Dem
52
Ties
2
GOP
46
At the midterm convention, Donald Trump pushed hard for Republican voters to turn out in droves in November. At various times he required the crowd to join him in reciting a mass oath promising to vote, he encouraged Republicans to vote if they are registered or not, he said it is perfectly fine for Republican voters to "cheat like hell," and he said that any Republican who does not vote will "go to hell." However, his main pitch, which he repeated many times, was that he wants MAGA voters to pretend his name is on the ballot, and he wants them to turn out and vote as a personal favor to him.
Even Trump himself doesn't have confidence this will work, however. After all, he said the same stuff in 2018, and a lot of MAGA voters stayed home. And in an interview on Fox yesterday, he really made it clear he's not confident, as he struck a very different posture than the one on display at the two nights of the faux convention.
The President actually had a few choice thoughts. To start, he said that he just doesn't feel the same about this election because he's not campaigning for himself. The pretty obvious subtext here is that he just doesn't care as much about the outcome. And later, he shrugged and added that if the Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress, "It is what it is." He also promised that "I'll block all their bad stuff for 2 years... It won't be the same, but I will be a blocker."
There is a conspiracy theory, percolating in various places on the Internet, that Trump is deliberately trying to lose the midterms. We really don't believe that's true. Well, at least not on a conscious level. There may be some sort of Freudian thing going on there, maybe. After all, Freud was obsessed with daddy issues, and if there's anyone alive who has daddy issues, it's Donald Trump. (And note that we did not add Sr. or Jr. there, because the sentence is accurate either way.)
What we do believe is that Trump has begun to convince himself that it's not so bad if the Democrats do well in November. First, because even if the Republicans somehow hold on to both chambers of Congress, what exactly is he going to do with 2 more years of trifecta that he hasn't already done in the first 2 years of Trump v2.0? He got a couple of pieces of legislation through Congress, and other than that, he's ruled by executive order and by fiat.
Second, because Trump is not especially good at being for things. His strength is being against things. If the Democrats gain control of either chamber, or of both, they are going to investigate Trump and his underlings six ways to Sunday. But the tradeoff there is that Trump can blame the blue team for everything that goes wrong from Jan. 3, 2027, onward, from the price of gas, to failures in Iran, to the New York Giants not winning the Super Bowl. Much of the scapegoating will be nonsensical, but Trump's base will eat it up.
The bottom line is that Trump is currently projecting a somewhat bipolar mix of resignation and desperation. It's not a vibe likely to light a fire under the voters he needs, we think. (Z)