MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
So what message are Republicans taking from Democrats' victories last night? Let's ask political strategist Alex Conant. He's a former spokesperson for both the White House and for then-Senator Marco Rubio. He is now a partner at the PR firm Firehouse Strategies. Good morning, Alex.
ALEX CONANT: Happy Wednesday, I guess.
MARTIN: I guess - well, for some people. So...
CONANT: For some people.
MARTIN: OK. So let's look a little bit - let's look at a little history here, OK, Alex? So 20 years ago, Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in 12 years. Cost of living, gas prices weighing on voters' minds. They were - we were in a war in Iraq. Do you see similarities between then and now?
CONANT: I do. I do. I mean, I worked in the Bush White House in 2006, and I remember pretty distinctly today 20 years ago, when President Bush came in and talked to the staff and talked about how we took a thumping. And that feels like the Republican Party took another thumping 20 years later for a lot of the same reasons - high gas prices, an unpopular war in the Mid East and then just historical trends. You know, it's really hard for any president to do well six years into a presidency, and I think some of the political capital that Trump has spent over the previous six years in the White House finally caught up to him.
MARTIN: One thing that was unique this year is just the huge amounts of money spent on campaigning this cycle. You know, at the end especially, you could sort of feel it and see it on the airways that the GOP had far more cash to pour into campaigns than Democrats did. So did that matter in the end?
CONANT: I - no. I think you're - I think anyone's going to be hard-pressed to point to a single race where, at the end of the day, money moved the needle. And I think we've known that in presidential politics for a while, that, you know, the candidate that spends the most money definitely isn't necessarily the one that's going to win. There's a lot of rich people who have run, self-financed and have come up well short.
We're seeing that in Senate and House races now, too, where, in the era of social media, where people - it's so easy for people to connect with the candidates and learn from the candidiates directly, message, candidate quality, environment matters way more than resources.
MARTIN: So in this instance, what do you think mattered the most?
CONANT: Well, this was a referendum on Trump. You know, Trump wanted it to be a referendum on him, Democrats wanted to be a referendum on him, and that's what it was. And then if you look at the exit polls, Trump's not popular. You know, people aren't happy with the direction of the economy, they're not happy with the war, gas prices. It was really a referendum, I think, on some of - on him and some of his policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran.
It'll be interesting to see if there's any sort of course correction. You know, Bush doubled down. He doubled down on the war after 2006 with the surge. It'll be interesting to see what Trump does now, if he also doubles down. I suspect he will.
MARTIN: Well, to that end, though, I wonder if this election also showed that the GOP kind of over-indexed on the idea that they had a mandate or the president felt like he had a mandate. And I wonder if there's a lesson here for the Democrats to not overthink their mandate.
CONANT: Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I do not think this was an endorsement of Democratic policies. In fact, Democrats really didn't run on an - any coherent agenda in this election other than stop Trump.
MARTIN: Oh, I think they would disagree with you, but we'll - that's a different conversation.
CONANT: Oh, sure, but, I mean, this was a referendum on Trump and this was a rejection of Trump more so than it was an endorsement of Democrats. And if you look at the poll - at the exit polls, Democrats remain very unpopular. The Democratic Party's favorability rings are not much higher than the Republican Party's. And so I think the Democratic Party does risk overreaching here, although I suspect really what they're going to focus on for the next two years is just investigating Trump, similarly to what the Democrats did in 2006.
MARTIN: And the takeaway for the Republicans?
CONANT: I - we got to rebuild, and that starts with recruiting more candidates. I think we're - we hopefully will have a vibrant 2028 presidential primary where, you know, we can hopefully elect a new generation of leaders because clearly Trump is not going to be the leader of a majority Republican Party in the future.
MARTIN: That is political strategist Alex Conant. Alex, thank you.
CONANT: Thank you.
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MARTIN: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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