Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

Political science professor at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

Obviously, there's a lot going on.

Let's dig right into it.

It turns out the government shut down.

Hey, what's.

Going on there?

It was a long time coming.

We kind of predicted this from, like, a month ago, but here we are.

Goal line stance.

And they couldn't get the ball in the end zone.

Both sides dug in.

What's going to happen?

Well, we don't know.

I mean, it can be solved, in a couple of hours.

Maybe by the time this comes to air?

- Right?

Or it can be 36 days just looking to, pass the record of, 2018, 2019.

So we don't know yet.

And the interesting thing is that the context of this shutdown is completely 1,000% different than it was, in previous years.

Yeah.

Tariffs, labor market kind of sluggish, inflation still creeping in somewhere there.

Grocery prices are still high.

Yeah.

My egg prices are still where they were at my friend.

And now the government doesn't work like.

Yeah, this is a liability, I think, in a way, for Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Right?

I mean, polling right now suggests that basically Republicans, by a very slim margin are blamed for this.

But of course, the narrative can change on this as messaging evolves.

But there are a lot of people who look at this and say, look, Republicans have got complete control of government, right?

You've been bragging about this for six months.

You need to be able to control this and they didn't.

Democrats are using this as leverage on the policy issue effectively of Obamacare healthcare.

Right?

So like reminds me of the 2018 shutdown all over again, right.

Having flashbacks.

So this is really, I think, a kind of moment where Democrats are hoping to gain some traction.

The base wants him to stand up to Trump, and there are a lot of federal workers also who would like them to stand up to Trump.

So that's where things are now.

But that can change pretty quickly because Donald Trump is such a great sort of communicator in the sense that he controls the airwaves when he speaks.

And so there's a way for them to do this if he stays on message.

Right.

Republicans pass a clean resolution saying where it is going to fund the government for a little while until we can kind of figure this out.

Democrats are saying, you said that before.

We're not buying it.

You know, the base is unhappy.

They want to see a fight.

Well, we got a fight, but with no national parks to go to to calm down.

Exactly.

But here, the key question, I think, is, you know, like, you just highlighted and is the fact that this is the first time that Democrats are having a real, opposition to the Trump administration.

Good point.

Yeah.

This is the first time that they seem to be united until they're not but to draw a line in the sand and say, like, no way, this is on you.

You break the plate, you are going to pay.

Yeah.

It's easy to get into a shutdown, right?

I mean, the one thing that's the same from past shutdowns is partizanship, right?

Polarization is still really high.

But the one thing that's different is that sort of the end game is always unique.

Right.

So getting out of it is the hard part.

And that's where Democrats have to think about what's the end game here.

They're asking for basically like a return to, you know, millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars of cuts.

And Republicans aren't going to bank on that.

Yeah, but it is possibly the case that that some of the Democrats might shift.

Right?

Some of the moderates have already done that.

Right.

John Thune, the Senate majority leader, still pushing, you know, kind of the effort to have a vote every day and say, look, I'm gonna make you vote on this every single day, which you know, puts pressure on the moderates to say, you know, they're going to either bend or they're going to hold.

Democrats are sort of unified.

Republicans are very unified.

And I think that matters going into the shutdown, too.

So at this point, I think it's kind of anybody's ballgame.

But in the meantime, we're still sort of seeing government shutdown that has real implications for how people work and live.

Absolutely.

But before thinking about those implications, one of the most important implications for me is for them, because I think that if Democrats cave in, they're going to destroy their base.

Yeah.

And, and that's going to be disastrous for the upcoming midterm elections.

Full scale revolt.

They need they need to hold the line politically speaking, because if they don't, they're not going to have anything, anything at all to go to the midterm elections.

I do think there's leverage there for Democrats.

Right.

The one issue that is really popular among people is the Obamacare subsidy.

So that's set to basically fall off this fiscal cliff at the beginning of the year.

And I think most people don't recognize that.

So basically, health care premiums are going to increase for like hundreds of millions of people that tens of thousands of people.

Right.

So there's a lot going on.

But the problem, I think, for most Democrats is that they're not able to communicate that really effectively.

This gives them a platform to do it and gives them an issue that's really popular.

So there is a way out here.

I think probably it's the case that you'll see Republicans say, okay, we'll give in.

We'll let this separate vote on the Obamacare subsidies happen so you can buy your face.

And or at least we can try to make this happen because Republicans don't want this cliff to be a problem for them either.

And it very much is.

Oh, yeah.

And so this is definitely a liability.

Like they may fix this on their own, but they don't want to have this now kind of pitchfork to their head, you know, to make them do it right now.

So I think that this does provide Democrats that additional leverage.

But they've got to hold the line.

You've already seen Fetterman Cross.

You've seen Mastro cross.

You've already seen King cross.

So like a lot of the senators are saying, not so sure about this shutdown thing.

And the longer it takes, the harder it is to undo.

So it becomes a kind of real liability.

I want to talk about the implications to the 2026.

Right.

That's the biggest issue here.

It's like everyone's in campaign mode seems like all the time.

But what does this mean for the Senate elections especially, maybe some House elections, that this shutdown is going to happen.

And depending on how long it continues goes on?

Well, I think it's going to be dependent on the messaging and how they can frame the issue.

Yeah.

And I think that for Democrats it's very simple.

Right.

And you said it is Obamacare subsidies.

Yeah.

If they focus on that then that resonates on very clear.

And the other thing is what I mentioned before is the context, the whole economic context in which we are, the new policies of the Trump administration, trade tariffs, economy, so on and so forth.

And that has to translate for Republicans into gains that people feel in their pockets.

Yeah.

If that is not translated, then they can do it.

What Trump did basically just get his campaign manual and change the name from, Biden to Trump.

And you have your playbook because the economy has to be better by next midterm election.

Yeah.

Reminds me of the kind of '80 election, right, where, you know, Ronald Reagan kind of flips the script on Jimmy Carter and says, well, looks, you know, four years ago, things were bad.

Are they better for you now or not?

And I think a lot of people are going to say, maybe not.

Republicans want to make the case.

The government should be smaller.

And definitely this will make government smaller.

In addition to the shutdown, there's 150,000 federal employees who were, basically on track this month to be, like, retired, like you took they took the buyout.

So.

Right.

You're going to see a significant reduction in the number of government workers.

And now the government workers that are already working for the government are going to be temporarily furloughed and maybe even laid off permanently.

This is what Donald Trump is threatening.

And the OMB director is suggesting will happen how that far as we don't goes, we don't know.

You know, we're still kind of in the a couple days for a couple of days.

But there is, I think, a real threat here that people look at government and say, wait, this is not working.

It's a problem for me to get all the items I need from government, right?

Everything slower than it used to be.

And not only that, but my grocery bills are still really high, right?

Cereal's really expensive still.

And you know, the price of bacon is extremely high.

And so people are going to say, I don't like this.

And that's a, I think, a real problem.

So Trump is kind of famously poll driven.

This seems to me to be a problem for him in terms of like trying to like get him past this political hump.

And if the polling suggests that Democrats are doing better, Republicans are to blame.

It could be that this ends faster than we expected.

Well, of course, and also, it's very important to note that that the context of the 2024 presidential election, the Trump coalition, is not a historic coalition.

It was a coalition during the 2024 election.

Yeah, it is not.

Very.

Temporary.

Exactly.

It is not that all Latinos suddenly designed to realign with the Republican Party or the middle class or the working class or this or that, no, no, no, no, no, no, it was the context of the 2024, a disastrous campaign by the Democrats.

Yep.

Boom, boom.

Boom, boom.

And we're going to talk about this with respect to Gina Hinojosa running for governor, because there's a hope that maybe that'll spur Democrats.

Yeah.

Hope among.

Yeah, success among Latinos.

But you're exactly right.

But also the kind of things that are happening because of the government shutdown are going to uniquely affect South Texas and particular pockets in Texas, right?

Yes.

Like the kind of 67, $670 million in grants.

Right, are in jeopardy infrastructure projects, water projects that people like want to see continuing on in here in Houston.

Disruption of the Port of Houston is an issue.

You've got NASA and other federal funding.

Yeah, that's on the sort of chopping block here.

You've got no issuance of new flood insurance, issues.

And so that's a definite kind of problem because that deadline is coming up.

So there's a lot of kind of reduced access to government here that may uniquely affect some of the people that Republicans are hoping will side with them in the next election.

Indeed.

So this is going to be an ongoing issue.

We'll see how quickly it gets done.

It may very well be done by the time you're watching this, but, I don't think so because both sides are pretty dug in and they both like their messaging.

So we will see, you know, kind of how this tracks.

But let's shift gears a little bit and talk about, and talk about the, kind of meeting that the president had with the Secretary of War and the assembled hundreds of generals, the president and the D.O.W., I guess, now, called back all of these generals to give them a pep talk, sort of.

Yes.

What happened there?

Well, it was well, first of all, we didn't know anything.

No one had an agenda or anything like that.

So everyone came to the meeting and, for us that we watched that it was like, what's going to happen?

It feels like a lot of academic meetings we go to like, yeah.

It's like, what is all this about?

Yeah.

It's like, wait, what?

I saw somebody said that this meeting could have been an email, right?

It was like a press release.

It was like a campaign rally.

Yeah.

It didn't have the effect of, like, I think mobilizing towards a particular goal.

Right.

What was the purpose?

Well, the purpose, according to the secretary of of of of war or defense.

Yes.

Quote unquote.

War now.

Technically.

Yes.

Technically.

Okay, was basically like, we need to bring back that warrior, ethos to the military.

I didn't know that they lost it.

To the people with the tanks and bombs and.

Exactly.

Drones.

Exactly.

You should go.

And do better.

Like you should be able to be fit and do that.

Hey, and sorry.

No beards.

no beards.

You're Out of luck, my friend.

No long hair.

And displays of personal something.

I don't know what that means.

Yeah.

It's an odd thing to do and cost a lot of money to get all the generals.

Oh, yeah, for the purpose, it seems, of kind of rallying the troops, literally.

I mean, no pun intended.

Like talking them about the value of the military and how much they cared about them has its purpose, I think.

And certainly talking about the amount of money spent is a good sort of base priming enterprise, but it didn't seem to have any real purpose beyond that.

And there are a lot of doozies here, right?

Like the room was sort of silent for much of this.

And these are folks who were trained to like, you know, not show emotion.

That's not their responsibility.

But there's just an kind of eerie silence.

And I think the president was hoping for more of a kind of rah rah moment.

That's not what this is.

So, you know, that's a campaign style event that, this is not this.

And so there's a lot of this, I think kind of problematic issues that are happening here.

You know, the president complained about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize.

He took aim at Joe Biden.

He says, okay, if you don't like this, can leave the room.

Of course you'll lose your rank and, you know, kind of your pension and whatnot.

But, you know, you can go if you want to.

So is it an ultimatum?

I don't know what this is.

Yeah.

No, it was, I guess, very odd.

And also in terms, I mean, looking at it, on the other hand, you say, well, the military keeps that line still, alive.

Right?

In terms of not showing emotion or anything like that, we don't know what they were thinking.

And not engaging in Partizan.

Exactly.

Not engaging whatsoever.

Yeah.

It was like yeah.

It's funny because there's academic work that looks at kind of how sort of certain kinds of missions the military engages in are perceived as political.

And when it's perceived as political, there's a decline in trust to the military.

And there's one thing the military doesn't want is to have the kind of large scale distrust of them.

So that's an issue.

The other thing the president noted here was that he wants to see these U.S.

cities be the kind of training ground for a lot of the operations he's interested in.

This is also an ominous warning, it seems to me, to the cities, but also to the military to say, like, you're going to be on task potentially to be a kind of police force inside these cities.

We've seen all the ways in which that comes about and has implications.

So that's another, I think, reason that he called them to this point.

And I don't think that that's what they want, but it's hard to know.

Right, exactly.

I mean, they'll do what they're told to do because this is the way things work.

But there is also a real risk here for the military and for the president to pursue this kind of course.

Well, absolutely.

First of all, the military are not trained to do that kind of civilian, safety, public policy, security, whatnot.

And it can be a disaster, a huge, huge, huge disaster.

Occupation of cities.

It just seems very kind of problematic.

Yes.

I think, you know, we've seen lots of coverage of this, but I think that's a liability for the president.

So yeah, we'll track to see kind of how this plays out.

But it may just be a kind of one and done thing.

But I think it definitely shows you that there's a sort of new approach that the president's taking to the military.

Oh yeah, we're going to definitely see more of that.

Let's shift gears and talk about Texas election, something more, I don't know, happy that we can all get behind.

Yeah.

The notion of free and fair elections.

Just as a reminder, the deadline to vote in the November elections is October 6th, so be sure to get your registration updated if you are not registered.

Or if you've moved.

But let's talk about the governor's race.

Gina Hinojosa, who's a representative from Austin, has told a couple of donors that she's running for governor next year.

What do you make of it?

It's very interesting.

I think it's, it's, interesting proposition.

We have Mr.

White, already throwing his hat, to the, rodeo in this case.

We talked about this last week.

And now that Gina, Hinojosa is saying, well, I'm going to be part of it.

Yeah, it's a very interesting I think that in terms of what will go in terms of name recognition right now, politician, from that has very deep ties with RGB daughter of Mr.. Hinojosa that was, the Democratic Party chairman, a couple of months ago and also progressive.

Yeah, with very clear ideas.

Latina, a woman, very interesting.

And I think, could be a potential interesting matchup against a very effective governor, a governor that has a warchest of $86 million, just to say.

Just a little.

Yeah, cash in the bottom.

Very effective, very successful in terms of his legislative agenda.

Very savvy, politically speaking.

Interesting match.

Absolutely.

And obviously, the big question is, can Gina Hinojosa get all the ducks ready and lined up for that particular one?

It's a great question.

And I think it's funny that both of the kind of major contenders for governor are related to kind of famous people.

Right?

So Andrew White, obviously the son of Mark White and Gina Hinojosa, the daughter of, of Chuy Hinojosa.

so there is definitely like a, you know, I think a cemetery here too, at the Democrats are hoping can play up in a more successful way.

It's a tough lift regardless.

Right.

Like you say, Abbott has got a tremendous war chest.

He's got a significant amount of political capital to spend.

And this is a very red state.

So it's a challenge, I think, to see this as a race that a Democrat can kind of easily win.

But if there's a Democrat who can win it, it's probably going to be somebody who can rally the biggest swing vote in the state and the Latino vote.

So there's a prospect here for that to be successful.

She sort of, it seems like, implied that that's kind of her major effect.

And I think that that would be a real plus.

That said, you know, we talked about this before, but the way that the Latino vote has shaken out the last couple of cycles, it's trended a bit red.

And I agree with you.

I don't think this is durable, but at least there are those patterns that give the Republicans a chance to be able to win that vote.

And if it's a competitive vote, Democrats will lose.

And so that's sort of I think the issue that is problematic for the Democrats.

But, you know, you've got to get through the primary first.

Democrats are struggling.

They have since 1994 when Jurassic Park was in theaters the first time, the very first Jurassic Park.

Jeronimo, and now there's like 7 or 8 of them.

I Know, I know.

There's the very first one.

It's been a long time for Democrats, but they're hoping that Abbott is vulnerable in a way.

And I wonder if you think he's vulnerable.

I mean, you seem to make a case that he's not beatable.

And there's a I think good evidence of that's the case.

But there are some moments potentially vulnerability.

So a couple of them, you know, include on the voucher issue.

And Hinojosa's good on the voucher issue.

Right.

For Democrats.

Right.

She was a former school board member.

She fought with Abbott kind of publicly about this.

And you know, the kind of I think interaction really prompted her to run for governor.

The vouchers, though generally supported by most people and the polling indicates.

So I'm not sure that's the most kind of vulnerable issue for him.

His approval ratings at 40%.

It's about the lowest it's been since he took office.

The question about Texas serving as a good model, that the Texas Politics Project issued 46% somewhat or strongly disagree.

So there are a lot of people who don't think Texas is the right path.

Donald Trump's influence on Abbott is too much, according to 46% of people, and the right amount according to 34%.

The future, the failure of government to plan on the flooding issues is a big factor.

51% of people agree that that's a problem.

So there are some liabilities there because he is Texas government for lack.

Oh yeah.

Other ways of putting it.

That said, the vouchers are really important for people.

54% said that it was extremely or very important for the pledge to address the issue of people using the bathroom of their birth gender.

So and plus like the money plus the uphill battle in terms of registration, just it's a lot.

Right?

So Abbott might be vulnerable on some things, but I can't imagine it's going to make a huge difference in terms of the general election.

Well, no, but it's going to be interesting because as you say, the swing vote is going to be Latino voters.

Yeah.

So you have, let's say, the Bobby Pulido plus Gina Hinojosa, plus some other candidates here and there that are reshaping the narrative.

Right.

And going back, let's say to this common sense approach to politics.

And I think that that could be something that there is an opening for Democrats.

One number two, if they can, if Democrats can really this time focus on what would be the most important issue that is getting people out to vote, then they can have, a chance in some races or at least once again be competitive.

And obviously we have the Trump effect and the Trump effect is very, very, very polarizing.

And there is no question, as you say, as the poll of the Texas Politics Party, you said that Governor Abbott is 100% aligned with President Trump.

Yeah.

And that could be an asset with a certain segment of the electorate.

But, oh, it's a liability with all their segment of the electorate.

The question is who's going to turn out to vote?

That's the biggest question.

Yeah, it's all about turnout.

And from 2018 we know that a big turnout did benefit Democrats.

Yeah.

It's not like a linear relationship.

But there is a strong positive relationship.

Yeah.

And the other thing to note is that it's hard in midterms, right, to get people to vote generally.

But this is a different kind of midterm.

It is a much more political kind of activism.

And I like your point about how the down ballot races in 2018 juiced up turnout, top of the ticket.

So I think that actually could be a real benefit.

So there's a possibility here to make this happen.

By the way, did you see that Bobby Pulito retweeted my reference to you singing last week?

Oh Okay.

Go back and look because yeah, he, he was not he was not sure that you did a good job okay.

So you can't join the military.

You're probably not going to be a music star so.

I'm going to reply, I guess I think so I gave it my best.

I think you.

Did great.

Without vocalizing or anything like that.

With No warmup, no band, like, you did a great.

Yeah, I think so.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I have a niche and I wouldn't miss that.

We'll see.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

He's on our list.

Yeah.

I think this is interesting.

So we'll see how this plays out.

But, like, of course she's got to get past the primary.

Yeah.

Andrew White has lost to a progressive ish Latino in the past.

And so it could very well be that that repeats.

But this is going to be a pricey race.

Gina Hinojosa has raised no money nobody knows who she is outside of Austin.

Like it's such an uphill battle.

Yeah.

Like it's a problem.

But like, she has to do well because Democrats need those positions filled.

Absolutely.

That's an issue.

Yeah.

The other issue is that Greg Abbott still thought of as a kind of national figure.

He was asked over the weekend if he might run for president.

He said, you know, didn't say yes or no, but said that he would have a decision guided by God.

Do you think that that's a feasible outcome?

Well, I mean, not.

The God part, the running part.

But, I don't know.

I mean, we have to wait and see how the chips, fall in in terms of national and politics.

And if there is an opening for, Governor Abbott, I think in terms of, public policies and and advancing the MAGA agenda, conservative agenda, he has all the right boxes to check, check check check check check check check.

Yeah.

And eventually he could position himself at that particular level.

In the right moment.

He set the national agenda on immigration issues, on support, not vouchers per se, but followed up with it because in Texas is the biggest state So there's an opportunity there, I think, for him.

Oh yeah.

But he's always demurred a bit.

So things are getting more real now that the question about who's going to take over after Donald Trump has become more prominent, speaking of Republicans, the agriculture commissioner is in a bit of trouble this week.

Sid Miller, is who in the past declared war on D.E.I.

celebrated executive order from Donald Trump and from Greg Abbott in 2003 wrote a letter to the leaders of.

'23.

Say 2023.

2023.

Sorry, yeah.

Sent a letter to the leaders of the UTSA and to UT Austin saying that they should let in a woman who was referred to as a biracial Latina.

The father has retreated to Argentina.

Turns out that this woman's mother is a political associate.

And, he would very much like to see them, her admitted.

Sid Miller survived some scandals before, remember?

Indeed.

Absolutely.

Which sounds all too appealing.

He also who has been, kind of snared up in some bribery and licensing scandal issues.

His chief of staff has been associated with some of this.

And so I think that this reignites some of those questions.

Oh, yeah.

Is he in jeopardy of losing in a primary?

Well, this is D.E.I.

and this is something that, conservatives and and Republicans have, opposed, very, very, very, very strongly.

Yeah.

Right.

It's political poison for Republicans.

It is, it is.

And here he is basically, I don't know.

Facilitating it.

But.

To some.

Degree, yes.

I mean, and it's kind of a question if the chicken was before the egg or the egg of the chicken or whatnot.

But it's, is.

The commissioner after all.

Right.

If anyone knows Sid Miller would know.

He would know.

But it's very close.

Right.

I mean this is not 1998.

Right.

It's 2023 for a new Republican Party.

Nathan Sheets is running against him.

He's got endorsements from Rick Santorum from Kelly Shackleford from Angela Paxton.

He's raised a bunch of money, partly because if he gave it to himself, but he's got 400 K in the bank.

It's a lot of money.

Oh yeah.

So this could be a pretty competitive race.

Another competitive race is the Senate race.

James Talarico raised $6 million.

He should be called James Tala-Rich-o.

Oh.

Talarico.

Oh there you go.

Boom boom.

Boom.

What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, it's, I think it's a very good start.

Yeah.

From 0 to 6 million is not shabby at all.

In a Month or so.

Pretty good.

Yes it is.

I think you're exactly right.

We call that in Texas politics a good start for race.

It's basically going to take 80 to 90 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's another interesting moment here in the Senate race was that, Ken Paxton, who's obviously running for the Republican primary, surprised some customers in my hometown, Plano, Texas, by serving McDonald's hamburgers.

He also, decided that he thought the Bad Bunny was a bad choice for the Super Bowl.

What do you make of all this?

Well, I mean, I think Bad Bunny is a good choice.

I mean.

He's the best streamed artist, and it.

Did.

Yeah.

It's like millions and billions of, hits on Spotify and this and that.

So, I think he's going to bring a lot of money, and it's something that we may or may not discuss next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The party keeps up next week.