Listen to this article:

In November, the US will have what are called its “off year” or mid-term elections that take place in the middle of a president’s term. At stake are one third of the seats in the upper house, US Senate, and the entire lower House of Representatives, and up to 36 of 50 governorships. Many states also elect their state legislatures, and several municipal elections are also held.

The Trump Administration goes into the elections with the President’s standing in the country at a historic low. His approval rating, according to The Washington Post last week, stands at 37% – identical to what it was in April, and roughly the same rating he held when he left office in 2021. The coalition holding him up has narrowed to its hardest core. Trump is unpopular across a range of groups, including men and women of every age, education, income and racial group.

What Make America Great Again (MAGA) influence remains shows up in the internals: his approval stands at 50% among rural adults, 53% among white men without college degrees, 57% among white Catholics, and 70% among white evangelical Protestants.

What this means is that Trump goes into the mid-term elections with a deep handicap. The worst-case scenario for him is for Republicans to lose their majorities in either the Senate or the House, or both. This would effectively make him a lame-duck President. His ability to push legislation, appoint conservative judges, cabinet members and administrative officials would be blocked.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Worse, Democrats would gain the chairs of various committees and launch aggressive, sweeping investigations into the Trump Administration’s activities, executive orders and the leadership of various government agencies. Indeed, Trump’s nightmare is that he and some of his cabinet colleagues could face impeachment proceedings.

Trump’s counterattack is based on shoring up his two flanks, one abroad and one at home, and the two are more closely linked than they first appear. The first is a high-risk effort to “win” the war with Iran through a renewal of military action – a move that, if it goes badly, could hand Democrats a rallying issue but that Trump appears to be betting will instead let him claim a decisive foreign policy win before November.

The second is a set of........

© The Wire