“All presidents lose. Trump loses more often, on more things, than most,” says political scientist Jonathan Bernstein in a written conversation with New York Times Opinion editor John Guida.

Bernstein argues that Trump is an “inept” president who “actually gets worse at all of this as he goes along.”

“Trump thinks winning elections is like winning a prize — the United States of America — to do with as he pleases,” he writes. “But what actually happens in elections is that the voters hire you to do a job. It’s a job with some 340 million bosses. And like all jobs, it has constraints and obligations.”

Trump “just doesn’t see that,” says Bernstein, who also notes that “Trump has hardly had a week where his approval exceeded his disapproval.”

What Trump is actually good at is being “a really good reality TV star.”

“He’s very good at grabbing attention,” which “can help a president set the agenda,” Bernstein says. “Political scientists have found that presidents aren’t very good at changing what people think, but they can be good at changing what people think about.”

Trump has been good at creating “a Democratic Party eager to fight — and that may even, in time, undermine the 50 years of successful G.O.P. gains in the courts,” but he has not worked to get his agenda passed in Congress.

“With the power to set the agenda, skilled presidents can get things done: by pressing Congress to vote on something they would rather not vote on or by pressing the bureaucracy to pay attention to their directives,” says Bernstein. “Trump is an inept president, so he mostly squanders the attention he gets — and at least half the time, he winds up drawing attention to things that don’t help him at all.”

Trump has not been successful at getting Congress to pass his most important legislation: the SAVE America Act, or at getting the Senate to kill the filibuster. Recently, even some GOP lawmakers crossed the aisle in a significant rebuke of the president — namely the War Powers Act legislation — and some have balked at Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund.

Meanwhile, “Trump has managed to do a lot of damage that will be truly hard to undo,” says Bernstein. “Legal talent has drained from the Justice Department. The same thing is happening virtually everywhere in the federal Civil Service, especially after work force cuts.”

It will “take time to rebuild,” but it will “be hard for any future president to recover from the foreign policy debacles,” he warns.

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Democratic political consultant James Carville wants Maine voters to back Graham Platner despite the candidate’s flaws — and partly because of some of them. Platner is currently the likely Democratic nominee in Maine’s U.S. Senate race. If Platner wins the primary, he will face Republican Senator Susan Collins, who was first elected in 1996.

“I understand he’s f—— up,” said Carville on his Politicon podcast. “Yeah, maybe we need a combat veteran right on that Senate floor, who is f—— up.”

Carville berated Senator Collins by calling her “the most pliable member in the history of the United States Senate.”

He warned that he believes the country is “in imminent peril — I mean, imminent peril,” and asked: “Who is most likely to slow this criminal in charge?”

“I think it’s Graham Platner.”

“I ask all of you to understand his flaws, and understand the peril that this nation is in, and maybe he might be the right guy at the right time,” said Carville.

“Graham Platner grew up, I think, pretty privileged,” Carville said, sharing some of the likely Democratic nominee’s backstory. “He went to some kind of fancy fancy boarding school. He graduated, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He was in for eight years. He had three combat deployments. He gets out of the Marine Corps, and he goes to GW.”

Then Platner “joined the Maryland National Guard. Oh, you know what happened? He gets deployed a fourth time.”

“He’s f—— up,” said Carville. “He’s been shot at. He’s a veteran. All right? He’s got a little bit weird. He’s an oysterman. I know what oystermen do. I live in Louisiana. I think that oyster harvesting is the same the world over, it’s hard a—— work.”

Carville acknowledged that he has concerns, but said that maybe senators “need to look at this guy before they start sending young people off to fight wars, and see what the consequence of it is. Maybe he ought to run and say, ‘You don’t know, I’m gonna be on a veterans affairs committee, and I wanna be on a mental health subcommittee, ’cause I know something about… Yeah, I might be five degrees off dead center. So f—— what?’ They need that.”

He said he doesn’t agree with Platner’s economic stances, that they are “to the left of anything I’d say I’m for.”

“But you know what? He recognizes this horrific inequality in this country. And it actually would do some good to have somebody in there.”

Carville called Platner’s tattoo “very troubling.”

He said, “what I have to consider first, is this country is about to lose it. The whole goddamn thing.”

“Okay, we gotta win this,” Carville concluded. “And if we got a person who’s understandably got issues, yeah, good. And maybe people ought to see it, and maybe we ought to just be reminded of what these stupid wars have brought about in the consequence of said stupid wars. It’s [what] stupid Susan Collins been for all her political life.”

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President Donald Trump’s rapid transformation of the GOP into a majority-MAGA base may end up costing the Republican Party in future elections, according to a new report.

In just four years, then share of Republicans who identify as MAGA — “Make America Great Again,” Trump’s political slogan — has jumped from 38 percent to 62 percent, according to YouGov/Economist surveys.

“It’s a change that has occurred with remarkable speed,” Brookings Institution senior fellows Elaine Kamarck and E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote in a new analysis, The Independent reports.

As Trump tightens his grip on the party, non-MAGA Republicans are increasingly becoming opposed to MAGA’s positions on some key issues and appear to be more in line with America’s independents. While non-MAGA Republicans now comprise a minority of the GOP, they represent a share that “will play a crucial role in determining the GOP’s future” — and could swing the vote in future elections.

“A clear majority of his party wants him in charge,” the report’s authors write, “but the tighter his grip becomes, the farther he drifts from the rest of the country.” And non-MAGA Republicans are increasingly “unwilling to cede the GOP to Trump,” as they grow “steadily more rebellious.”

“That could prove costly in future elections as the nation, overall, is evenly split between the two parties,” The Independent observes. “Seeing other Republicans vote more like independents or Democrats could swing elections in that party’s favor. Democrats could also benefit if non-MAGA Republicans also skip voting and drag down turnout numbers.”

There are some stark contrasts on policy and beliefs between MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans.

On the economy, for example, YouGov found that just 18 percent of MAGA Republicans say the economy is worsening. For non-MAGA Republicans, it’s 65 percent — in keeping with the 67 percent of independents who also see the country on the wrong track.

And on Trump’s Iran war, 83 percent of MAGA Republicans support the president’s efforts — but less than half, just 43 percent, of non-MAGA Republicans, do. When it comes to the Epstein files, The Independent notes, just 5 percent of MAGA Republicans believe Trump was involved with the convicted sex offender’s crimes — but 29 percent of non-MAGA Republicans say he was.

“The widespread disillusionment of non-MAGA Republicans presents the party with a serious mobilization challenge this fall,” the authors conclude, according to The Independent. “Trump has converted most of the GOP to his way. But those he has not brought along are increasingly restive; they can abandon their party or simply stay home. We’ll know in November.”

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