Even some dyed-in-the-wool MAGA pollsters are starting to sound the red alert.
asserted
pollsters → start → alert
“Republicans are going to run out of a coalition soon if they don’t build on what he started to build in ’24,” Big Data Poll Director Rich Baris told Tim Miller in an interview yesterday.
asserted
Baris → go → interview
“And a lot of those gains are squandered because of the direction they took.”
asserted
they → squander → direction
In the eyes of some of his voters, Baris argued, Trump’s biggest sin has been his foreign-policy obsession: An inflation-spiking war in Iran wasn’t what the president promised, and it certainly wasn’t what they expected from him.
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they → argue → him
Say you’re a Republican lawmaker going into a tough midterm fight.
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you → say → fight
The good news is your party controls the presidency.
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party → control → presidency
The bad news is the president is insanely unpopular and getting more so every day.
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president → get → ?
Many voters you need are pretty mad at the guy.
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you → need → guy
You might want to start telling them, Yeah, I’m with him—but only on the good stuff, the stuff you guys like.
uncertain
guys → want → stuff
As I wrote last week, this was never going to be an option for Republicans this cycle.
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this → write → Republicans
They’re tied too tightly to Donald Trump in voters’ minds already, and he’d rather see them lose than win at his expense.
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them → tie → expense
Even so, as the midterms get closer, I’m genuinely astonished by just how hard Trump is working to tie himself like a millstone around each vulnerable incumbent’s neck.
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Trump → get → neck
Last week, the Atlantic reported that Trump had settled on a specific spending strategy ahead of the midterms.
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Trump → report → midterms
Rejecting the idea that he should go local, using his massive war chest to help bolster the reputations of specific candidates in key races, the president is opting for a different approach: spending heavily on national ads intended to keep the spotlight on himself.
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president → reject → himself
Yesterday, his political operation unveiled the first tranche of those ads.
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operation → unveil → ads
The first, called “Toughest Guy,” aims to convince the public that Trump is a really tough guy.
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Trump → call → public
Another ad focuses on Trump’s most broadly palatable accomplishments: “We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security, the largest tax cuts in American history,” Trump intones.
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Trump → focus → history
The price of eggs, he notes, is down, too.
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he → note → eggs
Congressional Republicans, never mentioned in the ads, are reduced to an implicit enabling role: They’ve occasionally helped Trump get his priorities over the finish line, and they’ll be needed to help Trump “finish the job.”
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Trump → mention → job
The same Maximum Trump spirit promises to be on full display at next week’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas, a two-day affair that will be anchored by back-to-back primetime speeches from Vice President JD Vance and Trump himself.
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that → promise → Vance
There’s a reason the major parties haven’t traditionally held midterm conventions: Without a presidential contest hanging over every race in the country, it doesn’t make sense to try to build a one-size-fits-all national narrative for hundreds of disparate and unique state and federal contests.
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size → ’ → contests
Unless, of course, you’re the kind of president who thinks the only way anyone in your party can win is by their voters closing their eyes and pretending they’re voting for you.
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they → ’re → you
It isn’t just that House and Senate Republicans have become inseparable from the president in voters’ minds.
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Republicans → become → minds
They’re also beholden to whatever mercurial decisions he decides to make about his gigantic bag of cash.
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he → ’re → cash
Last Sunday, Sen. John Kennedy took to Fox News to basically plead with Trump to open his wallet in support of the party’s damaged-goods Senate nominee in Texas, Ken Paxton: “We in the Senate don’t have the money budgeted for Texas.
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money → take → Texas
We need help from the president,” Kennedy said.
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Kennedy → need → president
“The president says he has $850 million in his campaign accounts.
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he → say → accounts
That’s a lot of jack. . . .
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That → ’ → jack
But he hasn’t committed to it yet.”
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he → commit → it
Majority Leader John Thune made the same point on Fox on Tuesday: “Because Texas is such a big state, we’re going to need the president and his team to be engaged there and putting resources into that race.”
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president → make → race
It would be easy to laugh all this off as just desserts for venal Senate Republicans and the latest demonstration of the president’s incredible vanity.
asserted
It → laugh → vanity
There’s a part of Trump that seems genuinely to believe that, when voters are reminded of his accomplishments, they’ll rush back into his arms.
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they → ’ → arms
It’s exactly the sort of hubris that seems likely to lead the GOP straight into a catastrophe.
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that → ’ → catastrophe
But we can’t lose sight of the other side of the equation.
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we → lose → equation
Trump isn’t only relying on highly dubious methods of persuasion to carry his people through the midterms.
asserted
Trump → rely → midterms
It’s increasingly clear that he wants to try to cheat his way to victory, too.
asserted
he → ’ → victory
We’ve been writing a lot about Trump’s attempt to seize federal control of mail-in ballots by giving the Postal Service an unprecedented new role of policing which mailed ballots should and shouldn’t be delivered.
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ballots → write → role
This week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, seeking information about alarming allegations he had received from a USPS whistleblower about that effort.
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he → send → effort
The software the USPS was building to handle these tasks, the whistleblower alleged, was “astonishingly untested,” rushed, and buggy.
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whistleblower → build → tasks
And even if it miraculously worked as intended, the procedures USPS was building around it seemed almost guaranteed to disenfranchise legitimate voters.
asserted
USPS → work → voters
…and 36 more, not listed.
