Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. In 2024, the book explains, the Democrats' problems involved reality, not just messaging. Two years later, Republicans own the reality problems, including the Iran quagmire and the resulting economic pain. Those problems will affect the midterm far more than the GOP midterm "convention."
Shane Goldmacher, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June at NYT:
Shane Goldmacher, Ruth Igielnik and Sophia June at NYT:
With fewer than 50 days until the midterms, Democrats have developed a clear advantage over Republicans as the president has lost the public’s trust on the economy, according to a new national poll from The New York Times and Siena University.
President Trump’s lingering unpopularity and intense frustration over his management of cost-of-living issues, in particular, have deepened Republican vulnerabilities as Democrats push to win control of both the House and Senate.
Likely voters favored Democratic candidates over Republicans by close to 9 percentage points in their congressional district — a metric that is closely watched by both parties as a leading indicator of political momentum.
Mr. Trump’s approval rating continued to languish at 38 percent among likely voters, essentially unchanged from the lows it sank to after he went to war with Iran. A majority of voters disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of every major issue included in the poll: the economy, immigration, tariffs, the war and, especially, the cost of living.
And voters said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans on not just health care and foreign wars but also on the two issues that powered Mr. Trump’s 2024 victory: immigration and the economy.
American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here.
Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate.
“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron CVX 1.88%increase; green up pointing triangle Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.”
