Nov 2, 2025

Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Leigh Ann Caldwell.

This weekend, I saw Ivy Meeropol’s documentary Ask E. Jean at the Double Exposure Film Festival in D.C. The movie includes never-seen footage of E. Jean Carroll’s deposition on her way to winning defamation cases against Donald Trump. The viewer comes to know the longtime Elle advice columnist as a fearless, funny, eccentric, and inspiring woman. We’ll see whether a distributor is willing to platform it. 🚨 More event news: I’m really looking forward to sitting down with Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim after an exclusive screening of their new nuclear armageddon thriller, A House of Dynamite, followed by a swanky reception, next Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Navy Memorial, in Washington, D.C. The evening is hosted by Puck and our partners at Netflix. Please join us! R.S.V.P. here. Tuesday is Election Day, of course, and there are several high-stakes contests—none more talked-about than Zohran Mamdani’s youthquake candidacy in the New York City mayoral race. There’s also the gubernatorial race in New Jersey: Democrat Mikie Sherrill—whose house in Montclair was dispensing full-size candy bars to trick-or-treaters on Halloween—has a small lead over Republican Jack Ciattarelli. And in Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger has around a 10-point lead over her Republican opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears. California’s redistricting referendum is expected to pass, elevating would-be 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom as a champion of the party’s redistricting counterattack. Today, though, I’m looking a little further out—to next year’s midterms, particularly where things stand in the fight to control the House. I’ve spoken with half a dozen strategists to get a temperature check and a peek beyond the current mayhem.

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But first…

Could the shutdown end this week?: Bipartisan conversations continued over the weekend to end the shutdown, which will break the record on Wednesday as the longest full or partial government shutdown in history. (Congrats to all who participated…) Senators are returning on Monday after a weekend during which food stamp benefits weren’t dispersed, lines at food banks grew, and Affordable Care Act costs went up for next year. Optimism is growing, and it feels like the shutdown could come to an end this week (my prediction is actually Wednesday), but there’s still not a clear-cut resolution.Today, John Fetterman went on CNN’s State of the Union to blame his own party. “I feel like the Democrats really need to own the shutdown. I mean, we’re shutting it down,” he said to the dismay of his colleagues—especially the centrist Democrats who have been working toward a resolution. Other than Fetterman, the party has stayed united, but this week could be a breaking point.
Mitch McConnell has entered the chat: The fallout from Tucker Carlson’s hours-long interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, wherein Carlson barely pushed back against his guest’s antisemitic and racist statements, continues largely unabated. After Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts posted a video criticizing the “venomous coalition” that has been attacking Carlson for platforming Fuentes, Sen. Mitch McConnell reposted Roberts’s video message on X and wrote, “Last I checked, ‘conservatives should feel no obligation’ to carry water for antisemites and apologists for America-hating autocrats. But maybe I just don’t know what time it is…” McConnell, who often seems out of step with the party amid its rampant MAGA-ification, has been careful about when he speaks out, and does so only when he thinks the moment is sufficiently important. This apparently rose to that occasion.

Now, for the main event…

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Under the stormy skies of Trump 2.0, both parties are limbering up and probing for advantage in a midterm brawl to decide control of the House—a fight neither side can afford to lose. Naturally, strategists on both sides claim the wind is at their backs.

Leigh Ann Caldwell

It’s Election Week in America, and an exciting one for operatives and omniscient bloviators thirsting to understand the mood of the country and get paid to dispense their advice. Have Democrats won back the trust of voters after the 2024 Biden–Harris debacle? Naturally, everyone is looking for clues in the off-cycle races. Can New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill, a Navy veteran who also appeals to suburban women, outperform Kamala Harris and beat Republican Jack Ciattarelli in a state that moved decidedly to the right in 2024? In bluish-purplish Virginia, the chattering class is wondering how big a margin Democrat Abigail Spanberger, the former C.I.A. officer who appeals to rural voters, will notch over Winsome Earle-Sears. The size of Gavin Newsom’s presumptive redistricting victory will also play into their prognostications.

But I’m more focused on the broader political environment, heading into a midterm election year where control of the House is truly up in the air. Yes, a million things can happen between now and then, especially with an unpredictable Trump in the White House. And the congressional maps aren’t set in stone, as Trump & Co. are pushing red states to carve out more Republican districts, and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and former President Obama et al. are pushing blue states to redraw friendly districts of their own. Plus, there are retirements yet to be announced and primaries to be run, etcetera, etcetera. Nevertheless, I spoke to more than half a dozen strategists and people working directly with House races to block out where things stand as we approach the on-ramp to the midterms.

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Republicans are generally optimistic despite midterms not being historically kind to the party in power. “Are they bullish? Yes. Is anything a slam dunk? No,” said a person familiar with the Trump political operation. And yet, Republicans uniformly say that the mood feels nothing like the 2017-2018 cycle, when the G.O.P. lost the House with a 41-seat wipeout.

Instead, they point to the generic ballot—the best indicator of the national mood right now—which has Democrats up by 2.7 points on average, compared to the 10.5-point advantage they had over Republicans in 2017. (A new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, out today, similarly found that voters currently prefer Democrats over Republicans by two points; an NBC poll said Democrats are preferred by eight points.) Republicans were also quick to note that the Democratic Party’s unfavorability rating of 59 percent is somewhat worse than their own: 53.5 percent. Meanwhile, Trump’s own unfavorability rating is up four points compared to this time eight years ago, to 51.1 percent, according to the RealClearPolling average. Democrats, of course, know they still have work ahead after the ’24 disaster. Last week, as my partner Peter Hamby reported, a group of Democrats put out a report, “Deciding to Win,” whose survey of tens of thousands of voters found that the party’s message was too liberal, too disconnected, and too exclusive. The D.N.C. is expected to release its own autopsy after Tuesday’s elections. Still, Democrats scoff at Republicans’ argument that performing less badly than eight years ago is a winning political strategy. “We don’t need to perform at 2018 levels,” one Democratic strategist said, noting that the party needs to win only a net three seats—not 40—to take back the House. (Democrats may actually need to win up to 10 seats because of mid-decade redistricting in red states, but it’s too early to tell.)

The Economic Albatross

There’s no question that Trump’s own favorables, while stable, aren’t exactly a signal that his policies are popular. He’s now underwater on key issues like immigration, the economy, trade, and even foreign policy. (He’s above water on crime and the Gaza/Israel war, according to the RCP average, but the Post poll today had him down on those issues, too.)

Meanwhile, Democrats are dusting off James Carville’s Clinton-era catchphrase, “It’s the economy, stupid,” and hoping it sticks. Trump’s favorables on the economy are at their lowest point in his two terms, with only 33 percent approval, according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll. An NBC News poll out today likewise found that nearly two-thirds of voters say Trump “has not lived up to expectations” on the economy and cost of living despite the president’s claim that stock market gains reflect his deft management. Expect Democrats to exploit the uncertain landscape out there: The stock market is booming, but the job market is softening; gas prices are low, but home energy prices are up; high-profile layoffs, including Amazon’s elimination of around 14,000 white-collar jobs, are grabbing headlines, and so on. “Trump was always seen as a bad person who was good on the economy—now he’s seen as a bad person who is bad on the economy,” said Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “It becomes an anchor on every Republican candidate running in the midterms.” Republicans I spoke with insist that the president is well aware of the challenges facing the economy, which they’re confident will improve over the next year. They intentionally made many of the tax cuts passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill retroactive, so voters will see a benefit in their April filings. The G.O.P. narrative also includes the continued decline of mortgage rates, as well as anticipated new policies from the White House aimed at bringing down costs for essentials like food and healthcare, according to a source familiar with the White House strategy. “As we enter into the new year, and the election year, [the president] will become more hyper-focused on costs,” said the source.

No one expects voters to be thinking about the government shutdown when they head to the midterm polls a year from now, but both parties are working the refs to direct the political fallout. Democrats boast that the shutdown has allowed them to focus the conversation on healthcare—highlighting Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid and refusal to extend Covid-era subsidies—for a solid month. Republicans believe the shutdown has helped them yoke the Democratic torchbearers, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to the party’s left wing, trotting out the canard that Democrats are holding the government hostage until both parties agree to fund free healthcare for undocumented immigrants. “It means we can keep immigration top of mind for voters,” one Republican strategist told me.

The Trump Money Tree

House Republicans are also thrilled about how much money they’ve been able to raise, belying the adage that fundraising often dips the first year for the party that holds the White House. So far this year, House Republicans have outraised their Democratic counterparts by $720,000. During the first year of Trump I, by contrast, House Democrats outraised their Republican peers by $8.7 million. For more proof that the Republican donor base is still engaged and supportive of the president’s agenda, note that of the $93 million the National Republican Congressional Committee has raised this year, $35 million came from a single fundraiser that Trump hosted at Mar-a-Lago this spring.

Democrats do admit that Trump’s war chest gives them pause. The president’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., has more cash on hand—at least $196 million—than the Republican and Democratic campaign committees combined, and a person familiar with the Trump political operation told me that the president “will do what it takes to win the midterms” as long as “there’s a path to effectuate an outcome.” In other words, if Trump isn’t spending in a specific race, it’s probably a sign that they don’t think it’s winnable. Trump continues to hold Republicans together, having convinced them that it’s far more politically potent to stick with him than to discard him, and party members seem to feel profoundly more comfortable than they did in 2018. “You can’t underestimate the power of the White House, committees, and outside groups all rowing in the same direction. That’s a huge advantage,” Republican strategist Matt Gorman told me. Democrats, of course, say with some justification that the political winds are shifting in their favor, and that they’re confident in their incumbents and new recruits. In any case, next November, there should be about half as many contested seats as in previous years—around three dozen—since partisan redistricting and polarization continue to shrink the map. Of those competitive seats, Trump won in 13 districts currently held by Democrats, while Harris won just three districts that Republicans represent. Regardless of what happens in the next year, it’s a pretty safe bet that the margin of control of the House will continue to be extremely slim.

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