A lame duck? Yes, but Trump is still the focus as US heads to midterms
Donald Trump’s name won’t be on any more ballots, but his spirit will be.
A lame duck president with relatively low approval ratings, Trump should be fading from view, and his fellow Republicans should be distancing themselves from him and his troubles before the upcoming November mid-term election.
That is not happening. Instead, Republicans who oppose him are retiring, knowing they would lose if they ran, or losing their primaries. This year, representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, all opposed Trump in one form or another and found themselves gone or about to be gone from Congress.
The ideological stripe doesn’t matter. Tillis and Cassidy are mainstream, moderate conservatives. Massie and Greene are populist and were MAGA-aligned. All four are out.
Trump remains the master of the Republican Party. At an unusual mid-term Republican convention this month in Texas, he was the star, using his celebrity and showmanship to draw the eyeballs of low-propensity voters – those not highly motivated to vote – who are critical to Republican chances in November.
Vulnerable Republican candidates, such as Ken Paxton in Texas and Mike Rogers in Michigan, are counting on Trump to raise hundreds of millions of campaign dollars and more importantly, drive voter turnout – the key to the November election.
Both parties are pounding away on the messages that will inspire low-propensity voters in their parties to show up and vote. Over the last 20 years, non-presidential elections in the United States average turnout of 42 percent, with presidential years at about 61 percent.
This low-turnout dynamic incentivises each party to do what it takes to motivate their voters to show up. The party that can reach 43 percent turnout will likely win.
Even at age 80 and after years of scandals and negative press, Trump remains the best hope for Republican turnout. GOP House and Senate candidates know this acutely and need Trump to make the election about him.
At a rally in South Carolina, Trump said, ‘The problem that we have is, they say that Trump does great when he’s on the ballot, but when he’s not on the ballot, his people don’t come and they don’t vote for senators, congressmen and other Republicans… So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. Just come and vote. It’s so important.’
The Trump coalition, which has been successful twice and now defines the GOP, may be leadable only by him. His most likely political heir, Vice President JD Vance, has not yet shown the same ability to bring together blue-collar voters and more traditional pro-business Republicans.
Congressional Republicans, who are acutely aware of their own viability, welcome Trump’s leadership of the party, even with his low popularity numbers. The conventional wisdom that the president’s unpopularity is unusually bad is not accurate. Trump’s approval rating of around 39 percent is roughly similar to George W Bush’s 39 percent and Barack Obama’s 41 percent at similar points in their presidencies.
The real challenge for Republicans is high enthusiasm among Democratic voters. As much as Republicans are united in support for Trump, Democrats are even more enthusiastic about opposing him. The person of the president is effectively the strategy for both parties.
Democrats also have challenges: their party is also wildly unpopular. Recent primary wins by far-left Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates that espouse anti-capitalism and pro-Hamas policies have not helped more mainstream Democratic candidates. Republicans can plausibly highlight the extremist nature of at least some of their opponents.
In fairness, some DSA nominees are now disavowing some of their more radical statements to appeal to mainstream voters. Far-left internet personality Hasan Piker has been a popular spokesperson for some groups of Democratic supporters and has said the United States deserved the 9/11 attacks of 25 years ago. Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate nominee for the Democrats in Michigan, has called Piker’s comments ‘dumb.’
In the 2006 and 2014 midterm elections, those of Bush’s and Obama’s second terms, the party out of power had dramatic wins at the ballot box and took control of both houses of Congress. That could happen again this year, but Trump and the Republicans have some advantages.
Redistricting battles in many states have reduced the Democrats’ structural advantage in the House by about 10 to 12 seats. Their relative unpopularity leaves them vulnerable to a highly negative national campaign, which Trump and the GOP have the resources to implement.
One other factor in party dynamics is their treatment of moderates. Right now, Republicans are showing more strategic tolerance for policy diversity than Democrats, and that could provide an advantage over the next few months.
Susan Collins, a Republican senator from Maine now up for reelection, is a liberal on social issues and often distances herself from the national party. Last month, she didn’t appear with Vice President JD Vance when he visited her state. Vance dismissed any party loyalty concerns and endorsed her candidacy.
Democrats, meanwhile, have been savaging their colleague Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania for his slightly conservative foreign policy views, particularly with respect to Israel. Should Democrats win a one-seat majority in the Senate in November, Fetterman is a strong candidate to switch parties and flip the majority back to Republicans.
With less than two months to go before the midterm election, the likely result is a narrow Democratic majority in the House and a still-Republican majority in the Senate. This will trigger House investigations into Trump’s various alleged scandals (Democrats will have subpoena power) but also give Trump the ability to confirm new cabinet nominees in the likely event of significant turnover.
In other words, Trump the lame duck president in 2027 will remain the focus of American politics.
About Author
