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.
Mr. Trump’s diminished standing, as well as voter anger about high prices brought on by tariffs and the war with Iran, is causing serious problems for Republicans across the map. And economic trends appear to be going the wrong way for the party.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday, which will drive up the cost of borrowing at a time many voters are already paying high rates for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debts. Mr. Trump has said not to expect gas price relief before the midterms, with the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves at a 44-year low.
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A national poll released this week by The New York Times and Siena University found that Democrats entered the fall with an advantage of nearly nine percentage points over Republicans on the congressional ballot — an edge similar to 2018, the last time there was a so-called blue wave....The rising price of diesel is hitting farm states especially hard, and Republicans like Mr. Marshall are rushing to show that they are trying to do something about it. This week, he wrote a public letter to the agriculture secretary urging the Trump administration to provide relief for farmers.
Evan Halper, Rachel Chason and Joyce Sohyun Lee at WP:
Because of the shortage of crude oil and the damage the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have inflicted on refineries that turn it into diesel and gasoline, market analysts are warning that fresh price shocks are about to hit motorists.
Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser for Gulf Oil, predicted on X that Wednesday would “see staggering increases at the pump for both gasoline & diesel.”
“Fuel margins have yet to catch up with previous wholesale hikes,” he wrote. “Watch for huge increases in Great Lakes and Rocky Mountain states in particular.”
“Buckle up,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the price-tracking platform GasBuddy, wrote Wednesday morning. “Gas and diesel look set for a spike over the next 48 hours, hardest in parts of the nation’s interior.”
Gas prices are also shooting up particularly fast in the political battleground states of the Midwest, where rising crude prices have been compounded by a power outage at the ExxonMobil Joliet refinery near Chicago, which typically produces 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel per day and is a crucial supplier for the region.
By early afternoon Wednesday, according to De Haan’s tracking of real-time data, the price for a gallon of regular had jumped by 30 cents from the day before in Lawrence County, Ohio, and Edwardsburg, Michigan. It was up 28 cents in Des Moines and 26 cents in Belmont County, Ohio.
