A Rage-Driven Campaign
The Coming Midterm
Midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the incumbent president. And the result is usually negative. There is a reason why that happens.
Turnout in U.S. elections is typically highest in presidential elections. A lot of Americans vote only once every four years, for president. Turnout in the last three U.S. presidential elections (2016, 2020 and 2024), as a percentage of eligible voters, averaged 64 percent.
Then turnout usually drops off in midterm elections, to an average of 44 percent in the last three midterms (2014, 2018 and 2022).
The voters who vote for president and then drop out in a midterm are typically casual voters caught up in the excitement of a presidential campaign. They vote for the winning presidential candidate and his party. And then they disappear two years later when there is no exciting presidential contest. Casual voters don’t usually care a lot which party controls Congress.
As a result, the president’s party almost always loses seats in the House of Representatives in a midterm election. Senate losses are not quite so predictable because only one third of Senate seats are at stake, whereas the entire country votes for a Representative every two years.
But the rule of the president’s party losing House seats in a midterm election doesn’t always hold. It didn’t hold for two midterms in a row, 1998 and 2002, when the president’s party broke the pattern and gained House seats. In 1998, with Bill Clinton as president, the President’s Democratic Party enjoyed a net gain of five House seats. The ``dot com boom’’ made Clinton very popular, especially after the Republican Congress impeached him over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern.
In 2002, George W. Bush was still riding a wave of high approval after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bush’s Republican Party gained 8 House seats in the 2002 midterm.
More recently, however, the historic pattern has been sustained. Under Barack Obama, the Democrats suffered a sweeping loss of 63 House seats in the 2010 midterm. In President Donald Trump’s first midterm in 2018, Republicans lost 40 House seats.
Currently, Republicans hold a very slim majority in the House of Representatives (220 to 213). If the historic pattern holds and the Republicans lose House seats next year, Democrats may gain control of the House. That’s why President Trump has ``ordered’’ Republican-controlled states like Texas to redraw congressional district boundaries in order to carve out more Republican seats. By way of retaliation, the voters in Democratic California have authorized the state government to carve out more Democratic seats. The Supreme Court has ruled that such mid-decade redistricting is acceptable.
In the first year of his second term, President Trump has faced little opposition from the Republican Congress or from the federal courts. The principal check and balance on President Trump’s power has come from the press -- a supposedly nonpartisan institution that enjoys constitutional protection but limited institutional power.
In an 1832 case involving Indian removal, Andrew Jackson is believed to have said, ``[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.’’ The Indians were forcibly removed and sent on the ``Trail of Tears.’’ Donald Trump is an unabashed admirer of Andrew Jackson and had Jackson’s portrait restored to the Oval Office.
Rage was clearly factor on both sides in the December 2 special election to fill a vacant House seat in Tennessee’s 7th congressional district. The district was designed by Tennessee’s Republican lawmakers to be a safe Republican seat. In the 2024 regular election, the Republican candidate won by 21.5%. In the 2025 special election, the Republican won by a much closer margin (8.8%).
President Trump celebrated the result as a ``big congressional win,’’ but the narrower victory set off alarm bells in the Republican Party. The losing Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, said on election night, ``We may not have won tonight, but we changed the story of what’s possible here.’’
The Republican Party spent several million dollars including nearly $1.7 million by President Trump’s super PAC. And they brought out some big Republican names, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Trump himself by telephone. Democrats spent millions to capture the seats and brought out their own national figures to campaign for Behn – former Vice President Al Gore (formerly a senator from Tennessee), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is wildly popular with liberals. Trump called Behn ``the AOC of Tennessee,’’ hoping to discredit the Democratic candidate as a leftist.
The major figure in the race was President Trump. Republicans have a narrow majority in the House (7 seats out of 435) that President Trump depends on to pass his agenda. Republican Matt Van Epps said to the President in a November tele-rally, ``I will have your back 100 percent.’’ After his victory on election night, Van Epps said, ``Running from Trump is how you lose. Running with Trump is how you win.’’ For a Republican candidate in Tennessee, that sounds about right.
But running with Trump can also lose a lot of Democrats. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said on Fox News, ``The left will show up. Hate is a powerful motivator., They hate President Trump.’’ They certainly do. The November Gallup poll showed Trump’s job approval rating dropping to a second-term low of 36 percent. Trump’s approval from his fellow Republicans was down a few points (to 84 percent). But Trump got only 25 percent approval from Independents and a miserable 3 percent from Democrats.
Trump is the ultimate polarizing figure. He drives up turnout on both sides of the partisan divide, for him and against him. Trump specializes in identity politics, turning every race into a confrontation between ``us’’ (conservatives) and ``them’’ (liberals). He invites people to vote their identity. Every issue becomes a contest between ``one of us’’ and ``the enemy.’’
The big issue right now is ``affordability,’’ formerly known as ``cost of living’’ or ``inflation.’’ It doesn’t quite fit President Trump’s liberal versus conservative metric, so he doesn’t really know how to handle it.
President Trump’s embrace of tariffs sounds to many voters like a scheme that will raise prices. A tariff is really a national sales tax. U.S. consumers are forced to pay higher prices for imported goods (and goods with imported parts like automobiles and electronics) and the revenue goes to the federal government.
In fact, tariffs were the principal source of revenue for the federal government before the federal income tax was ratified by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913. We have a progressive income tax with higher rates for higher income Americans. Tariffs are regressive, forcing the same rates on lower-income and higher-income consumers.
President Trump doesn’t like the affordability issue because it can be used to criticize him. Many voters know that the cost of everything – housing, food, health care – has continued to go up. Especially in Trump’s native New York City, where the affordability issue helped elect a democratic socialist mayor in November. Mayor-elect Mamdani had an apparently cordial meeting with President Trump after the election. The message? Trump respects success.
Nevertheless, President Trump has continued to denounce``affordability’’ as a legitimate issue. He has called the issue a ``fake narrative’’ and a ``con job’’ perpetrated by the Democrats. He even declared that ``affordability doesn’t mean anything to anybody.’’ But then why does he call himself ``the affordability president’’?
President Trump is clearly uncomfortable with the affordability issue because it can be used against him. He is more comfortable using it against his predecessor, Joe Biden.
When Trump denies that affordability is a real issue, he sounds like Chico Marx in the Marx Brothers’ movie ``Duck Soup.’’ In the movie, the formidable Margaret Dumont says to Chico, ``I thought you left.’’
Chico responds: ``Oh no. I no leave.’’
Mrs. Dumont: ``But I saw you with my own eyes!’’
Chico: ``Well, who you gonna believe – me or your own eyes?’’