Logically, the first option any governing political party should pursue to maintain its hold on power is to do a good job, specifically on issues the public — not just the party base but swing voters — cares about most. By that standard, Donald Trump and the GOP aren’t doing a particularly good job given his poor and ever-eroding job-approval ratings during the 15 months of his second term in office.

What makes the GOP’s record worse is that the president, who dominates his party like no other chief executive ever, has really struggled to identify policy priorities that are within shouting distance of what a majority of voters appear to want. In returning Trump to office, voters made it clear that they’re longing for significantly lower living costs, a stable economy, and stronger border control. Instead, they’re getting rising energy and grocery prices, huge and destabilizing tariffs, a violent mass-deportation initiative, an unwanted and aimless war, and a crusade to make voting harder, to mention just a few of the president’s recent preoccupations. Trump is so far off the obvious path to improved popularity that returning there between now and the midterm elections in November may be impossible.

So now the White House is turning to plan B. The midterm message Team Trump is settling upon, according to CNN, will be music to the president’s ears since it’s based on conflict, lies, and relentless pandering to his base:

Top Trump advisers are plotting an electoral push centered on messaging the midterms as a stark choice between the two parties’ platforms, rather than a direct referendum on the success of Trump’s presidency, according to four people involved in the private planning. …The strategy is driven by internal polling showing that Republicans still hold a trust advantage over the Democratic Party on some key issues, even as Americans have soured on Trump and his performance overall.The Trump team’s plans seem to tacitly acknowledge that the president has lost significant ground with voters over the last year, and that more energy needs to be put toward attacking Democrats as a result. Trump’s diminished approval ratings were not the subject of any extensive discussion during the Waldorf meeting, people in the room said.

Top Trump advisers are plotting an electoral push centered on messaging the midterms as a stark choice between the two parties’ platforms, rather than a direct referendum on the success of Trump’s presidency, according to four people involved in the private planning. …

The strategy is driven by internal polling showing that Republicans still hold a trust advantage over the Democratic Party on some key issues, even as Americans have soured on Trump and his performance overall.

The Trump team’s plans seem to tacitly acknowledge that the president has lost significant ground with voters over the last year, and that more energy needs to be put toward attacking Democrats as a result. Trump’s diminished approval ratings were not the subject of any extensive discussion during the Waldorf meeting, people in the room said.

To put this more directly, Republicans are going to try to convert the midterms from a “referendum” to a “choice” election by demonizing Democrats.

This is hardly an original idea: Unpopular administrations always try to shift attention to the opposition. It has occasionally worked in the past, at least partially. But it’s doubtful the conditions exist for it to work in 2026.

To be very clear, the president’s party almost always loses ground (at least in House races and usually others) in midterms, even if it has some sort of long-term advantage over the opposing party. There have been exactly two midterms since World War II when the president’s party gained House seats: in back-to-back midterms in 1998 and 2002. In both cases, the president in question (Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002) had unusually high job-approval ratings. In 1998, Republicans were overextended in the wake of their 1994 landslide and made themselves especially unpopular by planning to impeach Clinton over a sex scandal. In 2002, Americans were still transfixed by the September 11 attacks, making them tend to cling to the incumbent president, whose party also had a long-standing advantage on national security issues.

There’s little reason to imagine Trump will be an exception to that rule (aside from the fact that his party lost 40 House seats in his first-term midterms in 2018 when his job-approval ratings were about where they are today). One reason for midterm losses by the president’s party is a natural tendency by a slice of the electorate to seek a counterbalancing force to presidential power. No president, not even Lyndon B. Johnson or Richard Nixon, has sought, exercised, and gloried in presidential power quite like Trump. His party controls Congress and hasn’t even tried to share power (and thus responsibility) with the opposition. Given today’s chronically sour public attitudes toward government, it’s a really bad time to be in charge.

Another way presidential parties in the past have at least mitigated midterm congressional losses is by stressing local issues and the value of incumbency. Straight-ticket party voting based on national issues is now at an all-time high, and incumbency is as much a handicap as an advantage.

Still another way to deflect voter backlash against the party in power is to identify and attack exercises of residual power by the opposition party. A classic example occurred in 2022 when a U.S. Supreme Court majority crafted by Donald Trump during his presidency abruptly abolished the constitutional right to an abortion. This became a powerful issue benefiting Democrats in the 2022 midterms, when they lost just nine net House seats and actually gained one net Senate seat. On other occasions, shared power can lead to shared voter disdain: The aforementioned Democratic gains in 1998 occurred when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. The shoe is clearly on the elephant’s foot in 2026.

What makes the “choice election” strategy especially tempting to Team Trump is that savaging the radical-left opposition as a gang of woke criminal-coddling traitors could in theory drive up Republican turnout by making the midterms a holy war while eroding swing-voter support for Democrats or at least dampening their turnout. But the historical record is clear: Refocusing midterm voters on the party out of power rarely works, and when it does, there are unusual reasons for it working. Trump himself is undoubtedly focused on every single thing that happened in the Biden presidency that offended or threatened him. Voters generally are not.

Does that mean residual public concerns about Democrats are worthless to Trump and the GOP? No, not at all. They’d be wise, however, to save their attack lines for 2028. Presidential contests truly are “comparative”; in these elections, swing voters tend to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of both parties rather than lashing out at the people currently running the country. That’s cold comfort to Trump, of course, since he won’t be on the ballot in 2028 and in any event has never been able to contain his rage at the opposition for two minutes, much less for more than two years. Needless to say, a midterm election characterized by even more partisan polarization than we’ve experienced before will be bad for the country. But if dragging both parties and the country’s political discourse to the very pit of hell is Trump’s idea of an election strategy, that’s where we’re going.

The GOP’s Dilemma: Pass ICE Funding Now or Make Bill Even Worse

Mamdani Has Mightily Pissed Off One of NYC’s Richest People

Trump’s Average Job Approval Hits New Second-Term Low

Sign Up for the Intelligencer Newsletter

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us.

© Daily Intelligencer