Patrick Ruffini

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the and beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. And I think that the people who, you know, really want to advance a certain idea of, you know, what the Republican Party should be should just get in. Should figure out, you know, what about the their ideas can actually have has popular support and energy behind this and go and convince Trump of that because I think that that's ultimately what's gonna be effective. On today's episode of the Puck, I sit down with Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and political strategist. Ruffini runs Echelon Insights, a company focused on next generation political research, analytics, and digital intelligence.

He shares the insights he has gleaned over the last two decades to help you understand where the puck is headed. We got a lot to cover, so let's get to it. Patrick Graffiti, welcome to the puck. Great to be here. So before we get into the meat of this, can you take a moment and just share a little bit about yourself for our listeners?

Sure. I'm, a cofounder at Echelon Insights. We are a polling and data firm. You know, when we do work for political campaigns, it's usually for political campaigns on the Republican. It is, you know, exclusively for political campaigns on the Republican side of the spectrum, but, we have a broad array of clients across corporate America, nonprofits, and whatnot.

Terrific. So you wrote the party of the people inside the multiracial populist coalition remaking the GOP, and I believe it was published in 2023. And Ezra Klein, among others, I'm sure, called it the book that predicted the twenty twenty four election. So let's start with what prompted you to write the book. Yeah.

I I mean, I, in, going all the way back to 2016, I was among those people who thought Donald Trump was frankly gonna be a disaster for the Republican party. He was gonna tank, you know, the party with rising parts of the electorate, Latinos, you know, groups that were, you know, slated to become kind of the major you know, kind of the majority minority country, right, by twenty years twenty, thirty years down the road. And I thought his message at the time was one that, you know, was not gonna resonate and was gonna backfire, frankly, among those voters. And, you know, the fact that his coalition, right, proved much stronger than initially anticipated that he won that election when virtually, you know, kind of all the prognosticators, myself included, said, or or thought he wouldn't win that election, caused me to reevaluate, I think, the strength of this populist message. Whereas, you know, while people might, like myself maybe inside the Beltway, you know, recoil that this idea of this sort of anti institutional, anti establishment candidate.

It turned out that resonated with more people than it turned off. So, you know, that election really did cause me to kinda question, those assumptions to begin with. And then heading into 2020, was noticing something interesting in the polling that, you know, Trump was actually doing better with black and Latino voters. And I, you know, initially, I didn't make much of it because it seemed like, Trump was was going to lose the election based if you believed all the polls. It was, like, a seven, eight point race.

You know, and so, you know, I, you know, I thought, man, but this could be an interesting plot twist, right, if he does better among these voters after disparaging them in the 2016 campaign and doing all the things that I really worried about at the time. We ultimate plot twist, right, if he gains Latino voters, if he gains African American voters, particularly after the BLM, events, the George Floyd events. Right? And so I thought that that was interesting, but I kinda shelved the idea, and then the election happened. And what happened in the election was it was a lot it was in 2020 a lot closer than what people were predicting, and he came within 40,000 votes really in three states of, being reelected in 2020 when, you know, I don't think any of the polls prior to that were predicting that.

In fact, it was an even bigger polling mistake and miss than, 2016 was. And when you look at under the hood at what happened, Trump really did make these huge gains with Latino voters, make these huge gains with Asian American voters. And it seemed like the populist working class coalition he built in 2016 was broadening to include, more members of diverse groups. And I think this not only tells a story. Right?

The the the it certainly tells a story about how the part political parties are are changing, where it used to be the Democrats, right, who used to be seen as this party of the people, party of the working class, and and party of the worker. And now, they are seen more as a party of the elite, of the college educated, increasingly a people on the upper end of the economic ladder, increasingly these people who live in super zips and large metros. And I thought that was a fascinating change, but it also tells you a lot about really how the country is changing, that we are becoming less racially divided, that, people are from all of these groups are voting according to a consistent set of values. And what are those values? I think for those folks who are, you know, have been moving towards the Democrats, it is these caught more cosmopolitan values of of tolerance and equality across, you know, defined primarily in terms of race and gender.

And then, on the other side, it's a more traditionalist, sensibility. You know, people who value hard work, who are moving up the economic ladder through their own hard work, but also have more traditional cultural values. And if you're an immigrant to The United States, you definitely have more traditional cultural values than I think many of the people who are already here in The United States. So I think it's just a fundamental reshuffling, right, of the decks of American politics, and I thought, this would be a really, really fascinating thing to write a book about. You say that so succinctly and so, for me, easy to follow.

I guess my question is, where do we go from here? Right. Because, you know, obviously, in this election, what you had was even a broadening of those gains. Right? I mean, just further going further in that direction, which tells you how strong kind of the pent up demand was, right, for, you know, I I I think for what Trump represented within these communities, and it shows that there was a lot of gas left in the tank.

You know? Is there still gas left in the tank? I wonder you probably yes for this multiracial populist coalition. But, you know, always hard to predict, but you wouldn't have necessarily predicted after 2020 that it would continue, you know, along these lines. You know, normally, that doesn't happen.

Normally, something different happens the next election. And this turned out to be really a continuation and and really a much more resounding continuation of the 2020 trends. I mean, you're talking about you know, you really made gains everywhere and fundamentally shifted. New York City shifted double digits to the right. Chicago shifted double digits to the right.

These large metro areas, which were impregnable fortresses of the Democratic party and Democratic votes, really shifted and moved in a big way in this election. So, I I do think, right, that they showed the you know, I I think that this was maybe people were underestimating the power of this coalition, the power of, you know, kind of this racial realignment or dealignment as you as you may have it where, minority voters who were quite loyal Democrats, you know, are now migrating, I think, to a little bit more of a fifty fifty position. Now a lot depends on what happens in the next four years. A lot depends on if the Trump administration delivers, if the Trump administration is able to restore a sense of economic both economic and cultural normalcy, which I think has been lost, which was promised to them, which was promised to the American people in 2020, what was not delivered on by the Biden administration. But assuming they're successful in doing that, you know, what I would what I would generally say is, you know, look, I think you're going to continue to see education, college education, and working class versus the sort of working class versus cosmopolitan divide continue to be a major, major factor in our politics.

And I think you are are gonna see, you know, some of the African Americans, Latinos, not again, it's not necessarily that they're gonna be a Republican group, although you you maybe maybe with Latinos, they will be. But, it's gonna be that they're closer to fifty fifty because their voting patterns are no longer really determined by their racial identity. People are moving out to the suburbs. They're intermarrying. They are just much more integrated and are rising up the ladder economically.

And so it makes sense that they're kind of behaving more and more like like just average swing voters. Right? So I think you're gonna kinda see that. Now whether or not does this mean Republicans are now gonna win every election from here on out, That's not what it means at all because we do have we're gonna continue to have competitive two party politics. But what I do think it means, right, is that win or lose, Republicans are going to be the representatives of this working class coalition, increasingly.

And I think that's gonna obviously, that has a lot of implications for policy. It has a lot of implications for, you know, who is the you know, really kinda who is the party that represents certain ideas about business and free markets. Right? Is that gonna be a continued focus? In some ways, based on the moves of the Trump transition, yes.

But in other ways, like tariffs, maybe not as much. Well, as a pollster, what economically or culturally has to happen to have a realignment where you really do build this new party coalition that's a majority party. What is it that the, quote, majority of Americans who are working class, what are they looking for, and what is it that the Republican party has to deliver on? Well, I think that the the vote in this election specifically was a vote to return to economic stability and normalcy in a sense of, you know, really, that Trump in 2020 represented instability in terms of how he conducted himself in the White House. But in 2024, he represented almost a return to safety and normalcy, for a lot of voters.

And I think that was the biggest change because, you know, the kind of governance they had seen over the last, four years. Yes. You didn't have mean tweets, but you did have a crisis on the southern border. You did have the Afghanistan withdrawal. You did have cumulative 20% inflation, which really, I think, jarred people's sense of security.

So I think that, you know, in terms of their ability to be successful, right, over the next four years is gonna, you know, hinge on restoring, again, a sense of normalcy and stability, to the country, that it was lacking. It was lacking before, you know, before 2020 even, but, but, definitely lacking after 2020. So I think that that that that is gonna be a huge deal. Now the question, I I think, becomes is, you know, for a longer term, a longer term perspective, right, on this because, yes, you know, certainly if they, you know, kind of govern, you know, these specific events, specific to this time. Look.

It's hard to see one party becoming kind of a dominant political party in the country. I think there are certain ways in which Republicans are set up in certain aspects. Right? In the senate, for example, it's hard to see Democrats actually coming back to have a majority under this new alignment because, you know, because the rural bias. Right?

I mean, you know, Trump states represent the national majority in the US senate. So in some ways, yes. Like, in that body, you might see a pretty durable Republican majority if you because you have this kind of alignment in in the electorate. That's not looking like it's changing anytime soon. But I do think that, you know, if Republicans do things that are unpopular, that they will be punished at the polls.

So they'll be punished in the midterms, and they'll be punished in, you know, potentially in the presidential race. And that just should be a, a, I think, spurred to take nothing for granted and to govern, I think, in a pretty you know, really not overread what your mandate was. And, so so but I think, like, again, I am very skeptical, right, at a national level just because we've been stuck in this fifty fifty, rut for a while. But I think what what it would take actually for that to happen, right, is, you know, if, you know, Republicans actually did, you know, substantially continue to realign non white voters in such a way that there wasn't really a response from the other side. Because usually, like, you do a realignment on one side, and then the other side realigns to compensate.

That's kinda what happened in 2016, 2020. But, you know, to the extent that if Democrats just continue, you know, aren't able to get out of where they are now, where they're perceived as, you know, too far to the left, in a country that is plurality conservative, yeah. Could I see them, you know, Republicans continue to gain strength? Yes. But I do think ultimately parties do adapt.

I don't think we have permanent majorities in either side. When you look at what happened across the world in terms of the number of incumbents that were not sent back to office, how much of what's going on is just this this pent up desire for material change and and somewhat of an inability of the great democracies to respond in an effective manner to bring about the change that people are looking for. No. I think that's absolutely I mean, you've had this kind of thermostatic reaction, right, to incumbent parties in power and, you know, you really seen everywhere, incumbent parties, if they haven't lost, they've lost seats, they've lost vote share because of the dissatisfaction. So it should not be surprising to us how the election turned out.

And it what it turned out to be the case was, you know, Trump was thought to be this immutable force that he had the ceiling at 47% of the vote, that he had never gotten more than 46, 47% of the vote before. And so it was gonna be tough for him to capitalize on this, but it turns out that, no, that actually, like, you know, those material conditions, those react those forces remained really, really strong. So I think, again, this that's a case for not over reading the mandate because, you you are seeing it happen in lots and lots of different countries. Why I'm hopeful for, you know, maybe that the country has turned a corner is I think particularly on the economy that, you know, I think that, Trump is perceived as somebody who is strong on economic issues, on economic matters. At the moment, You know, it was this was true when he came in at twenty sixteen, that the moment he came in, there was an immediate improvement in people's perceptions of the economy.

He has this image as a business person who's gonna come in, knock heads, do deals, and, really be able to manage the economy so such that markets do better, such that the country overall market conditions are better. And, it just turned out, right, in his first term that that wasn't the voters' like number one priority. They were kind of evaluating him through another lens and all the, you know, kind of chaos, in the other parts of his administration eventually kinda took over. But right now, I mean, we really are in a moment where those that skill set that he has or that perceived skill set that he has with voters is really the most important thing that, people are looking for. So I do think he has a shot to, I think, turn around the sort of malaise and perception right now.

When you look at somebody like Bernie Sanders, who is perceived as not a flip flopper, who really stands for a populist message and has been consistent, what is the appeal that Donald Trump brings to the working class that Bernie Sanders was not able to capitalize on? Well, look, I think this is a different it is definitely a different they're running two different races. I I think that, you know, Trump stepped into a wide open Republican primary in 2016, but was not I mean, I think had an economic populist message, but was really foregrounding the issue of immigration, which, you know, was, kind of simmering beneath the surface and not just simmering about to boil over in the Republican party where, you know, you had a Republican party or Republican base that didn't feel like this issue was being addressed going all the way back to the Bush years. And you had, you know, then the front runner was Jeb Bush, you know, who talked about, you know, being pro immigration. And so it seems like the major demand that Republican voters, primary voters had in 2016, was not being met by anyone except for Donald Trump.

Right? And that's how he was able to steamroll through that primary. And, obviously, he had skills, right, that the, that the other candidates didn't have in terms of dominating, capturing attention, in a way. Bernie Sanders too over performed in the twenty twenty sixteen primary, but he wasn't given much of a shot. And against a much more establishmentarian I mean, I think it's just a much more establishmentarian party.

It used to be the case. They used to say Republicans, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. That has flipped in terms of the types of candidates that Democrats are nominating, which is very much now will nominate the next in line, will nominate kind of the most senior statesman person in the party. And look where that's led them. Right?

Led them to Joe nominating picking Joe Biden. It led them to Joe Biden running for reelection at 82 and, having to withdraw from the race and then, you know, having Kamala Harris parachuted in without a primary, without any kind of vetting, without anything really overnight. So that just shows you, I think, the different dynamics in the in the parties where it's flipped to where, you know, Republican in the Republican party, you could see, right, if conditions were just right for somebody to come in as a complete outsider and take over the party and almost remake it into kind of this right wing populist party that you you see in in places like Western Europe, whereas the Democrats were structured very differently. But I think when you look at the overlaps, it is true that Trump did make gains among those Bernie Sanders, the same groups of voters who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary, Latinos, younger voters, who are just most dissatisfied with the system, you know, are the same kinds of voters who moved over to Trump. You know, it just so happens that I think Sanders was not in a position to capitalize on that because of the I think the structure of the Democratic Party is fundamentally different right now than the structure of the Republican Party.

But, Patrick, when you look at the polling and if you're in the puck, we try to look forward. So if we're thinking four years down the line and a JD Vance or someone is emerging as the, quote, front runner for the Republican nomination, people are gonna ask, you know, are you better off today than you were four years ago? And when whether or not it's health care, which we hear a lot about lately, whether or not it's minimum wage or manufacturing jobs, where do you think we'll be in four years? Yeah. I mean, that is an that is, a anyone's guess, right, where we will be in four years.

I mean, who would have thought, you know, four years from now, we would be today. That can be difficult to predict, which is why I I think I'm hopeful that I think we're seeing an incoming Trump administration that I think is more, I think, careful about guarding its popularity and maintaining and building upon its popularity than the the administration that came in eight years ago. And that will redounds the benefit of somebody like JD Vance. Now I think that he himself acquitted himself very well in the campaign. There were a lot of doubts about him in the media.

You know, the media kind of, you know, had this narrative about him very early on, that he was a bad pick, that, oh, maybe Trump was doubting him or something like that, which turned out to be completely bogus, right, based on his performance on the stump and based on his performance especially in the debate. And I think that, it will be very interesting. I think that Republicans have been kind of looking for somebody who could articulate Trump's message, but do so in a way that is much more palatable to groups of people who have moved away from the Republican party like suburban voters. And I think that, you know, that was mission accomplished in the particularly in the VP debate where we saw that, I think, very, very clearly, and I think just a number of very interesting, you know, ways in which, you know, JD Vance did make an attempt to reach out to women voters to suburban voters and really translate that message. You know, in many ways, I'm very eager to see, right, what happens, right, with this, moving forward because there is kind of this question.

Right? In 2028, will will the Republicans be able to recreate the Trump magic? And I I would urge them to not really even try. Right? Because in the sense of, you know, you can't recreate Trump.

He is unique. I mean, you have to find somebody who is, you know, certainly, you know, understands that this is the future that that this realignment is the future of politics. This is the coalition. This is the party you're running from. This is who you're representing.

And really starts from that baseline, but really does it in their own way that's authentic to them. And, you know, what we saw from this campaign, right, is obviously, Kamala Harris was not really seen as a and and not really an authentic figure, right, in terms of you you didn't really know uniquely who she was, but rather she represented this sort of party orthodoxy that, you know, and was the, you know, kind of the installed pick at the last minute, and I think did not really define herself very well. So how where does policy fit into this in terms of brand identity and where where the Republican party goes? Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of people in the traditional in in certain traditional segments of the Republican are already very worried that, you know, especially even after this validation, right, of the strategy that, you know, is the Republican party still a party of either free trade or is it a party, free markets or is it a party of this classical liberalism?

And look, I think to some extent, all of that, the idea that it was was always a little bit overblown because that's never what the party was at the grassroots level. That's not really what, you know, why, you know, somebody is going to lick envelopes. That was never why somebody is going to knock doors. That was never why that was never what the grassroots of the party was animated by. They're animated by, I think, a lot of times cultural issues.

They were animated by immigration. And I think Trump had just his finger on the pulse of who that voter was. You know, he was really dialed in to this conservative media ecosystem. And I think people operated in DC under this illusion, right, that, oh, this is a free market party. This is a, you know, a Mitt Romney style party after or Paul Ryan style party after 2012.

And, you know, that just wasn't the case. It was never really the case, but there was I think there was an illusion that it was the case. With that said, right, look, I don't think that, you know, I think you can make too much of these shifts because, you know, to an extent, there are some aspects of this that are pretty deep seated. So I think when I look at the shift of Hispanic voters, the the Hispanics that I've done research on, you know, have really expressed this idea that, you know, we are a very upwardly mobile community, and, we want political leaders who kinda support us along that path. And, you know, for them, it's very clear who that party is in terms of creating more job opportunities, supporting the industries and the sectors in which they're employed, particularly after twenty twenty lockdowns.

And, you know, I think there are many parts of this coalition that resonate with, you know, specific parts of that message, but, you know, there's a lot there's sort of this abstract philosophical debate that's happening in Washington that bears no kind of connection to reality. And I also think, look, there's there's certain aspects of libertarianism and, that on small government that are making a comeback with the Elon Musk, the Doge, and the sort of Javier Millet from Argentina kind of traveling in the Trump circles. I mean, you're seeing a large a lot of both heterodoxy, and ecumenicalism, what I would call. Right? The sort of idea he's just kind of borrowing from different strands that that where he sees that there's a lot of energy, a lot of populist energy, emanating from.

And I think that the people who, you know, really want to advance a certain idea of, you know, what the Republican party should be should just get in the ink, should figure out, you know, what about the their ideas can actually have has popular support and energy behind this and, go and convince Trump of that because I think that that's, that's ultimately what's gonna be effective. Are you saying that in the same way Teddy Roosevelt was able to, in a sense, capitalize on that populist energy and, in a sense, go after some of the big techno well, big companies at the time and so forth and and really deliver from a policy perspective. What types of things do you think this administration should be doing that would perhaps be a surprise to those people that are looking for a traditional response? Yeah. I mean, I think look.

I think, you know, this this may not be as big, right, as a of a shift as Teddy Roosevelt was. You know, in many ways, right, that, you know, I think stylistically, I think Trump represents for a lot of these people, it represents kind of we are gonna smash the system. We're gonna, you know, kind of go in and uproot everything about the system, but in the end, he may he'll make deals. Right? And he'll make deals, but I think he will have a lot of running room from the base of the party to actually do those deals.

A lot of things will be on the table that weren't on the table before. I think certainly tariffs. I think that his ability, you know, I think to not be bound by, let's say, certain ideological commitments and, to essentially, you know, kind of put his you know, all his cards on the table and say, this is how it's gonna be. Hey, Mexico. This is how it's gonna be.

Hey, Canada. This is how it's gonna be. And the ability to, you know, kind of, wave that tariff stick and actually get concessions. Right? I think that's certainly, like, how he and how he sees, like, the playbook moving forward.

I don't think it's, you know, he is putting forth some sort of grand ideological vision, right, of how the party you know, how either either what the party represents or what it's gonna be. I I do think it's very much he's playing power politics in a way that, you know, I think most, most people, you know, kind of had over you know, certainly not something that this current administration did over the last four years. What do you mean by playing power politics? Well, I think he's going out there. Right?

And, you know, particularly with these tariff threats. Right. Right? And, you know, trying to get, you know, really making sure he gets wins, you know, even before he's in office. Right?

So, you know, do I think you know, a lot of a lot of times, do we think this is all these things are gonna happen? No. But I think it's all mutually assured destruction. Right? And and and the idea is, yeah, these countries are gonna move or they're gonna give him kind of enough to the point where, you know, he can get he can move things in a certain direction without it costing Right.

Very much. So question, what what is the cosmopolitan trap? Yeah. So I write about this kinda early in my book where, you know, if I'm talking about the multiracial populist coalition, this is this represents the others, the opposite end of it, which is this tendency, particularly for politics on the left to, revolve around the values of high income, high education, and very left leading liberal voters who, I I think, in the twenty tens and in 2020, gravitated towards, politics of this kind of the so called woke identity politics that you saw it on these signs that, you know, that were dotting the landscape in suburban areas. In this house, we believe science is real, no human is illegal, those types of issues that really have animated, I think, liberal politics, much more so and almost and I would argue to the exclusion of economic issues.

In a lot of these neighborhoods where you saw this kind of liberal politics, right, these were actually areas that were not Bernie Sanders' areas in the primaries. These were Hillary Clinton areas in the primaries because Bernie Sanders, I think, represented an alternative theory, which was working class economic populism and, you know, refocusing us, the Democratic back party back on the class struggle, which is essentially where it had been focused, I think, for the majority of the twentieth century, he and, you know, could argue all the way back to its founding in the nineteenth century. But as a result, right, it turns out that this cosmopolitan trap is is a trap because there are fewer there's less of a market. There's a less of a total market for that that philosophy than there would be for a more democratic economic populist philosophy that, you you know, you have significant numbers, not only of people in the country who are not college educated, who don't agree with liberal cultural ideas, but you also have significant parts of what were thought to be the Democratic base, including black voters, Latino voters, and immigrant voters, really, of all stripes, who also aren't on board, ironically for this identity politics.

How does big money affect both parties at this point? So that's an interesting question because you could argue I think big money actually brings both parties to the left. But, in in some ways, like, in in the sense of, you know, the business community and the don't average donor, like, the large donors to the Republican party are more moderate maybe than you know, maybe I think in some ways also out of touch, but in some ways actually just have a little bit more of a moderating influence on Trump in terms of maybe it's some of these whether it's the some of the tariff threats or whether it's it's it's whatnot. But the sort of idea is that, like, the Republican donors are more moderate than their party as a whole, and that should technically have a pretty healthy actually, a healthy effect on moving the party to the center. But the Democratic donors are actually furthest to the left than the party as a whole.

And so, it makes it very hard for the Democrats, particularly on these issues of identity, to break from that donor class. That is very much, in many ways, kind of one tied to Elizabeth Warren, to, you know, to a very progressive style of, politics, sort of erudite, high minded style of politics that is not a popular majority. I would also say Democrats are not as tied to big donors. Right? I mean, they are actually tied more to small donors, and I think that makes it much, much harder because those small donors are very progressive on all of these issues.

And it's rather than changing, you know, kind of, telling 50 rich guys that, you know, this is the direction we're gonna go. You have five to 10,000,000 people you have to convince, and that's very tough. If the Democratic Party is is influenced by small donors as you describe, why did, for instance, tax go down under the Biden administration when you figure in the credits that he was offering for the new Green Deal? I mean, why why didn't they more successfully advocate a more progressive tax program that would have potentially at least appealed to the middle class? Well, you know, I I wonder what if it would have appealed to the middle class.

Right? You're raising taxes on the rich. Obviously, that's that's an issue that pulls very well. But I think when it comes to, again, the coalitional politics, right, the Democrats, there's actually less room for them to increase taxes on the wealthy because that's who their coalition is. Right.

And maybe, yes, they on the super wealthy, yes, because there's not much of a political constituency there, right, in terms of raw votes. But if you're talking about people making double earners making 2 to 300 a year, you know, that margin that that cutoff always keeps going up, right, because it's it's the, you know, you just gotta figure out, alright, the average New York time reporter husband, wife couple, right, I mean, how much are they earning and set the limit right above that. Because so many people in the professional class, particularly in these big urban areas, are are are quote, unquote rich under the Democrats' definition. So so, you know, I I do think that it just becomes harder for them. You look at the something like the SALT deduction, right, in the in the New York area as as being something that, you know, that that that it's been mostly Democratic members of Congress.

Obviously, Republicans too when they get get elected in those areas who are advocating for that. So I think that that is what you're seeing manifest is some subtle shifts on this economic stuff. But I do I would I would dispute a little bit the idea of on the policy front that there there wasn't there weren't wins. And I think with the IRA, it was definitely a win for this new coalition in terms of that became a climate bill when, there was discussion. Initially, it was going to be kind of this care economy bill.

You initially had, alright, we're gonna do something for the blue collar workers with the infrastructure law, and then we're gonna pivot through early twenty three, I think it was, to do this, you know, what became it was initially Build Back Better, then it became IRA, but that was gonna be for the pink collar workers. It was gonna be for the care economy. It was gonna be for kind of sectors of the economy that were more women and working class. And then that pivoted to environmental, like something that was more green, you know, the green subsidies, which are exactly the concern of the upper high income donors. Or, I mean, that is really kind of the the major driving force behind that.

So when you look at economic policy and you have people like J PAL saying that the federal debt is unsustainable, from a political perspective, when you look at the coalition that's been established, what are the types of changes that this administration can bring to bear that will actually get implemented because they're politically feasible and it will address some of these long term imbalances that Jay Powell points out. Yeah. I mean, so I think from one perspective, and you you saw this in the is this gonna be the first Trump administration all over again when you really had very little concern for the deficit or for government spending. Right? And that's that that that is definitely something that is an outgrowth of you know, that is that is really a very clear expression of how Trump is very different from a normal Republican politician.

He doesn't really care about these questions of size of government or federal spending and was only too happy to do a lot of COVID spending. And that was really the thrust of economic pot and budget policy in the first administration. And, obviously, we know the Democrats don't really care either. I mean, they're also going in that direction too. But I think the thrust of this kind of politics, right, has has really tended to explode the deficit in a big way even when the economy is doing well.

You know, we have deficit 7% of GDP. Is there anything else that you think from the perspective of the coalition or otherwise? What what should we be looking for is what's next? Yeah. I mean, look.

I think the major question, right, along all these lines is Social Security and entitlement programs that is looming. And, you know, that is something that Trump has ruled out as, you know, cuts to Social Security benefits, but it seems inevitable now whether or not that's something he leaves for the next administration, you know, and, you know, as it gets as the deadline gets closer and closer, you know, I think that that is that's gonna be a big challenge for sure. Interesting. You know, it it it it's funny. I I mean, as a pollster, obviously, you're looking at how things are going.

As you said, you do it from the public inside. I mean, I think as an American, we we just want this to work. Right? And we we have some really serious challenges right now. And putting all the polling aside, the question is, can these democracies deliver on real change?

Because, I mean, I think, you know, the immigration is an issue. I argue with my brother about this. There's no question people are really, really upset with the the level of immigration. And granted, that is a real concern for a lot of people. But at the end of the day, so is the price of eggs and the ability to buy a house and the ability to hold your head up high and feel that you have a job that has meaning Right.

And that you're respected and not looked down upon. And I really wonder whether or not the great democracies can bring that dignity back to the middle class. I think that's right. And I think that, you know, another thread I think another theme you're kind of seeing, in this in this administration is, I think, an appetite for really busting up the bureaucracies that are holding back this you know, that are either holding back change. He had a tweet the other day.

It's like, we're gonna expedite permitting if you're gonna invest in America. So this idea of you know, and it also ties back to what Elon Musk wants to do is, you know, if he is gonna be someone who is just going to try to remove barriers to either, you know, home building or, you know, things that, really have been mired in this bureaucratic muck for years and years and years. You had Biden. It made a big deal of all these infrastructure investments, made a big deal about all these green investments, but they're all, like, tied up in bureaucracy such that you can't get electric vehicle chargers actually built, that things cost, like, an insane and sorbent of amount of money. Now, you know, it's, like, a huge challenge to tackle.

You have a lot of people on the left who have really called attention to this issue. But at the end of the day, right, I mean, who is going to be the, you know, who, you know, maybe you need somebody who has a certain disregard for existing norms and bureaucratic procedures to actually put it in place. Yeah. Because I I you know, in California, when you look at high speed rail, you look at homelessness, and you look at housing, what has to happen for government to get real progress made on those three central issues that are extremely important to Californians. Yep.

I mean, I don't know if there's any if you can answer I mean, any thoughts in terms of what can be done? I mean, it has to be something transformational, but California is certainly the the ground zero for, you know, this this issue where, you know, they you know, you have environmental projects that can't get built because, you know, there's environmental review. And so, you know, it really is gonna cost. I think it's gonna reshape the political landscape because you're gonna see people just leave California. Then they're gonna go to Florida.

They're gonna go to Texas. They're gonna go to these redder places, and those redder places are going to gain electoral votes. And in 2030, it's not gonna be possible for Democrats to win just by winning back those blue all states. Yeah. And and look, I think the one thing that's amazing about having 50 states is that if Texas can build high speed rail and a bunch of houses and keep people satisfied with clean drinking water and clean air and safe neighborhoods and everything else, we you know, presumably, California will copy that.

I mean, it's it's not like we don't have laboratories where we can experiment. No. It's not. It can be interesting. Well, Patrick, thank you so so much for joining us on the Puck today.

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