RCP co-founder Tom Bevan, on Friday's RealClearPolitics podcast, compares the messaging we're seeing from the president and vice president about the economy going into the 2026 midterm elections. "Trump is out there just saying, look, everything's great," he said. "I don't think the economy is as bad as Democrats are portraying... But perception is reality, and the perception out there is that the economy has issues." "Trump is unwilling to acknowledge those issues....

RCP senior elections analyst Sean Trende offers a few explanations for why Republicans aren't doing backflips on their way to the voting booth in 2026:

SEAN TRENDE: Yeah, I feel like we do this every few years, right? Whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, if people are a little upset about the economy, the president doesn't want to say, "Well, yeah, I've done a bad job." So he goes around and talks up the positive aspects, leaving members of Congress kind of in the lurch. It's a tough position for Republicans, and even if gas prices come down, it takes a while for those kinds of expectations to reset. That's a real problem for Republicans in this midterm election....

RCP co-founder Tom Bevan said on Monday's RealClearPolitics podcast that Democratic candidates' polling leads going into the midterm elections are starting to eclipse the margins of error, but the real deciding factor will be whether the price of gas starts going back down in the next four weeks. "Even if you don't believe the polls are fully accurate, they're getting to the point where they'd have to be wrong by 4 or 5 points to give Republicans a chance of holding the Senate," he said. Republicans are behind by 8.4 points in the latest RCP Average of the Generic Congressional Vote and 8 points in the Georgia Senate race. A pollster at the National Republican Senatorial Committee meeting last weekend apparently told party leaders they still have a chance to gain seats in the Senate....

Peter Berkowitz, RCP columnist and author of the new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America," commented on what parts of a university education AI can and can't replace, Monday on the RCP podcast. "I want to remind everybody that distance learning is actually not a novel development. It was invented about in the 15th century with movable press," he quipped. "This thing called a book." "A book enabled you to walk around the town, the village, the farm, sit down all by yourself, and you had access to the treasures of civilization....