Timelines and Economic Benefits

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.

President Donald Trump is steeling Republicans for a tough midterm contest.

The president today unveiled a plan to build a massive, $15 billion steel plant in Iowa — a major job creator he cast as an example of his success in reshoring domestic manufacturing as economic anxieties snarl his party’s prospects in the midterms. The plant — the largest in U.S. history — will be built by the Minnesota-based Mesabi Metallics and support more than 6,000 construction jobs and nearly 2,000 manufacturing and mining jobs, adding $95 billion to the U.S. economy, Trump said during a news conference in the Oval Office.

...

The struggle for Trump is that the timelines of factory building — and the jobs they create — rarely align with the country’s biennial election cycle. The Iowa plant isn’t expected to begin producing steel until 2030 — during the first midterm year for Trump’s successor. Other major manufacturing announcements the White House has made, including multiple auto plants in Michigan, aren’t expected to commence production until 2027, 2028 and 2029.

Compare that to the much more reactive time frames during which two of Trump’s other top presidential priorities — heaping restrictive tariffs on countries he claims have treated the U.S. unfairly and launching an unpopular war with Iran he’s been unable to end — have rattled global markets and sent domestic prices soaring.

Craptastic Outlook for GOP

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Along with war and inflation, Trump's corruption is bringing down the GOP.  Some lawmakers are starting to act.

Marc Caputo, Hans Nichols, Alex Isenstadt at Axios:

This week,

• Trump's disapproval rating hit 60.4%, the worst mark of his two terms in office, including the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots.
• Gas prices are over $4 a gallon, diesel has hit $6.50 and no relief is in sight.
• Seven months in, the U.S. is locked in a standoff with Iran with no apparent exit strategy.
• Grocery prices are still rising year over year.
• Mortgage rates hit 7%.
• And the cost of borrowing across the economy continues to climb.

Enter the elections: The problems for the GOP are everywhere. In the battle for the Senate, once ruby-red Texas looks more in play than ever, and Florida isn't far behind. Nor is Alaska. North Carolina and Georgia look lost. Maine is problematic.The Senate GOP campaign arm is begging donors for another $8.9 million to defend Senate seats in three states that Trump won by double digits two years ago — Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.
"We're having problems just getting Republican voters to respond to polls," said one national Republican pollster. "At what point do we think these guys aren't showing up at the actual polls on Election Day?"
...

On the House side, the Cook Political Report moved 15 House races toward Democrats on Friday.Democrats need to net just three seats to win control of the chamber.
Republicans are now playing defense deep in red America. GOP-aligned groups are spending money in more than a half-dozen districts that Trump won by at least 15 points in 2024.

...
What they're saying: "While many have long predicted that Democrats will enjoy a 'blue wave' election, I think of it more as a 'red undertow,' which will pull many Republicans under and significantly trim the margins for many others, said the Cook Report's founder and top elections handicapper Charlie Cook.That's an implied reminder that Democrats' favorability ratings aren't good; they're just better than Republicans'.

"Over the last 90 days," Cook added, "President Trump's political standing has transitioned from very unpopular to toxic and now to radioactive."

Said another consultant involved with races across the country: "Things were bad. But they started to go worse recently and if it keeps on this track, it's gonna be real bad."

The environment is starting to rival the second midterm election of President George W. Bush's tenure in 2006, the consultant said, amid the Iraq war and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Republicans lost control of both chambers after losing 30 House seats and six Senate seats."The numbers are somewhere between shitabulous and craptastic," a top Republican advising several federal races across the country told Axios. "It looks worse than 2018 now. Trump is heading to Bush 2006 levels."

State of play: More and more lately, Republican incumbents are running for cover from Trump.In Iowa, two House Republicans have switched their positions to support a war powers resolution on Iran.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, who rode the 1980 Republican wave to the Senate, and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who's running for Iowa's other Senate seat, are demanding restrictions on diesel exports.

Panic Mode

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Along with war and inflation, Trump's corruption is bringing down the GOP.  Some lawmakers are starting to act.

Megan Messerly, Alex Gangitano and Myah Ward at POLITICO:

Six weeks until the midterm elections, administration officials are pulling policy levers they otherwise might not to help vulnerable Republicans in key congressional races. They’re weighing a 90-day ban on diesel exports in an effort to drive down energy prices, considering backpedaling on a plan to import foreign beef and giving candidates wiggle room to criticize a war with Iran that President Donald Trump continues to stress was necessary to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons.


Trump, never shy about attacking Republicans who disagree with him, has recently swallowed dissent so long as candidates criticize his policies and not him personally. Some campaigns are even giving the White House a heads up before staking out positions different from the president’s.

“More often times than not, a candidate or an elected official will call the White House and ask how to do it, because they are not interested in going against the president,” said one person familiar with the White House’s thinking, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

The White House’s latest posture represents a remarkable change for an administration that in its decisionmaking has often put Trump’s priorities ahead of what would be politically advantageous to Republicans in tight elections. But inside the West Wing, a new reality — informed in part by polling — has taken hold as the administration grapples with far more competitive races than had been expected only a few months ago.

The GOP's Reality Problems

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."

Gregory Schmidt at NYT:

Mounting fears that widening clashes in the Middle East could further disrupt energy supplies briefly pushed the price of oil to about $110 a barrel on Friday, while U.S. diesel prices rose above $6 a gallon.

Concerns over oil supplies, already heightened by the U.S. war against Iran, broadened this week with reports that the Houthi militia had seized a critical port on the Red Sea, presenting a new threat to shipping in the area.

The price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, surged before easing to about $103 a barrel, after the International Energy Agency lowered its forecast for global oil demand by 2.5 million barrels a day this year, from a drop of 1.6 million barrels a day it predicted last month.

“The continuing impasse in negotiations between the United States and Iran delays the prospect of a normalization of flows into next year,” it said, adding that demand for oil is expected to rebound in 2027, “narrowly offsetting this year’s losses.”

West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. standard, traded as high as $104 a barrel before falling to about $99.

But the jump in oil prices “pales in comparison with those for refined products, where market tightness is now most acute,” the I.E.A. wrote in its report.

The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel jumped to $6.06, according to the AAA motor club, a 60 percent rise since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. In response, Iran has effectively blocked most ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. During normal times, about a fifth of the world’s crude oil flows through the strait.

With assistance from the U.S. Navy, a few tankers have been able to get through, but Iran has signaled in recent days that it was willing to be more aggressive in exerting control over the strait.

Trump the Saboteur

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

In 2020, Trump's ineptitude cost the GOP control of both Georgia Senate seats, and thus control of the chamber.  He did the same in 2022.

Once again this year, Trump could directly cost the GOP control of the Senate.  

• In North Carolina, he attacked incumbent Thom Tillis, who would have been a heavy favorite for reelection.  Tillis withdrew, and Democrat Roy Cooper is likely to take the open seat.
• In Texas, John Cornyn could have cruised to victory.  Trump endorsed the crooked Ken Paxton, who could lose to Talarico.
• In Georgia, Governor Kemp could have defeated Ossoff.  But there was no way Trump would support someone who did not stand with him on election denialism.  Trump endorsed scandal-ridden Mike Collins, who will probably lose to Ossoff.

Stef Kight and Hans Nichols at Axios:

Zoom out: Trump has repeatedly forced Republicans to grapple with policies that aggravate their constituencies or collide with their own ideological convictions.His plan to import up to 300,000 metric tons of beef tariff-free for 90 days inflamed GOP lawmakers in red states. More than a dozen GOP senators publicly criticized the move, warning it would hurt American cattle ranchers.

Imposing higher tariffs on Canadian goods threatened to bring a trade war to two must-win border states: Maine and Michigan. [Not to mention Ohio and Iowa, too!] 

And his call Monday to target Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier could have outsized economic implications in Kansas, a red state with an increasingly competitive Senate race. Trump ally Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) was forced to break with Trump over the call to boycott. Bombardier is a key employer in Kansas.

Republicans are taking an à la carte approach to data centers, which have suddenly become a political liability. Candidates in both parties have been scrambling to distance themselves from the industry.But Trump isn't brooking any nuance on the issue, calling communities that oppose data centers "backwards and poor." He doubled down four days later.

...

Trump is also restarting hostilities with Iran, dashing any GOP hopes that gas prices will drop before November.

People around Trump know he's self-destructive.  They don't even bother to push back anymore.  Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei at Axios:

For nearly a decade, Republicans acquiesced to nearly every Trump demand and idea — and rationalized it by saying his instincts proved smarter than theirs. Now, many no longer trust those instincts. But they find it just as futile to push back against virtually anything he wants.

• Start a war without an endgame? OK.
• Post a cartoon of you — wielding a hockey stick and sporting a Trump-branded USA jersey — towering over Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, sprawled on the ice, and telling him to "GET UP"? On it.
• Toss together an egocentric, first-ever Republican midterm convention that many endangered candidates don't want? Sounds like a good plan, boss! (Gavels in today in Dallas at 4 p.m. ET, in fact.)
• Oh, you want to speak both nights? Done!
• Make ads featuring you when your popularity is near its all-time low? You came to the right place, sir.
• Make the midterms a referendum on you? Check.
• Spend precious time obsessing about ballroom construction, and gilding and marbleizing the White House? You are the new Caesar Augustus.

 

Is Trump a Secret Asset of the DSCC?

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Jonathan Martin at POLITICO:

As the traditional start of the campaign season draws near, though, Republicans are increasingly worried they may be consumed by a worsening prairie fire.

“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told me. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”

The triple-whammy of tariffs, expensive diesel and fertilizer and now imported beef has created a crisis for agriculture-state Republicans.

...

The culprits are obvious: the exorbitant cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the political center and the massive enthusiasm gap Democrats enjoy over Republicans.

The fear, GOP officials tell me, is that these sentiments are increasingly becoming locked in with voters; that the grim political environment — caused by spiking gas prices after the ceasefire with Iran collapsed last month — is close to irreversible. Or to borrow from Haley Barbour, that sage of Mississippi: In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse.

For months, the shorthand conversation among political professionals has not been if this will be a difficult election for Republicans but whether it will be 2018 or 2006.

Which is to say: Will 2026 bring a backlash against the party in power, but one largely confined to House losses because of polarization, limiting Democratic strength in Senate races? Or will there be a greater wave that grows high enough to sweep out Republicans thought to be safe, flipping both chambers of Congress in the process?

Once Iran hostilities restarted and it became clear that there would be no Supreme Court vacancy, as there crucially was in 2018, the answer became clear. Republicans would not be able to get off defense and lacked the court fight that would hand them their best opportunity to go on offense.

 WSJ editorial: 

The November midterm elections will be in part a referendum on President Trump’s border taxes, and most polls show them losing. A new poll by Overton Insights and the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds that tariffs are unpopular in the Lone Star State, especially among Hispanics. Houston, Republicans have a tariff problem.

The survey, which was shared with us exclusively and will be released next Wednesday, shows that Texans overall disapprove of his tariffs, 54% to 46%. Texans who didn’t vote in a party primary—generally independents and folks who are less partisan—disapproved of them, 68% to 32%. Hispanics gave them the thumbs down, 69% to 31%.


The latter is especially notable because Mr. Trump won 55% of the state’s Hispanic vote in 2024, no doubt in part owing to frustration with Democrats’ handling of inflation. But Hispanics also strongly oppose the President’s blunderbuss border taxes targeting trade partners like Mexico and Canada, which raise costs for consumers and businesses.

The Texas economy is heavily exposed to tariffs because of its cross-border trade and integrated supply chains with Mexico. Texas traded $303 billion in goods with Mexico and overall exported $299 billion of manufactured products in 2025. The latter include electronics and computers ($71 billion), chemicals ($55 billion) and transportation equipment ($29 billion).

Because Texas is the largest state exporter of goods, it suffers a bigger brunt from retaliatory tariffs, such as those that Canada plans to levy on the U.S. in response to Mr. Trump’s tariff escalation. In case he hasn’t noticed, the tariffs have become an albatross for Republicans in close races across the country, including Texas.

All About Trump

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez, Michael Scherer, and Ashley Parker at  The Atlantic:

President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections.

Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are pissed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues.

But Trump himself has rejected that approach. House and Senate Democrats, the president noted during the meeting, will make their fall campaigns a referendum on him. His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments—the dozens of new stock-market highs, a decline in fentanyl deaths, the “sealed” southern border, the increase in domestic-manufacturing production.

The solution Trump settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests. Trump wanted what one person described to us as “environmental lift” ads—commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories—and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to this person. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

Lotsa luck with that.  Jason Lange at Reuters:

• Support for US military action against Iran falls to 31%, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows
• Trump job approval stays at 33% for second straight survey, matching record low
• Poll finds 83% of Americans expect war to continue for ​an extended period

 

Iran Quagmire: Predictable and Predicted

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Alexander Ward, Lara Seligman, and  Alex Leary at WSJ report that Trump summoned then-DNI Gabbard to brief him on how the Iran War would go.

Then-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard outlined assessments from America’s intelligence apparatus. According to people familiar with the meeting, she told Trump that killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely usher in a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons. Tehran would rush to close the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the global energy market. And it would strike U.S. forces and partners in the Middle East, prompting questions about American resolve and reliability with allies.

The notes of caution echoed warnings Trump was receiving from all corners. Top military leaders told the president that a war would lead to casualties, concerns about the weapons stockpile and readiness problems for an overstretched force, The Wall Street Journal reported.

...
Now Trump is relying on sanctions and a perpetual blockade wearing down U.S. forces to crush Iran’s economy, a wait-and-see strategy he argues will send the regime crawling to his feet.

An estimated 3,000 Iranians and 18 U.S. servicemembers have died related to combat operations, and the Pentagon says an additional 756 American troops have been wounded. The war also has damaged U.S. bases, drained oil reserves and shrunk munitions stockpiles. The conflict is weighing down Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections and sinking Trump’s poll numbers to the lowest of his presidency.

...

“This was all predictable and predicted,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative who worked in Democratic and Republican administrations. “You can draw a straight line from the fact that the war was launched without any clear political objective to the mishandled diplomacy in trying to end it.”

Quagmire

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Trump's war drove gas prices up.  Now Vance says that the war's purpose is to lower gas prices.  Incoherent.

Cleve R. Wootson Jr. and Rachel Chason at WP

Sixty days ago, seated beside French President Emmanuel Macron at a lavish dinner at the Palace of Versailles, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran and declared the beginning of the end of the U.S. conflict with Tehran.

The “historic breakthrough” would lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and ensure Iran never obtained a nuclear weapon, the White House declared. Trump advisers said the deal would demonstrate that the president could end, rather than prolong, the kind of “endless wars” in the Middle East he had spent years denouncing.

The agreement set aside two months for talks to turn the interim truce into something more ambitious: a broader settlement of the decades-long standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.

That window has now closed.

The war has not ended. The Strait of Hormuz remains largely shut. Detailed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program never began.

The United States has resumed its blockade of Iranian ports. Tehran is demanding concessions that the Trump administration has rejected. And the administration has now publicly disowned several of the key points in the ill-fated memorandum, including development of a plan “with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and development” of Iran, a waiver of sanctions to allow Iran to sell oil, and a “dialogue” between Iran and Oman over how to run the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump on Monday went so far as to threaten to bomb Oman over its talks with Iran on management of the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil used to pass.

Incoherent Message on Iran and Energy

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Trump's war drove gas prices up.  Now Vance says that the war's purpose is to lower gas prices.  Incoherent.

Alexander Smith at NBC:

Keeping gas prices low is now the United States’ “goal No. 1” in the Iran war, Vice President JD Vance has said, as Washington threatened an indefinite naval blockade and signaled it would soon intensify economic pressure on Tehran.

The comments appeared to be the latest shift in the public rationale for the conflict, with Vance ranking Iran’s nuclear ambitions second.

The vice president’s remarks came as the Trump administration embraced a long-term effort to inflict more damage on the Islamic Republic, despite growing signs of strain on American forces and domestic pressure ahead of the midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has suggested a shift away from military force in favor of “low-keying it” with economic pressure. That followed a deadly cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges that produced no clear resolution and depleted U.S. reserves of missile interceptors

Gas prices are down from their May peak, but still up 25% from one year ago.

They will remain elevated as long as oil supply is blocked in the Strait of Hormuz. pic.twitter.com/XOzs8hhD94

— Steve Rattner (@SteveRattner) August 12, 2026

The GOP's Trump Albatross

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Aaron Blake at CNN:

In an interview released Friday, Trump denied not caring about the GOP’s fortunes in the midterms. But he didn’t actually dispel the idea that he’s not terribly interested in being a team player and doing the things his party needs.

In the interview with Punchbowl News, taped on Thursday, Jake Sherman asked Trump about the narrative that he doesn’t really care about Congress and holding the GOP’s majorities in 2026.

“It’s not right,” Trump said, adding: “We’re gonna fight hard,” and, “it’s very important to the country that we win.”

But then he said a bunch of other stuff.

The president suggested that he’s doing Republicans a favor both by potentially spending some of his war chest on them — “I could spend it on pretty much anything I want,” Trump said — and by taking time out to occasionally take his message on the road.

“I didn’t have to be away in Nevada yesterday, I didn’t have to be in Los Angeles yesterday making speeches,” Trump said. “I didn’t have to be supporting all the people. I have a busy schedule.”

Trump added that he recently told someone that he had already won his own campaign, so “I’m not campaigning.”

Then came the comment that should really make Republicans pull their hair out: that their problems are of their own making, not his.

“The question is, will [people] vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” Trump said, adding: “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”

This is, to put it lightly, not accurate.

Trump has dragged the country into an unpopular war with unpopular economic consequences.  Iran will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.   

Patrick Wintour at The Guardian:

Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.

For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.

While Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic revolution have never trusted the US, that animus is now also directed personally towards Trump. He not only tore up the painfully negotiated nuclear deal in 2018, but he sanctioned the assassination of the military leader Qassem Suleimani and twice involved Iran in negotiations on its nuclear programme only to launch wars against it. He shows no remorse for the killing of the country’s supreme leader, or for the attempt on the life of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Alexander Ward at WSJ:

For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.

But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.

This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.

“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”

 

Why This President Owns This Economy

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Economist Justin Wolfers:

For nine out of the last 10 presidencies, if you’d said, “How much should we blame the president for what’s going on with the economy right now?” I would have said that the president is just one factor among many.

That’s what I would have said nine out of 10 times. This is the 10th time.

There’s literally no question about the cause of the current oil price spike. It is that we decided to go to war in Iran on an open-ended, ill-defined mission, and we’re not quite sure what to do. The Iranians took over the Strait of Hormuz, and now the global economy is substantially fractured and global energy markets are in disarray. There’s no question about what caused that. We know that because we actually saw things get a little bit better in June during the ceasefire, but those happy days are behind us.

There’s also no question that tariffs are a complete own goal. They’ve led to higher prices paid by Americans. And that, I think, explains why, if you look at the United States compared to our peers in the G7—think of these as other economies that are kind of like, if the U.S. economy had mates, this is who they’d be—comparable large industrialized economies, the United States right now has higher inflation than any of them. We’re number one, but it’s not one of those good number ones.

And let me just add: it really does hurt my heart because we know how not to screw things up. Any economics textbook, anyone who’s taken introductory economics, would know that there are large economic costs to going to war. They would know that starting a global trade war in a chaotic and incoherent fashion is all downside and no upside.

GOP Gas Pains

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

 Jessie Blaeser at POLITICO:

Voters’ anxieties about fuel prices could give Democrats a boost ahead of the midterms, further strengthening the Democratic voting base and putting strains on the MAGA coalition as the increasingly unpopular war in Iran drags on. A plurality of Americans — 46 percent — say the change in gas prices will impact how they plan to vote come November.

Most voters overestimated the change in gas prices in their area, according to the analysis of polling and granular pricing data provided by OPIS, a Dow Jones company that tracks gas prices. That includes majorities of voters who supported President Donald Trump and also those who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Roughly one in four Americans say gas in their local area has risen by $3.00 or more. But no zip code has actually seen that degree of change on average in the year and a half since Trump took office, as of early July.

...

What’s more, American’s perceptions do not quickly change even when prices do. The POLITICO Poll asked about gas prices in both May, when they were near their peak, and July, when they had dipped.

The results were the same in both.

...
Roughly 63 percent of Americans selected “the war with Iran” as the primary reason why gas prices have increased since Trump took office, including 59 percent of Trump voters and 70 percent of Harris voters.

Trump Making Things Worse for Republicans

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

An Ipsos/WP poll shows Democrats with only a slight lead in the congressional generic ballot. But other polls and the fundamentals of the election suggest a blowout.

 Sarah Jones & Jason Easley at The Daily:

The Republicans were hoping that the Iran war would end, inflation and prices would drop, and voters would put the pitchforks and torches down and go back to being just angry.

Those hopes have been shattered as the Iran peace process fell apart. The war is back on. Oil is at $100 a barrel. Trump has resumed his tariff obsession, and things went back to being the darkest timeline for Republicans.

The new Emerson College Poll was the stuff of Democratic dreams and Republican nightmares.

According to the Emerson Poll:

A new Emerson College Polling survey of likely 2026 voters finds the Democrats with an 11-point advantage over the Republicans on the generic congressional ballot, leading 53% to 42%. President Trump holds a 39% job approval rating, consistent with the past two months, whereas his disapproval increased another point, to 57%.

“Driving the Democrats’ significant lead on the ballot are women voters, who break for the Democratic candidate by a 27-point margin, 56% to 39%, while men are more split: 49% support the Democrat and 44%

Voter Motivation 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Gregory S. Schneider and Scott Clement at WP:

Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans in the congressional midterm elections by only a slim margin, but Democratic supporters are far more motivated to vote, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll.

Because of partisan redistricting that favors Republicans this year, analysts estimate that Democrats need to win by three to four percentage points overall to gain a majority in the House. The poll shows Democrats leading Republicans by about that margin, 48 percent to 45 percent.

The blue advantage grows to eight points among those “absolutely certain to vote,” with 53 percent of highly motivated voters supporting Democrats and 45 percent supporting Republicans.

Republicans are not losing by a wide margin among the broader electorate despite President Donald Trump’s deep unpopularity and broad concerns about the economy, the war with Iran and immigration issues.

But their supporters just aren’t as energized to turn up at the polls, the Post-Ipsos poll suggests. If Trump is able to mitigate some top concerns by Election Day — for example, by bringing down the price of gasoline or ending the war with Iran — then his push to draw new congressional districts in red states could be enough to retain the GOP majority in the House.

But the latest news suggests that the GOP's best-case scenario is increasingly unlikely. 

 

War, Oil, and the Economy: Ominous News

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Aaron BoxermanYan Zhuang and Hari Raj at NYT:

U.S. and Iranian forces edged closer to wider war over the weekend after the killing of two American service members in Jordan during an Iranian missile barrage.

They were the first U.S. soldiers killed by hostile fire since a truce with Iran unraveled in recent weeks, bringing the death toll to 16 among U.S. military personnel since the war began in February. Another service member is still missing after Iran on Friday bombarded a military base in Jordan where U.S. forces were stationed.

The deaths of the soldiers capped a week of spiraling attacks that chipped away at what remained of the deal that President Trump agreed to with Iran last month and that was supposed to end the war. Sensitive infrastructure targets like bridges and water facilities have come under fire in Iran and in U.S.-allied countries on the other side of the Persian Gulf

Even as the United States and Iran expanded the scope and intensity of the attacks in the region, there was little sign that diplomatic efforts to end the fighting were gaining traction.

The U.S. military said early on Sunday that it had struck Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps forces responsible for striking U.S. forces in Jordan.

On Sunday, Iran launched strikes on Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, all Middle East countries where the United States maintains a significant military presence. In recent days, critical infrastructure has increasingly come under fire; the Kuwaiti government said on Saturday that an oil facility, as well as a power and water treatment plant, had been attacked.

In an unusual worldwide warning, the State Department said Sunday that Americans traveling abroad should exercise heightened vigilance as tensions in the Middle East had created the “potential for unforeseen escalation.”

Here’s a montage of Trump saying over the past five months that the war with Iran is about to end and that the Iranians want to make a deal “so badly.” https://t.co/dM82kx29yJ pic.twitter.com/NZL0YhNfxb

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) July 18, 2026

Mike Zapler at Axios:

Just when Republicans thought they'd caught a break on gas prices, the collapse of President Trump's Iran deal is derailing their best chance to change the inflation story before the midterms.

Why it matters: Falling gas prices are one of the most tangible ways to ease voter anger over inflation. Renewed combat — and the threat of escalation — has prices shooting back up.

The big picture: Trump has said repeatedly that gas prices will "drop like a rock" when the war is over. But the war doesn't look like it's ending anytime soon.When the U.S. first launched attacks on Feb. 28, average gas prices nationally were $2.98 a gallon, per AAA. They eclipsed $4.50 in May, gradually dropped to about $3.75 earlier this month, and are now flirting with the $4 mark since combat broke out again.

Zoom in: Surprisingly, Americans typically don't punish politicians for their own economic suffering; instead, they tend to look at how government policies are affecting the country overall.But gas prices are a different story, says Stanford's Jon Krosnick, who's studied how they affect politics.

"It's hard to think about any other economic indicator where the number is literally posted on signs on the streets where everybody's traveling," he told Axios.

The Economy Will be a Problem for the GOP

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

At WP, Dan Balz and Scott Clement report that Trump's approval rating is stuck at 37%.

Assessments of Trump’s handling of the economy and Iran are worse than his overall ratings, with 33 percent of Americans saying they approve of his economic stewardship and 29 percent approving of his conduct in overseeing the war with Iran. Immigration is a relative strength, with 40 percent approving. That is unchanged from a low point in February but significantly lower than at the beginning of his current term, when 50 percent approved of his immigration actions.

...

Most Americans now doubt their living standards will improve. Asked whether they and their families will “have a good chance of improving your standard of living,” 40 percent said yes and 59 percent said no. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, 65 percent responded positively to a similar question in the long-running General Social Survey.

A new high of 43 percent say they are “not as well off” as when Trump returned to office, a 12-point increase since February and on par with views toward the Biden administration. In 2018, only 13 percent said they were worse off than when Trump began his first term.

Two-thirds of Americans say groceries are unaffordable (66 percent), up from 45 percent before the war began in February. Inflation data doesn’t show a sharp increase in grocery prices, but this might reflect the broader impact of months of higher prices for gas and other items.

A year ago, the Republican-controlled Congress passed, and Trump signed, what they then called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The measure extended tax cuts approved during Trump’s first term and included a variety of other tax and spending measures. Republicans have since begun calling the bill the “working families tax cut,” hoping that rebranding will reshape public opinion about the bill.

The strategy is not working, with 19 percent saying they paid less in taxes due to the measure while 25 percent think they paid more in taxes, according to the Post-Ipsos survey. Another 25 percent say they see no difference, and 30 percent say they are unsure what impact the bill had on their taxes. Even among Republicans, about as many say they saw their taxes increase or did not change as said they paid less in taxes.

David Goldman at CNN:

The largest-ever global oil supply shortage has topped economists’ lists of concerns since the start of the Iran war. But even as the United States and Iran resumed their blockades of the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil surging above $80 a barrel the economy faces a new problem.

Gasoline. That is, the world’s ability to make it.

The hundreds of millions of barrels of oil that exited the Persian Gulf and hit the market over the past few weeks helped add cushion to the world’s supply of oil — but they aren’t good for much of anything on their own. Oil needs to be refined into products and fuels people can use, including asphalt, plastic, heating oil, jet fuel, diesel and gasoline.

But the world’s refining capacity is deeply constrained. That’s in part because the supply chain got messed up during the war. It’s also because Iran attacked dozens of Middle Eastern refineries. And, more recently, Ukraine started blowing up Russian energy facilities.

Layer on extreme temperatures disrupting the cool conditions refineries need for proper distillation, and you’ve got yourself a big problem. Global refineries are processing 8.4 million fewer barrels of crude each day than they were before the war started — making 10% less fuel, according to Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodities research at JPMorgan.

Lisa Friedman and Rebecca F. Elliott at NYT

President Trump’s first naval blockade on Iranian ports in April caused oil prices to rise, but not to the stratospheric levels some feared. And Tehran’s oil exports plunged, depriving Iran of billions in revenue.

The strategy may be harder to pull off a second time without inflicting broader collateral damage to markets.

U.S. oil reserves, which have been steadily drawn down since the start of the war to help combat global shortages, are now at their lowest levels since 1983. Commercial inventories also have been run down. And other oil-producing countries in the region may have a harder time getting their ships out because of the heightened risks.

Another wild card is China. Usually the world’s largest oil importer, China has been helping to keep oil prices at bay by significantly decreasing imports of crude. New data on Tuesday showed that pattern held at least through June. But China might not continue on that path.

Trump v. Republicans in Congress

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional,  state, and local elections.

Trump is acting without regard for the political needs of Republicans in Congress.  An unpopular war is just part of it. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen at Axios:

• The big picture: Trump has spent his second term steamrolling his own party, confident the lawmakers he humiliates will keep voting his way. You see it everywhere:He canceled the signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill just hours before the ceremony — trying to strong-arm the Senate into passing the SAVE America Act, a sweeping voter ID bill with no realistic path to 60 (or even 50) votes.
• He dismissed the housing bill — which his own White House had called "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history" — as "of minor importance."
• He berated the "Four Republican Losers" in the Senate who voted this week to rein in his Iran war powers, calling the rebuke "poorly timed and meaningless." (Hours after his barrage, Republicans passed a symbolic reversal.)
• He blew up a bipartisan scramble aimed at renewing the government's FISA surveillance powers, demanding the SAVE Act on voting rules be bolted on. He let the authority lapse rather than back down.
• He yanked his own intelligence nominee, Jay Clayton, from a confirmation hearing hours before it began, leaving the nation's spy agencies under an acting director both parties distrust.
• He refused to brief Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other senators on his Iran deal until after the text was finally released, leaving them to defend terms they hadn't seen.
• He blindsided senators by proposing a $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund just as they moved a $70 billion immigration package, defending Jan. 6 rioters who attacked the building where the senators work.

The Politics of the US Surrender

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. 

War and economic woes will hurt the GOP in November.  The only question is how much.

Niall Stanage at The Hill:

President Trump tried to make the case for his interim peace deal with Iran on Wednesday, but a lengthy news conference only revealed that no last-minute rabbits would be pulled from the hat to assuage his critics.

Trump’s comments, delivered as he prepared to leave a Group of Seven (G7) summit in France, also exposed just how far the U.S. has shifted from its original war aims as the president avidly seeks to bring the conflict to a close.

An especially startling example came when Trump defended Iran’s right to maintain ballistic missiles — despite the fact that a prior U.S. and Israeli objective had been the destruction of this capacity.

“They have to have some because other people have some. You’ve got to have some,” Trump mused, referring to Iran’s position in relation to other Persian Gulf nations.

The president added that when unnamed advisers told him he needed to wholly eliminate the Iranian conventional arsenal, “I said, ‘Well, what am I going to do? Am I going to let Saudi Arabia have missiles but they can’t have them?’”

Trump cast his push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz as critical for American prosperity. He raised the specter of “economic catastrophe” in the absence of a deal and said he had no desire to end up analogous to former President Herbert Hoover, who is widely blamed for exacerbating the Great Depression.

On the central issue of Iran’s stock of enriched nuclear material, Trump waved away concerns, saying that while the U.S. has “the equipment to get it” and that it would be “psychologically” satisfying to do so, “it’s actually not valuable. Not a lot of value.”

Trump further confirmed that the interim memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreed between American and Iranian negotiators calls for a fund of $300 billion to be set up to help with the cost of Iranian reconstruction. While this would not be directly bankrolled by the U.S., Washington would be involved in the planning and facilitation of the fund, and it appears its Persian Gulf allies would be expected to contribute.

At roughly the same time as Trump was speaking, a senior administration official was on a media call reading the full text of the MOU to reporters. The agreement is expected to be signed in Switzerland on Friday.

The text confirmed by the official shows that the MOU provides for the reopening of the crucial strait by both sides, allows Iran to immediately resume crude oil exports, and includes a provision for the U.S. to unfreeze Iranian assets so long as the deal is implemented.

In return, Iran pledges that it will not “procure or develop” nuclear weapons. Trump is presenting this as a major victory but it in fact merely echoes a promise Iran has made numerous times in the past — including in the deal arrived at during former President Obama’s tenure, known as the JCPOA, which the current president excoriates.

The MOU does say that Iran’s existing stock of highly enriched uranium will, at the least, be subject to dilution on-site under the eyes of the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the relevant paragraph is vague and also notes that a final resolution on “the issue of enrichment” will be punted to a final deal. Skeptics worry this allows Tehran a capacious amount of wiggle room.

Critics on the left and right alike are asking why the war was fought in the first place, if this is to be the shape of its resolution.

The angst is especially sharp among conservative hawks. The staunchly pro-Israel commentator Ben Shapiro called the deal a “disaster” during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday. Another prominent conservative commentator, Erick Erickson, wrote on social media that the accord was “an American surrender.”

It isn’t just the pundit class who are outraged.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost a primary fight last month after Trump backed one of his opponents, blasted what he called “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”

Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during part of Trump’s first term but went on to run against him in the 2024 presidential primary, wrote on social media that the Iranians will use any funds received to “further their nuclear ambitions and on terrorist proxies against us.”

Haley added, “It’s a huge mistake to pay to rebuild the threat we just destroyed.”

Dana Blanton at Fox:

Voters doubt a peace deal will keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to the latest Fox News poll.

Sixty-four percent say it’s unlikely a peace agreement with the U.S. will stop Iran from pursuing nukes, including more than half of Republicans (53%), independents (69%), and Democrats (73%). Today’s views match those in 2015, when the Obama administration made a deal with Iran, as 63% of voters at that time also said it was unlikely an agreement would stop Iran from building a nuclear program.