Feb 18, 2025

Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter Hamby. Tonight, piping hot new polling about Kamala Harris, Democrats, and the media from our partnership with Echelon Insights. Democratic voters think their leaders in Washington are failing to stand up to Trump, even as they give the political press high marks for their coverage so far. With a conspicuous Democratic leadership vacuum, would voters turn their lonely eyes to a celebrity candidate like Mark Cuban, or Stephen A. Smith? Well, we asked… But first, a few notes from Abby Livingston and Eriq Gardner…

Abby Livingston

Ag Committee Vulcan Chess: The Farm Bill used to pass so easily that nobody paid attention to it. After all, it had a something-for-everyone appeal: the Democratic priority of food assistance via SNAP benefits or food stamps, and Republican insistence on farmer aid, like crop insurance and agricultural subsidies. Now, the House budget resolution has called for the somnolent Ag Committee to find $230 billion in savings, and Democrats think they might be able to exploit some Republican divisions during a time when any attempt to slow down DOGE, Musk, or Trump seems like progress for the party. The cuts are likely to come disproportionately from SNAP, to be sure, even though House Agriculture chairman GT Thompson supports the policy. But farmers could also be impacted at a vulnerable moment, as DOGE cuts are set to hit everyone—from Illinois soybean farmers supplying USAID, to Iowa food inspectors at the U.S.D.A. Now farmers could lose out on certain subsidies, too. The dynamic could help to flip certain swingy, ag-heavy districts in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, or elsewhere from the Republicans’ to the Democrats’ side. Angie Craig, the Democratic ranking member on House Ag, is now signaling that the demands for cuts might imperil the Farm Bill itself. “If my Republican colleagues move forward with this plan, it will certainly make getting a bipartisan farm bill across the finish line more difficult,” she said in an unusually direct statement for a ranking member—particularly one on Ag, one of the last bastions of serious policy over politics in the House. The committee is not a place for flamethrowers or social media clout-seekers: Entire careers there can revolve around the Farm Bill’s (usual) five-year cycle.Recently, congressional dysfunction has led to yearlong extensions rather than five-year bills, and the current dysfunction may threaten even that modest achievement. “It may be another year before it can get through,” said a former member who keeps an eye on the issue. Discussions are just getting started. But if there are future signs that the Farm Bill is headed for trouble, then every other sacrosanct policy in Congress probably is, too.

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Eriq Gardner

AP considers possible Trump suit: We’re nearing the one-month mark of Donald Trump’s second term, and while there’s been plenty of legal action over worker firings, funding freezes, and Elon Musk, there hasn’t been much actual casework related to Trump’s targets in the media. But that could soon change. I’m hearing that the Associated Press may be drawing up a legal challenge to the White House restricting access to AP reporters over its refusal to alter its stylebook to say “Gulf of America.” During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago this afternoon, the president castigated the AP for being “very, very wrong on the election and on Trump and the treatment of Trump,” and reiterated that its reporters will be banned until the news service adopts his preferred phrasing for the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico. If the AP proceeds with a suit, it would seem to be on firm legal footing. Look no further than Trump’s first term, when the White House ran afoul of the D.C. Circuit after trying, and failing, to revoke press credentials for CNN and Playboy. It’s a bit early to predict whether we’re on the verge of a media litigation barrage, though the landscape might point in that direction. Comcast’s D.E.I. policies are under scrutiny, PBS’s and NPR’s underwriting are being investigated, and the broadcast networks—except, so far, Fox—are being flagged for possible news “distortion.” The mere launch of these probes could prompt court challenges, especially if the media entities can demonstrate that these actions are retaliation for protected First Amendment speech. But that doesn’t mean the media will rush to court. If the government’s actions are perceived as mostly symbolic—posturing to appease Trump’s base—these companies might endure the pressure, hoping for a more favorable relationship with the administration. On the other hand, if business interests are genuinely at risk, you can be sure they’ll litigate. After all, Disney sued Ron DeSantis in 2023, claiming the Florida governor’s repeal of Disney World’s special tax district was political retaliation for Disney criticizing the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. (Trump sided with Disney against DeSantis in that battle; the parties ultimately settled.) Indeed, I suspect legal fights between media giants and this White House are inevitable, particularly given F.C.C. chair Brendan Carr’s skepticism of media objectivity.

Kamala ’28 Falls in the Forest

Revealing new poll numbers on the next (celebrity?) iteration of counter-Trump politics, and what Democrats want for Harris’s future.

Peter Hamby

Bear with me for a moment while I do a little Tom Friedman impersonation. I was at my local barbershop the other day in Los Angeles—Latino-owned, suitably hip, mostly staffed by millennial Trump haters who also think Democrats are corny—being interrogated about the current state of American politics, against my will. “Who can beat Donald Trump?” I was asked. I turned the question around, stuck in my swivel chair, reminding them that Trump (we hope) isn’t up for a third term in 2028. “Well, who do you guys like?” Three names came up, none of them actual politicians, or even nominal Democrats: Mark Cuban, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and ESPN yapper Stephen A. Smith. A few years ago, I would have laughed at these suggestions, but given the rock-bottom state of the Democratic Party, and a new poll I had my hands on, I was in a mood to listen. The arguments in these folks’ favor weren’t complicated—they’ve been percolating for years, or at least since some Twitter bozos made the presidential case for Michael Avenatti back in 2020. Democrats, the thinking goes, need a loudmouth dude to run against Trump, someone who can throw punches, capture attention, and break through to the kind of voters who don’t follow politics very closely.

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Maybe! During last year’s campaign, I wrote about how Cuban—an outspoken anti-Trump billionaire—had emerged as one of Kamala Harris’s most important validators among Latinos and young men. As for Stephen A., well, he’s not exactly swatting down the recent political buzz coming his way. The extremely noisy sports pundit probably wouldn’t want to walk away from his bonkers new ESPN contract—worth a reported $120 million over six years, or at least in that neighborhood. But he’s made a habit recently of attacking the Democratic Party’s social justice impulses and Trump-induced impotence. “I’m a Democrat!” Smith hollered on his eponymous podcast Tuesday, adding that he was glad Barack Obama deported so many undocumented immigrants. “But a moderate! A centrist, leaning left!” My barber pals agreed, in principle at least, that there’s no conventional Democrat out there capable of matching Trump’s cultural power. Then I showed them that clip of Chuck Schumer saying that voters are “aroused” by Trump’s executive actions, and we all had a laugh and changed the subject to Netflix shows. Echelon Insights, which partners with Puck for research into the electorate, had just been in the field with their February survey, and happened to check in on voters’ moods in these early days of Trump 2.0. Echelon measured the favorability ratings of a bunch of public figures and institutions—Trump, DOGE, Justin Trudeau, USAID, Kamala Harris, Benjamin Netanyahu, and more. Guess who had the highest net favorable rating of all of them? Cuban, with 39 percent. Only 26 percent of likely voters had an unfavorable opinion of the celebrity rich guy slash prescription drug reformer. He’s less well known than Harris and other big political names—with 35 percent saying they either had no opinion of Cuban or hadn’t heard of him—but his net favorable rating surpassed both Harris’s and the Democratic Party’s. Echelon also tested Stephen A. Smith, who was also more liked than disliked. Still, a majority of voters either didn’t know about Smith or didn’t have an opinion on him—a dynamic that will surely upset Smith. (I’ll be asking my colleague John Ourand to forward this email to his agent.) The poll also shed light on why Democrats such as my barber pals might want someone other than a career politician to lead the next chapter of the #Resistance: They feel their party’s leadership isn’t doing enough to stand up to the president. Echelon asked Democrats and Dem-leaning voters, “Do you think Democrats in Washington, D.C., are doing enough to fight Trump?” Respondents overwhelmingly said no, with 60 percent responding in the negative. Only 17 percent of Democrats said their politicians were doing enough to battle Trump as he tests the limits of his executive powers by dismantling the federal bureaucracy, firing career Department of Justice attorneys, and attempting to change settled law with his executive order pen strokes. The anger at Democrats in Washington isn’t totally fair; they don’t control any branch of government. Then again, they’re here because they fumbled their power away last November. Democrats might be hating on their own leaders, but they are giving high marks to the media in the early weeks of the Trump administration. Asked whether “the media is generally covering Trump’s presidency well or not,” 52 percent of Democrats said “very well” or “pretty well.” Only 37 percent of Democrats said the media is doing a poor job. A huge majority of Democrats (83 percent) said they are either “very” or “somewhat closely” following political news, with 82 percent saying they are following political news more closely or just as closely as they were during the 2024 election. Given the atomization of media during the past eight years, it’s unlikely that news organizations will get the kind of ratings and click-driven “Trump bump” that they did in his first term. But the poll results suggest that perhaps the plague of news avoidance will be less of a problem for newsrooms than it was during the Biden years, when so many exhausted Americans turned away from politics.

Whither Kamala?

In past polls, Puck had Echelon press Democratic voters on why they believe the party came up short in the 2024 election. We asked about ideology and the party’s future direction, and the results were mixed: Many Democrats think the party should pivot to the cultural middle and get away from their association with toxic culture-war issues that became cannon fodder in G.O.P. campaign ads last year. But other Dems say the party needs to pivot more to the populist left, drawing a harder line on economic fairness and attacking the country’s wealthiest. In the latest Puck/Echelon poll, though, we asked Democratic voters to name a single person or issue that they believe “is primarily responsible for the Democrats’ loss in the presidential election” last year. The top answer was rather vague: Twenty-three percent of Dem voters said the Democratic Party is primarily to blame. Another 18 percent blamed the economy, and 15 percent blamed former president Biden, the steward of that economy.

As for the person who ultimately lost on the ballot, Kamala Harris, the question revealed some positive news. Only 9 percent of Democrats blamed Harris for the party’s loss. (Conservative and moderate-leaning Dems were slightly more likely to blame Harris, who was savaged by Republicans for left-wing positions she had staked out in previous campaigns.) Meanwhile, a combined 36 percent of Democrats said they weren’t sure who or what to blame for the loss. Harris’s political future is set to be one of the Democratic Party’s main storylines in the coming year. As I wrote last week, Harris, back home in Los Angeles, is deciding whether to run for president again in 2028, or seek the California governorship in 2026. Democrats here in California who are also eyeing the governor’s race are mostly waiting on Harris to decide. If she jumps into the open primary next year, she will almost certainly be the immediate front-runner and candidate to beat, commanding media attention and raising enormous sums for what’s always an expensive statewide race. In our poll, more Democrats said they want Harris to run for president again than for California governor. With the caveat that this is a poll of national Democrats, not California voters, 40 percent of Dems said they want Harris to seek the presidential nomination in 2028. Only 19 percent said they wanted her to run for governor. Another 18 percent responded with a blunt “neither,” while the rest were unsure. One might see those numbers as an indicator of goodwill toward Harris inside her party. But looked at in reverse, the poll demonstrates that a large majority of Democratic voters don’t want Harris to run for president again—or governor, for that matter. In a ballot test including Harris, Echelon asked Democrats their top choice for the 2028 presidential nomination. Harris came out on top, the choice of 36 percent of Democrats—but again, that might also just be a function of her fame and name recognition. Many more voters—64 percent—wanted someone else, even if the alternatives weren’t clear in their minds. Harris was followed in a distant second place by Pete Buttigieg (10 percent), then by Tim Walz (9 percent), Gavin Newsom (6 percent), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (5 percent). Mark Cuban and Stephen A. Smith also made the 2028 list, and, well, the two media stars have to start heading to New Hampshire and South Carolina if they want to be taken seriously as candidates; Cuban was the choice of just 3 percent of Democrats. As for Smith: For the first time in his life, he came in as a quiet asterisk—an afterthought, who didn’t even register enough support from Democratic voters to put him ahead of “Someone Else,” which netted 1 percent.

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