TRANSCRIPT: The politics of polarization in America, with Steven Law
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you can find extended interviews of my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about the state of American politics and we're refusing to look away because unlike a five-car pileup on the Beltway, this crash isn't getting cleared anytime soon. Democrats are in a period of what my guest today calls massive redefinition after their 2024 defeat. Republicans are in lockstep behind an unpopular president. The opposition Democrats are nowhere and the country feels less governed by policy than by tribal warfare. How did we get here and what can we expect heading into a pivotal midterm election year? To unpack it all, I'll be joined by someone who's been deep inside the GOP machine, former Mitch McConnell chief of staff and Republican Super fundraiser, Steven Law. Let's get to it.
Steven Law, welcome to the show.
Steven Law:
Thank you so much. It's great to be on with you this morning, Ian.
Ian Bremmer:
Political parties in the United States, when I talk about them, it doesn't usually amount to a pleasant conversation, right? I mean, because people don't seem to believe as much in their parties these days. What are the Republican and Democratic Party, in your view? What do they stand for right now?
Steven Law:
Well, on the Republican side, at least for the foreseeable future, it's pretty clear where the party is and it's the party of Donald Trump. He has a incredible grip over the party, influence over its voting base, influence over donors. So his views, his ideology, to the extent that he has one, everything that he's doing I think defines the party pretty substantially. On the Democratic side, you're seeing this play out in the shutdown battle that we're seeing unfold in Washington. The Democratic Party is undergoing a period of reappraisal and trying to figure out where they go for the future. For me, there's a little bit of PTSD involved because Republicans went through the same thing after Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. There was a huge roiling conflict within the party. What are we going to be? How are we going to deal with Obama? What are we going to be about? And I see that going on in the Democratic Party today.
Ian Bremmer:
So the Democratic Party, in a sense, is orienting itself in terms of what it's not as opposed to what it is. I mean, is that a fair thing to say?
Steven Law:
Yeah, I mean, you see these different voices as recline talking about the importance of focusing on economic abundance, kind of pulling out of the culture war issues that the party became tainted with in this last election. But then you also see the more left-wing, very activist base, which has a huge amount of influence in the party and a lot of money. I mean, they're tied to the unions, particularly the teachers unions and other government unions. And their view is that the party should be much more focused on taking on Trump, on standing strong on the social issues that they had been championing over the last few years.
And somewhere in the middle are a lot of elected leaders in Washington just trying to figure out what to do and how to do their share of governing in Washington for the next couple of years. And what they all are also looking for as well is a year and a half, hence there will be the 2026 midterms. And that's really going to be an important moment. It's going to be a report card on the Trump presidency. It's also going to be a report card on whether the Democrats are able to offer a compelling alternative vision.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, when I think of midterms, I usually think of lower turnout. I usually think of elections that are principally about what the incumbent and the incumbent party, especially when they run everything, is actually doing. And so in that regard, it's less about what the Democrats stand for and who they happen to be running. Do you think that's not likely to apply this time around?
Steven Law:
Well, again, it's another little moment of PTSD for me. Republicans thought that would be the case during President Biden's midterm election in 2022. We thought it was going to be all about him. Inflation was a big problem. People were still stung by the embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan. But what ended up happening was that Republicans became mired in bad primaries that produced even worse candidates. There were a lot of other things that made, and then you may recall that Donald Trump announced he was going to be running for President again before that election.
So all of a sudden, the focus shifted away from Joe Biden, inflation, all that, to okay, what are the Republicans doing? What are their candidates like? And it made for a disappointing midterm. So it is possible for the Democrats to end up if they have weak candidates or far left-wing candidates, or they can't shake this complete identification with that left-wing social agenda, it could be a problem for them as well.
Ian Bremmer:
We haven't spoken yet about democratic candidates per se. I don't want to get too in the weeds about individuals, but when I see Mamdani, who's likely to be the next New York mayor, when I see the continued popularity of Bernie Sanders when he shows up on campuses, for example, it feels, and I'm not inside it the way you are, but it feels like that's where the momentum and the energy is in the Democratic Party right now. Maybe that's more about economic issues than it is about identity politics, but do you think that's true? Do you think that is where kind of like the Republicans did after Mitt Romney, do you think that that is, the Democrats are essentially an election cycle or two behind?
Steven Law:
Well, there's significant difference in what happened in 2012 and at least what seems to be going on in the Democratic Party right now. In 2012, there was this huge upsurge of anger mostly from the Tea Party, but what ended up happening was that Tea Party candidates who had been part of the reason we had lost significant winnable elections in 2012 and 2010, they ended up losing primaries. And we feel that an incredibly strong group of candidates in 2014 that led to the switch over of nine Democrat-held Senate seats, one of the most significant turnarounds in electoral politics. But that was because we had mainstream candidates and more mainstream ideas.
We avoided this kind of endless confrontations with President Obama that would've made us part of the focus, and it was a very successful year. It remains to be seen, in my view. I mean, obviously everybody in the Republican Party is very focused on Mamdani. I don't know, I assume he wins the mayoralty in New York. The question is whether he's still newsworthy after that from a national perspective. A person voting in a Senate race in Texas or Ohio or Georgia, whether they're going to have Mamdani at the top of their mind, they're probably going to be more focused on the candidates.
Ian Bremmer:
Well, presumably Trump wants Mamdani to be focused and front of mind, right? He's certainly been talking in that way.
Steven Law:
Yeah. Well, the one thing that is an asset in this sort of setting is President Trump can own the megaphone like no other politician we've seen certainly in my lifetime. And if he wants to make Mamdani the focus of attention, Mamdani will be, is certainly a focus of attention next year. The only question is, as I look at it from more of a political professional point of view, is whether a candidate who's going to be choosing between Democratic Senator John Ossoff, who has decided to be very, very liberal, not to move to the middle, whether they're going to vote for him or whoever the Republican candidate is, and whether that Republican has a compelling enough persona to be able to defeat him.
Ian Bremmer:
And if you were telling the Democrats, "Here are the two, three issues that you should actually be running on in the midterms to make a difference, to not have the challenges that you've suffered PTSD for," you'd say What? I'll move to the Republicans after this. I'm just trying to clear the wood for you.
Steven Law:
Yeah, sure. No, I always hate to give advice to the adversary, but I think there are two issues that I think are most important for them really in almost any election. This whole shutdown gambit at the end of the day reflected a strategic decision, I think by Democrats to go back to one of their core issues, which is healthcare.
Ian Bremmer:
Healthcare.
Steven Law:
And that's a base play issue. You talk about healthcare, it's a dog whistle to democratic voters. They pay attention, they want to vote democratic, less so for Republicans. But the other issue that's lurking out there, and we just simply don't know yet what the environment will be like, and that's the economy, inflation, cost of living, the job market, is it soft, is it strong? Certainly the stock market is pricing in a lot of economic growth going forward, but we'll just have to see. At the end of the day though, in most elections, most elections I've seen in the last 40 years, they're doing this. Most elections turn on how people view the economy and how that's going. So that's one that either they're going to be able to take advantage of because it seems like the economy's slowing down and inflation continues to go on, or as the White House is currently saying, "You just wait. It's going to be great next year."
Ian Bremmer:
And so you didn't mention corruption. One of the things that Trump talked a lot about in the first term when he won was draining the swamp. He doesn't mention that so much anymore, in part because he's part of it, he's more of a politician, and because he's done so well for so many really rich people, cap taxes down, he's making a lot of money himself. I mean, these things that are unprecedented. Is that a mistake for Democrats because it's more of just going after Trump as opposed to being something themselves and nothing sticks to him? Or is there a real lane here? I'm just seeing so much economic populism among young people in other countries around the world who are rising up right now against what they perceive to be very corrupt elites that don't care about them.
Steven Law:
Yeah, it's a good question. I tend to think that that set of issues is compelling to one's own base. And you hear it in the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, for example. I think-
Ian Bremmer:
Absolutely.
Steven Law:
... he's hitting that note, and it inflames that part of the electorate that is going to be very focused on it. But again, at the end of the day, I think most people vote their own pocketbooks. One thing, that we've used corruption issues against democratic candidates at different times, and what we find is that a lot of voters price in a certain amount of corruption for anybody who's in politics. It's quite remarkable. I mean, I actually have gotten to know a lot of politicians. I've found very few who are actually doing anything wrong. Most of them are pretty civic-minded. That goes for both Republicans and Democrats. But most voters assume if you're up in Washington, you must be up to some no good. And so that issue, it kind of attenuates the impact of that issue I've found in elections.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, look, I think one of the things the Republicans have been very effective at, certainly with their own supporters, is there's nothing Trump is doing that Biden hasn't already done, or even worse, which I don't find personally compelling when you do the research and the facts. I think a lot of what Trump represents is unprecedented, but I think that message has really resonated well with the voters, especially in a very divided media space algorithmically and network and cable and the rest. Do you agree with that?
Steven Law:
Yeah, certainly with respect to expanding executive power and wielding it with a lot of purpose. I think part of what's happening, and I've not seen data on this, but I'm increasingly of the view that people look at Washington and they look at politics with just derision, and what they see is a completely dysfunctional broken system. Congress can't even pass bills to spend money. I mean, that's just how bad it's gotten. And when they see Trump, whether they like specifically what he's doing or not, and it may have been this way with President Biden if you were a Democrat, here's somebody taking decisive action to address problems that everybody knows are problems, and they look at Washington, they look at the political culture that's just not able to do anything.
And I think people often say, eyes follow motion. Here's a guy who's constantly doing things, constantly putting points on the board. May not like the points that he's putting on the board, but he's a guy who's getting stuff done. And that is something that I think people have longed to see more happen in Washington. Incidentally, if Democrats ever take the White House back, and you have to assume that someday they will, I assume they'll do the same thing.
Ian Bremmer:
I think that's absolutely true. And you do, you saw that from Ted Cruz when he was concerned about the Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC flare-up. He's like, "Look, they're going to do this to us if they come in, so you should be careful." But I don't see many people making that kind of argument. It was notable for the fact for me that it came from Cruz.
Steven Law:
Yeah, that was an interesting play by him. It was an opportunity for him to criticize something the Trump administration was doing without blaming President Trump. So it was a fairly smooth move there. But also, I mean, it is something that is a reflection of principle, and I think a lot of Republicans, certainly a lot of conservatives are quite concerned about anything that looks like cancel culture. I do think the Attorney General who is on the hill today, I think she very quickly walked back the comment saying that they wouldn't tolerate hate speech. And then all of a sudden, people reminded that Charlie Kirk, may his memory be a blessing, was completely against this idea of categorizing something as hate speech that therefore you could regulate or ban. So it makes people uncomfortable on the right, and I think that Ted Cruz saw an opportunity and he took it.
Ian Bremmer:
So let's bring you closer to your comfort space and switch the talk to the Republicans. You did say right up the top, and it's not at all surprising, we know what the Republicans stand for right now because you've got a leader who doesn't really brook a lot of dissent. Now, there are some things that it seems that he really does stand for in terms of ending wars, for example, in terms of using tariffs as the principle tool of US statecraft internationally for a whole bunch of reasons. But domestically, could you provide some clarity around what you would say the Republican Party now stands for from a policy perspective?
Steven Law:
Yeah, and you hear different members of Congress say this. Certainly the administration is fully in unison on this. The Republican economic project under President Trump is not just about supporting big business and giving that whatever it wants, but Scott Bessent has actually, I think been a very articulate spokesman for this point of view, the goal of making the economy work for everybody. I tend to lean much more on the free and open trade side, but there is legitimate concern about the fact that that system of global trade has impacted adversely entire communities, entire regions of the country, and certainly sections of the middle class.
You could also argue, I think, correctly that it has raised living standards overall for this country and around the world, but it has had some disparate impacts that I think this administration is saying, "We want to make sure that the economy works for everybody." Interestingly, that's a page stolen directly from the Democrats, which is why you see Democrats not criticizing what Trump is doing on tariffs and all these things to kind of blunt the force of globalism. I think they like it. In fact, my concern again is someday there'll be a Democratic president and they'll do it 2X or 5X.
Ian Bremmer:
Certainly my presumption is that if the Democrats come in 2028 that these tariffs are going to stick because there aren't a lot of government officials, you and I know, that don't want that revenue.
Steven Law:
Right. It's a source of revenue and it's a talking point for how you're protecting American jobs. I think the challenge for this administration and Republicans along with him is between now and next year, and then certainly beyond that, to be able to demonstrate that this approach of being much tougher on foreign trade on raising tariffs, which then sometimes lead to investment deals and sometimes lead to resourcing jobs in the US, there's going to be need to be a concrete case made that this is in fact happening, that the short term pain of $5 a cup of coffee, what's coming through that is jobs back here in the US, factories being built, more investment in the US and people getting jobs. I think that's going to be the argument that will need to be made between now and next November, and then even beyond that.
Ian Bremmer:
And otherwise, again, the economy has always been core issue. If it's not number one, it's almost always number two for the US electorate. Certainly a lot is being made by Trump right now, not just on border security with Mexico where he's been quite popular, but specifically on immigration and crime inside the United States, which appears to be a fight that he really wants to have. Do you think that is smart strategy? Are the numbers bearing that out?
Steven Law:
Well, I haven't seen a lot of numbers on it yet, and I think it might be still a little early to measure it because the move from securing the border, which is undeniably immensely popular, even among Democrats, certainly among Independents and Republicans, now we're shifting toward, first of all, finding and deporting criminal illegal migrants, people who their illegality is not just their status, but things they've done in this country. That's also popular. But then the next step is obviously that they're pursuing, which is to find people who are here, simply here illegally, no other known crime besides that, and detaining them and ultimately deporting them.
Each of those has different levels of support, and in some cases, the tactics required to do these kinds of significant deportations of people who are simply illegal as far as status, but no other reason, that's going to be uglier. That's going to be messier. We're already starting to see that, and obviously that's also leading to these confrontations. It's a big part of why the National Guard is now being deployed in some cities, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. So the core focus of the president to really bear down on sealing the border from illegals, dealing with people who are here illegally and committing crimes, that's popular. Question is how much further it goes and how much the average American follows that. But certainly with the base, and the base matters in a midterm election, all of that is what those voters signed up for.
Ian Bremmer:
And sort of relatedly, the level of, and there's a mutual demonization in the United States going on right now, which clearly is unhelpful to the political culture of the country, I found it very noteworthy that when President Trump and Pete Hegseth were addressing the troops not so long ago, they were really focusing on the enemy within in the United States. And defining that much more broadly than certainly I've ever heard a president define it in my lifetime, which means more resources, but it also means that the political opposition in the United States might not be legitimate in their view. Did you hear that the same way? Is this something that concerns you?
Steven Law:
Well, I did hear it, and I certainly heard that as an interpretation. Whether Trump himself meant it that broadly, sort of this kind of Nixonian view of the opposition, Trump is kind of famously imprecise in his words. He doesn't speak like a politician. At different times, he said things that people take one way, but actually it means something more benign. But obviously this is an area where you really have to speak with great care, and if you're the leader of the country, you have to be clear what you're saying. I think when he's spoken more recently, he seems to be focused primarily on these groups that I've long worried about that show up sometimes in civil disturbances, and they're clearly very well organized, almost militaristic in their garb and in their tactics, and they look like left-wing militias to me.
That's a concern. Who are they? What are they doing? What do they fund? Are they just simply well-organized protesters or are they something much more malign? That's the area where I think the concern is, I would share as well. But again, to your point, you can't simply with a broad brush say every judge who issues a negative ruling, every Democrat who opposes what we want to do is somehow an enemy. And I don't think the President believes that. I really don't. But again, you have to be very careful about when you talk about things like that.
Ian Bremmer:
So this raises a challenging question because on the one hand, the Republicans are winning right now, and they're winning in part, not just because they have a better message for the people and their policies are popular, they're also winning because as you said, they have a leader that actually does not brook dissent, that everyone is loyal to. Having a strong leader makes it easier to win an election. On the other hand, that leader is occasionally saying things that are not only imprecise, but that can cause outcomes that clearly you and many of my other Republican friends are deeply uncomfortable with. And so I'm wondering to what extent that you, and perhaps more importantly, all of the Republican leaders that you advise, do you feel like they are constrained in a way that is uncomfortable for them? Do you feel that they are not able to speak their mind on issues that they really would rather to help ensure that the Republican Party reflects a party that they want to be part of, that they're proud of, those sorts of things?
Steven Law:
Well, I would say is almost it's time immemorial that when your party has the White House and you're in Congress, you support the party line. I mean, that was true, very, very few times that I ever hear any Democrat say anything critical of President Obama, even when, as we know, just a few short months ago, there was obvious evidence that President Biden was just not functioning well. You could argue whether it was cognitive decline or something else. Most Democrats took the party line and said, "No, he's great. In private meetings, he's wonderful." So that's not an unusual phenomenon.
I do think that Republicans and others who wish the success of this administration do find avenues to express concerns about particular policy issues, and they just do it inside the tent. And I think that with this president, that's an especially preferred approach than doing it publicly. So I think there are outlets for that, but then you kind of take your question more broadly. I do think, and you're seeing this play out, and I'll mention this in just a minute, you're seeing this play out in the Virginia Attorney General's race that many people aren't focused on.
Ian Bremmer:
But perhaps should, given that the candidate actually in a text had essentially called directly for political violence against a Republican official city.
Steven Law:
And against his children, wanting to see the opponent's children die. I mean, this person obviously, he's really not qualified to get any job in any company in America, let alone elected office. But my point is that I feel like at some point between now and next year, there's going to be a dividend that the voters will pay to a public leader who stands up and says, "We just need to turn the temperature down here." And you see that every once in a while. You saw a little bit of that in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Ian Bremmer:
From the Governor of Utah in dramatic contrast to the President of the United States.
Steven Law:
Well, as he said, he can't forgive his enemies.
Ian Bremmer:
But that's exactly what we don't want, right? I mean, I thought that Spencer Cox, Republican in good standing, very popular in Utah, it happened in his state, and he gave the leadership message that I think most Americans wanted to see from their president.
Steven Law:
Yeah, and even more poignantly, Charlie Kirk's widow, in a really remarkable moment, perhaps to me, the most remarkable moment of that event. But the other dynamic that you have that is the political driver, and you have this on the Democratic side, you have it on the Republican side, is that both bases want to fight. They want to fight. They are mistrustful of the other side. I mean, your average far left Democrat thinks that every Republican is a Nazi or a fascist. Well, fascist is now the new term of art. And every Republican on that far right fringe views the left as basically incorrigible traitors. I mean, that's the energy underneath it all. And so you've got people in both sides saying, "We just really, really need to fight."
Ian Bremmer:
But I mean, I don't think, I mean, you and I know a lot of Americans in common across the political spectrum. I can't think of many people in those groups who consider the opposition to be fascist or traitors, but I do think that that's the way the leaders are framing it.
Steven Law:
Well, I don't know that that's a leadership-level message. I don't hear that from the president, sort of this broad brush there that way. I don't hear that from know Minority Leader Jeffries or Minority Leader Schumer. Although every once in a while, Schumer does have an ungoverned moment of rhetoric, such as when he stood in front of the Supreme Court and said they would inherit the whirlwind. But for the most part, leadership is about attenuating that. You've got to, obviously, you're leading a party on either side, you're leading a base on either side. But I think the American public writ large wants leaders who at some point are constructive, unifying, even as they're prosecuting a strong agenda.
Ian Bremmer:
Steve Law, thanks so much for joining today.
Steven Law:
Thank you.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise, don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.