

But again, the audience extends well beyond the American right and well beyond America.

And that takes me to this point about the new entrance to the GOP.

Okay, so we did.

Yeah.

Like I said at the outset, two thirds of the GOP coalition are very conventional conservatives.

They believe the kinds of things on abortion taxes, foreign policy that Ronald Reagan believed in.

Basically every other Republican has believed that has succeeded him at the national level.

But there is a group of new entrants there, less than a third of the GOP.

And this is understanding the GOP coalition in its widest terms.

Okay.

Anybody who is either self IDing as a Republican or voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

So just today's GOP coalition, today's Trump coalition, whatever you want to describe it as, it's a very wide grouping, but the people within that grouping who are the most conspiratorial, who are the most bigoted, who are the most all over the isolationist on foreign policy or just all over the map, policy wise, hard to pin down the through line there is that they're new entrants.

The through line there is that they were voting for Democrats until pretty recently, or they weren't voting at all.

They're young.

So it's also more diverse, weirdly enough, meaning more blacks, more Hispanics.

But it actually makes some sense when you stop and think about it.

Right.

Like, who did Donald Trump reach out to and bring in to the GOP?

Ten unconventional figures Robert F Kennedy Jr was just here speaking.

Robert F Kennedy Jr is not bigoted at all, but he is unconventional, right?

And he has a set of views that positioned him on the progressive left for much of his career, or the environmentalist left, or what have you.

And today he finds his home in the Republican Party as a cabinet member and Donald Trump's second administration as secretary of Health and Human Services.

That is quite a departure from where we were ten years ago.

I want to turn to the U.S.

Senate race in Ohio here and talk a little bit about that.

One of the things that you've said is that Pennsylvania's John Fetterman is should be the blueprint for Democratic candidates nationally in red states, and he says that.

Or you say that Democrats can't bring themselves to nominate people like that who can compete and win.

Well, Sherrod Brown is running in this.

He's the Democratic nominee.

He's competed.

He's won.

Is he in that same model, that same old.

Yeah, I think look, I think Sherrod Brown's a good candidate, probably the best one that Democrats could have possibly run this cycle in Ohio.

A little bit harder to pick yourself up off the mat after you've already lost.

It's not like you have quite that same degree of incumbent shine on you or invincibility.

John Husted, unlike Vivek Ramaswamy, is a largely inoffensive, if a little undefined figure.

So but but in a in a red state.

I mean, I kind of like the odds of the inoffensive, undefined Republican.

It's very common that generic Republican runs better on ballot tests than specific Republicans, who have all kinds of baggage that come with them.

And I think John Huston is about as close as it gets to generic Republican look, Democrats probably wishing they had generic Democrat to run in Maine right about now would make things a lot easier for them.

I want to address the Fetterman piece.

Look, John Fetterman is underwater pretty badly among Democrats in his favor ability rating in Pennsylvania and may very well be primaried and not be in the Senate much longer.

But you know who?

He has positive favorable ratings with Republicans.

Is he like Joe Manchin?

Well, kind of went the other way.

No, not not.

I think John Fetterman is a better politician than Joe Manchin in some ways, because.

Being a centrist isn't his bit being.

Willing to go anywhere is his bit right and just being incredibly direct.

Whatever.

I don't want to get two hung up on the Fetterman example, but I just say, metrics wise, if you're really serious about competing and playing to win in red states, you would be running the kinds of candidates who have positive favorability ratings among conservatives.

Look at what this white House is doing right now with Susan Collins.

Susan Collins is the most liberal senator in the in the Senate Republican caucus.

And Donald Trump is not one to tolerate a whole lot of dissension within his ranks, as we've seen in some other contests and more conservative races and the more conservative states like Louisiana or Texas.

Or North Carolina, even Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn are not going to be in the next Congress.

But Susan Collins, who also voted for Trump's impeachment and against several of his nominees for the Supreme Court and against a whole lot of legislation he supported, gets a pass.

Why?

Because she's the one who can win in Maine.

I have not seen evidence that Democrats are really serious about winning and Red America.

If they were, they would run candidates who Republicans see things to like about.

Instead they run.

I'll point you just to one other example.

There's a Senate candidate in you know, we've all talked about Maine and Texas, and we can get into some of those races, but they're heavily covered by the national media.

But I'll point you in the direction of Nebraska.

Democrats, you know, are kind of optimistic about Nebraska.

They think they've done something very clever.

They've run an independent candidate who is taking massive amounts of money from Chuck Schumer, funding arm his war chest for this Senate election cycle.

And, you know, Dan Osborne is the name of the candidate.

He's running as an independent.

He's self-styled as a populist.

He runs a lot of his ads in red, not in blue, and puts the Republican Ricketts his ads in his literature, his language in in blue in some of those side by side comparisons.

But that's games that's that's that's trickery.

I highly doubt that's going to work.

I highly doubt Dan Osborne is going to be a United States senator, because on paper, you tick down where Dan Osborne is at on the issues and he's not like John Fetterman.

He's not willing to buck his party on much of anything.

He's a progressive.

He's a hard left, actually progressive.

He's a populist progressive.

He's more in the Graham Platner mode.

I want to ask you about a couple of issues that you've talked about and written about at Manhattan Institute that become political issues.

Of course, one of them is diversity, equity and inclusion.

DEI you've been very opposed to DEI measures here in Ohio.

We ended up with a law that is around its year long anniversary, Senate Bill one, which banned DEI mandatory DEI programs at colleges and universities, required intellectual diversity, as the bill puts it, on topics that a lot of people feel are settled, such as marriage, elections, abortion and also banned faculty strikes.

Is this where things are going?

I mean, DEI and inclusion has brought a lot of people into political parties and into positions that they would not have had access to before.

Well, I don't think banning mandatory DEI trainings or large DEI bureaucracies that publicly funded universities bans diversity in an American life.

Quite the opposite.

A restoration of colorblind equality under the law is a very politically popular proposition.

In Deep blue California, they have voted via referendum against affirmative action ballot propositions a number of times already.

The American people.

There was a bit of a change in consensus around this around 2020.

Following George Floyd's death and the protests and riots around the country that followed.

But no, by and large, meritocracy and colorblind equality is a very politically popular proposition, and I think both parties should embrace it.

I see no reason why it should be a conservative coded effort.

There are scholarships, though, that can't be awarded because of Senate Bill one, scholarships that discriminate on the basis of race.

Well, the scholarships that people set up to give certain people opportunities, right?

That's I think we said the same thing.

Well, let me ask you also.

We did, we did, we did.

I mean, that's fine.

I mean, you're allowed to believe in affirmative action.

You're allowed to believe black people have gotten a raw deal in the United States, and therefore there should be scholarships for them available in 2026 that that are earmarked for them or held for them.

Most Americans happen to disagree with that today.

But but it's it's it's fine.

You're allowed to think that I think the Constitution prohibits it.

But but you know, we're having that debate around the country right now.

I want to ask you to about another issue that's come up.

And you mentioned George Floyd protest, protest in general.

We've seen no kings protests and things like that.

You and of course, obviously, what happened in Minneapolis earlier this year with the shooting of two citizens by ICE.

You've talked about what you call the protest class, and you said that radical left wing activism is actually a very well funded industry with plenty of employment opportunities at the moment.

I think there's a lot of people who protest who say, hey, wait, I'm not getting paid for this.

This is what I believe.

You guys got to get paid.

You're missing out on the best opportunities.

We're writing about them in City Journal, our affiliate magazine, all the time.

You guys are leaving Soros cash on the table of that, though.

Where's the evidence of that?

You go around and talk to these people who are at these protests.

They're working at nonprofits.

Who else has time, maybe other than retirees, to go out and block highways in the middle of a in the middle of the workweek?

Look, we've been pushing model legislation at the Manhattan Institute that prohibits what we describe as civil terrorism.

It's one thing to have a misdemeanor slap on the wrist penalty for blocking traffic.

If you're one person screwing around in the road, it's a different thing if you're going out.

And by the way, you ask for evidence.

The DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America publishes this stuff.

They're running trainings, they have funders, and then they go and train people on how to protest effectively in ways that impede.

The regular business of a city.

It's a it's a different thing for one person to block traffic than it is for 30 people to sit down together on a highway and unroll a banner that says, climate action now or free Palestine, or Trump is a pedophile or whatever.

Look, he is somebody said, okay, I mean, you're you may have a First Amendment right to believe that you do not have a right to block traffic just to spread that message.

You do not have a right to harass the people who are eating outdoors at a restaurant that is privately owned, because you believe Trump is a pedophile or Palestine or whatever, and you do not have the right to, again, a cost individual citizens and make life in public spaces unlivable through weaponizing laws that are currently prosecuted as misdemeanors.

But you guys are working as a collective to do something more serious.

We think in those instances when the goal is to push the will of a radical minority on onto a agnostic majority via these sorts of tactics, they should be punished as something more serious than misdemeanors, because that's what they are.

Well, on that note, we're about to go to audience Q&A for those just tuning in via our live stream.

I'm Karen Castle, Statehouse Bureau Chief of Ohio Public Media.

Moderator for today's conversation, we're joined by Jesse Arm, vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute.

We welcome questions from everyone City Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City Club.

If you'd like to text a question that we can ask Jesse, please text it to (330) 541-5794 (330) 541-5794, and city club staff will try to work it into the program.

So let's just get started with the first question, please.

Patton Institute is known to be a center right to conservative public policy think tank.

Do you think that your views have been skewed to the right because it sounds like it.

And for example, you haven't mentioned anything about the independent voters who, from what I have understood, are going leaving the Republican Party and going more towards the Democratic Party.

Yes.

My views are skewed to the right.

You are correct in that observation.

Does that come through in your surveys?

No.

I think my surveys show things that I wish they didn't all the time.

I've talked about some of those things here tonight.

But look why our independents gravitating toward the Democrats this election cycle.

Because they certainly are.

The Democrats are the odds on favorite to win both houses of Congress.

The president's approval ratings are not very good.

Some of that, I think you can chalk up to the fact that public opinion in this country does swing back and forth like a pendulum, but the mechanics of elections in this country are such that I don't think the outcome in November is a foregone conclusion.

And I'm not saying that because I'm a conservative.

I'm saying that because it was a foregone conclusion that the Democrats would lose when they were polling very poorly in 2022, two years following Joe Biden's election, when public opinion was swinging against him like a pendulum.

And then Democrats did okay, I believe they lost one of the houses of Congress, but they didn't sustain anywhere near the kind of losses that were projected.

So time will tell.

Obviously, things are very fluid.

The president's base may be very dissatisfied with this kind of conclusion to the conflict in Iran.

A lot of people's minds are on that.

On the other hand, the market continues to go in the direction that it is going as of today, and gas prices follow suit.

Maybe the Republicans will have some kind of recovery between now and November.

But I yeah, I want to acknowledge in the question I am a conservative.

I also look at polling and data with that in mind and putting that to the side.

Let's take another question.

Can you possibly say to us what we've heard, what's wrong with the Democrats and what they're doing wrong?

Can you say what's wrong with the Republicans and what they're doing wrong?

Yeah.

Well, well, first I'll say what's right with the Democrats, maybe.

And why I think the Democrats are in position to do well this cycle.

I think it is on the backs of.

People like Amy Acton, who are not rushing to defend the excesses of progressive fever.

Pitch politics of 2020.

Let's look at two Democratic candidates who have attracted a lot of media attention this cycle Graham Platner in Maine and James Talarico in Texas.

There are a lot of clips of James Talarico saying things in 2020 and 2021 like, God is non-binary.

There are six.

Science tells us that there are six biological sexes.

Southern borders should have a big welcome mat right out in front of it if you want to win in Texas.

Those are maybe not the best slogans to be championing statewide, but James Talarico, much to his credit, has acknowledged that and said I no longer believe some of those things.

I am not someone who believes that children should be able to, you know, undergo surgical medical interventions to change their gender under the age of 18.

He's also noted that the oil and gas industry produces a lot of jobs and a lot of prosperity for the state of Texas.

I think that is indicative of James Talarico running a very smart campaign, where he is playing to win in a deep red state.

More Democrats, if they're serious about winning in those kinds of political environments, should run campaigns like the one James Talarico is running.

On the other hand, you have Graham Platner, Graham Platner, as I think closer to the theory of politics that I was describing with respect to this guy, Dan Osborne, who's running in Nebraska.

Granted, part of it is because he's in a blue state, but he happens to be running against a candidate who is sort of notoriously squishy, moderate, and willing to buck her own party.

I would think as a pollster, as a data guy, the most obvious solution is to say I will also run a very moderate campaign, and then voters will have the option between two different moderate picks.

And this is main they'll go with the moderate Democrat.

But that's not the campaign Graham Platner is running.

He's running a campaign that is basically hard left on every issue except guns, where he seems to have an affinity for AR 15.

Okay, maybe it'll work in Maine, there's a lot of people in Maine who wear those t shirts that say, like, I love my AR 15 and my trans son.

It's got funky politics in the northeast.

And then, as with respect to what the Republicans are doing wrong, don't even get me started.

It's a long list.

I'll keep you here all afternoon.

You know, economic satisfaction numbers have not improved despite the fact that the market is going in the right direction.

There.

This war.

The message has been mixed.

I think it was clearer what we were doing at the outset.

I think there are now new spokesman says, you know, we're seeing a lot more of the vice president, a lot less of the secretary of state and the secretary of war describing what we're doing now.

That leaves not just independence and Democrats confused about what the goals were here from the get go, and national security hawks don't understand why but base Republican voters, foreign policy we're shifting tack in this way and why the spokesmen have changed.

So all of these things, I think, contribute to why Republicans are doing worse in the polls right now than Democrats.

Take another question.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

My question for you is, in light of the president's falling poll numbers and the failure of some of the candidates again across the board, what do you foresee with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party?

I believe you said two thirds.

You thought of Republicans were more of a traditional mode.

From my perspective, it doesn't seem that way.

It seems like those people are being pushed out.

And what do you foresee happening after president is Trump is out of office.

What happens with the Republicans and the MAGA part of the party?

Thank you.

Yeah.

It's very hard to define what the MAGA movement is or what the MAGA mandate is.

I tend to typically define it as embracing.

This is going to do terribly in this room.

But.

With respect to policy specifically, not pitch, not tone, not tenor, not coarsening the discourse with respect to policy specifically, I actually think there's a pretty reasonable argument that Donald Trump has been a moderating force on the GOP with respect to Mitt Romney was going to cut entitlements.

Donald Trump wrote that right off the table.

Mitt Romney's GOP was fervently anti-abortion, 100% pro-life, and 100% anti-gay marriage.

Donald Trump on for all day pride flag at campaign stops while running for president, and then wrote all of the language about marriage being an institution between one man and one woman.

Out of the 2024 RNC policy platform.

Okay, we don't conceive of Donald Trump as a moderate, and I understand why he is not one in temperament.

And there's a lot of other issues.

He's not a moderate.

Yeah, immigration.

But immigration.

He actually moved the GOP in the right word direction, but also in one where many of their voters were at and many Democrats were at two.

You hear Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton talk about immigration in 2008, and I feel like I'm listening to the median Senate Republican.

Having said all of that, I think MAGA is basically, do you embrace that hardcore flexibility with respect to policy, the trust in one leader who is going to change his mind frequently, who is going to be a hawk on Iran at one point, and then who is going to say, we've came and done what we needed to do, and now we're going to be changing our tack and position.

Left leaning people call that a cult around one individual.

Right leaning people call it something different.

But at the end of the day, of course, it's true that the MAGA movement is wrapped up with and defined by where Donald Trump stands on any given day, on any given issue.

So what happens when he leaves the political stage?

A I'm not convinced that once he leaves the white House, he leaves the political stage.

Are you convinced you'll leave the white House?

Yeah, I'm convinced he leaves the white House.

If we if he left the white House in 2020.

Eventually, I think he'll do it in 2028.

He tried to stay.

Yeah, yeah, that's true, but.

But he didn't.

He wasn't able to the system held.

And what I will say is that I think it's conceivable that we don't have a 2028 GOP presidential primary that is as rich in these debates about economic policy, about foreign policy, about social and cultural issues as we're all kind of anticipating.

Right.

And it will be this clear, defining thing of like, what is MAGA?

Is it hawkish?

Is it dovish?

Is it free market oriented.

Is it a you know more embracing of government playing a heavier hand in dictating how an economy should operate.

It may very well just be who Donald Trump endorses.

And he could very well say my VP is the guy or my secretary of state is the guy.

And I think things wrap up pretty quickly.

Let's take another question.

Hi, Jesse.

Welcome to Cleveland.

As a person who's protested her entire life, which is a very long time.

Sure.

As a person who's protested a good 60 years of her life, it's interesting that you said I left money on the table thanks to ChatGPT.

Democratic Socialists of America has 100,000 members.

That's not a lot of people.

I find it just interesting that you go, oh, DSA, they're paying people, they're activating people.

They're making people stand out in the middle of the street when you're trying to eat dinner.

Question is, do you really think that's factual?

Number one, that they are so motivating people to get paid.

I find that guys, this is just so easy.

Okay.

If you're lawfully protesting and you have a permit and you're doing the No Kings March, you're fine.

You're golden, you're great, no problem.

I think she had a follow up here, you know.

Yes.

Thank you.

The question was, so that's the comment.

I guess the question is, I don't know how you say JD Vance is so pro-labor.

He is, you know, a Silicon Valley.

He's, you know, aristocat, he aristocrat.

He went to Harvard.

I just don't see where he's so involved in the labor movement.

Yes, he grew up in Appalachia, but I haven't seen him do anything for the working man.

So maybe you can answer that for me.

To me?

Pardon me.

No, no, I'm asking you how.

You're the one who said he was a work for the working man.

I'm asking you for the facts now.

I mean, you know, you're making me like him the way you describe him.

But no, I don't know.

Look, he wears this stuff pretty on his sleeve.

You should read about the Pro act, which was legislation he supported when he was in Congress.

He was a big proponent of putting Secretary of Labor who was no longer there.

Laurie Chavez-DeRemer in that position, who has a long history of working with labor groups and unions to earn endorsements and support within the GOP.

Yeah, I mean, there's just a really big ideological faction within the Republican Party right now that wants to put less of the clamps on big unions and work with them and embrace a spirit of collaboration.

And yeah, I don't I'm not too enthusiastic about it, to be frank.

First of all, go blue go.

97-2001.

That's the best thing I heard from the audience that.

Just joking.

I ran for office in Erie County as a Democrat for county commission, and during my door knocking, I got the question.

First thing was, are you a D or an R?

I answered the question honestly in the door would close and then I changed.

Are you a D or an R?

I said, I'm a child of God.

First, I'm an American.

I'm a husband.

I'm a father.

I'm a whole lot of things.

And then I'm a Democrat.

How do Democrats connect with people on a human level?

Because once I did that, people actually listened to me.

Yeah, well, that rocks.

You know, maybe you should run for office again.

Let me.

I want to complete one thought, actually, on the last question that I didn't that I didn't that I didn't say.

But then I'll address this one other phenomenon with the union vote that I think is really interesting is as we see more labor leaders kind of embrace like the Omni cause.

Right.

Like, like, you know, freeing Gaza is important to climate change, which is important to reproductive health.

This is something you hear a lot of in these kinds of protest environments and within progressive groups.

I just read a UAW endorsement from Michigan for the progressive socialist aligned candidate, Abdul Saeed, who's running there that made no mention of manufacturing or the auto industry.

Remarkable, right.

The candidate in that race who has a long standing history of working with unions and being an ally of manufacturing in the auto industry is Haley Stevens.

But then you read statistics like 25% of the UAW is currently made up of graduate students, people in academia.

And so then you see other things happening, like the guys who work on the assembly line are voting for Trump, regardless of what their bosses say or what party conventions they go to or who they endorse in primaries.

The vote is changing, I think partially.

And to tie it to this question, because of the cultural disposition of the Democratic Party, it is tailored to the grad student.

Okay.

And you guys who are sometimes out at those No Kings protests.

Should tell the next generation who's maybe not at the No Kings protest, but who's at some other protests, more like the ones I'm talking about that get a little hotter and maybe sometimes involve breaking into a building at Columbia and holding a janitor hostage, as opposed to going out on a Sunday afternoon and, you know, waving the American flag, which I see a lot of at the No Kings protests, which is great.

Embracing patriotism would go a long way.

25 years ago, according to Gallup polling, 90% of Republicans said they were very or extremely proud to be an American, and 87% of Democrats said the same day.

25 years later, that number is 92% for Republicans, a little bit higher.

It is 36% for Democrats who say they are very or extremely proud to be an American.

It takes nothing to be proud of your country.

You don't have to like your president to be proud of your country.

And by the way, Republicans don't do this pendulum swing back and forth pride in America to the same extent they just don't like.

I mean, the data tells us that anyway, it exists to some extent, but it exists to a much lesser extent.

I was proud to be an American when Joe Biden was president.

I'll be proud to be an American.

If Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris or even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the next American, is the next president.

They're all Americans.

And I think more Democrats who embrace that ethos than the Robert De Niro one that I heard the other day expressed would result in the Democratic Party doing better in elections, if that is a priority.

Seven other question.

Hi.

My question is a similar kind of a follow up to a prior question.

And so you said roughly two thirds of Republicans still fit what we think of as the traditional Republican mold.

We've seen nationally some of these primaries where you've made references to situations like this.

A sitting member of Congress in the Republican Party has caught Donald Trump's attention negatively.

He has selected a primary candidate.

And like Thomas Massie, for example, the what we think of as the more establishment candidate has been married out and replaced with somebody more in the style of Trump.

Given what you've said about the majority of Republicans still being the more traditional conservative type as well as the president's declining popularity, I'm just wondering, like, do you think this is a wise strategy for the long term?

How do you see this playing out?

You know, when these go to general elections in November?

Yeah, I completely reject the categorization that Thomas Massie was an establishment figure within the GOP.

He voted against the party and the president on a regular basis.

He trafficked in some of the ugliest conspiracy theories that are now floating around in American life.

by the way, he basically ran on this.

He ran on the notion that he was a bipartisan champion of, you know, the Epstein files, working with Ro Khanna to expose dentists from random states in the country who appeared in random lineups with other people at some point, and then doxing them and ruining their lives.

These are real things that happened.

Massie gets up out there after running a campaign aggressively against the entire GOP establishment and the president and then, you know, does doesn't lose amicably or with any degree of respect, but says that he couldn't get his opponent, who he had just lost to on the phone because he was he was stuck in Tel Aviv so he couldn't reach him online.

You know, Thomas Massie is everything that is disturbing and scary about the Republican Party, I think.

I don't actually agree with every single one of the president's choices in various different primary elections, but I happen to think that one was an excellent fight to pick.

And the fact that Massie was driven out of the Republican Party unceremoniously as an incumbent in his own district, someone who had high name ID was a recognized figure, built a relationship of trust with his voters, and was defeated by a conventional, more establishment Republican nominee.

On the backing of the president's endorsement is, to me, a bit of a white pill and a confirmation of this notion that most Republicans are, in fact, normal.

We have time for one more kind of short question.

Okay.

First of all, thank you for such a good conversation, joining it very much.

First on that on that poll wasn't true in that poll, that 41% of all Americans are not proud to be an American.

I think it's a Wall Street Journal poll.

My, my my second comment is or question is you talk about the death of the Democratic Party because of migration, but it's in that same migration causing North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia to become now purple states, or even go back to the now a blue state in Colorado.

Yeah, yeah, guys, my whole point, like half of my half of the things I've been saying are how Democrats can be more competitive in the Sun Belt and in red states.

A lot of these people who are moving to Florida and Arizona and Texas for the more favorable tax environment are Democrats who came from blue states and presumably will vote for politicians who reflect their values.

I think Democrats can win anywhere.

I think Democrats should have a 50 state strategy, but that requires some degree of flexibility on policy.

The Republican Party has done many things over the course of Donald Trump's tenure as party leader, which is now going on north of a decade.

One thing that they have introduced is a diversity of policy perspective, sometimes excessively so, in my view.

I've spoken of that today.

That has not happened in the Democratic Party.

In the Democratic Party, there has been, you know, we got to talk about it like donor funded groups dictate policy agendas.

Okay.

There are tons of them in Washington in the Republican Party, too.

No it's not.

Donald Trump dictates the term guy.

Folks, folks, folks, folks.

Do you believe that Donald Trump is a cult leader?

So do you believe that when Donald Trump says X, that everybody in the Republican Party says X?

And do you believe that if Donald Trump says, why the next day everybody agrees to why?

Yes.

Okay, then he's not hammering home a policy driven particular East agenda.

Do you see my point?

The left wing groups.

Okay.

Demand climate maximalism, demand maximalism on racial justice issues, demand maximalism on transgender issues.

All that go well beyond where the median Democratic voters preferences lie.

I feel like I'm not breaking through, but unfortunately, it is the case that if you have a cult leader who is saying, I believe X on one day and Y on the next day, that is simply not the same thing as a bunch of progressive groups that control the flow of dollars to candidates and control the pipeline for candidate recruitments, who distribute questionnaires with checklists that say, are you on this position a progressive?

Are you on this position a progressive?

Are you on this position a progressive?

This is a critique of conservatives I am making, and a critique of progressives alike to embrace some flexibility on policy positions, to run a if you are a Republican, to run a more candidate, a more moderate candidate in a state like Maine and a more populist conservative candidate in a state like Texas is sound strategy, it would be wise for Democrats.

You can run Zohran Mamdani in New York City.

You should not run him in Ohio.

That is the point.

We could go on, but we've run out of time.

Thank you very much to Jesse Arm for joining us at City Club today.

Appreciate the conversation.

To our members and friends of the City Club.

I'm Karen Kasler and this forum is now adjourned.

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