If you read some media accounts these days, you learn about promising splits in the Republican Party that augur ill for President Trump and the GOP heading into next year’s crucial midterm elections.
These seem augmented by a series of special election defeats that make the Republicans’ slim congressional majorities German-razor blade thin. The president’s job approval polling is underwater, as it always is.
If you read some other media these days, you see ominous splits in the leaderless Democrat Party that has yet to reckon with or atone for its deceitful Biden scandal. It has been so mentally constipated by ensconced aged members who enjoy the power and perqs — they wouldn’t recognize a new idea if their great-grandchildren handed them one for Christmas.
On top of this are some quiet demographic political changes underway across the country that threaten to upend the usual voting patterns that have made midterm results big trouble for the party of the White House’s resident president.
Somehow, as my RedState colleague Jennifer Oliver O'Connell posts, the same media manage to miss coverage of the ceremonies for angel families who've lost loved ones to violence by illegal aliens who never should have been admitted to the country.
This makes for dismay and widespread political uncertainty and unease as Americans wrestle with the festering financial impacts of prices inflated by the wild spending that Democrat progressives convinced a doddering Joe Biden to run through his autopen machine.
Those five trillion newly-printed dollars ignited nine percent annual inflation, the worst since the closing months of Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980, who, like Biden, wanted a second term but didn’t get it.
With Biden now off watching a ghostwriter concoct a memoir about his heroism that is supposed to be nonfiction, inflation is back down closer to the more normal three percent level. But with the welcome exceptions of some important items like gasoline and eggs, you may have noticed the Biden-era inflated prices have not fallen that much.
Media would like us to believe that is all the fault of the current president, who can do some things to affect an economy, but one of them is not control it.
Trump would like everyone to believe he’s doing his best. He has, for instance, negotiated significantly reduced drug prices and removed many of his predecessor’s intentional hurdles to boosting fossil fuel production.
The average gallon price of gas began rising as soon as Biden took office, reaching a peak in his second year of $5.03. The average price of gas for a majority of the country is now a nickel under $3.
But if you have TDS, you can’t tell anyone.
At his advisors’ suggestion, Trump has begun a series of speeches, starting in Pennsylvania, laying out the scale of economic improvements in his first year:
- Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000 a year. The typical factory worker has seen their wages increase by more than $1,300 (under Trump)... For construction workers, it’s $1,800 up... For miners, their wages went up $3,300.
Rent prices are down. Dairy prices are coming very strongly. The cost of Thanksgiving turkeys was down by 33% compared to the Biden-era [high].
Biden often had trouble speaking coherently. Appropriately, he also had trouble convincing the country that “Bidenomics” was helping everyone. His father's policies (and name) certainly helped Hunter Biden.
Trump’s authenticity should help him in the coming months, assuming he stays on topic. He also has a strong case to make on abruptly stopping Biden’s illegal immigration plague.
That was the overriding issue a year ago. Polls show strong support for that and his deportation program. But voter memories are short, and he needs to harp on that progress through Nov. 3.
One problem Trump cannot control is Republicans in Congress, as their elections near. They have been largely obedient to his political desires and priorities until now.
But election years are about self-preservation, and that brings out the Latin in politicians: De me agitur (It’s All About Me).
We can expect more independence from his party there, which media will gleefully report as defiance. The Senate finally passed a large block of Trump nominees, but the GOP there has refused Trump’s demand to kill the filibuster and still honors the blocking “blue slip” tradition that Trump denounces as a “scam.”
There was a split over releasing the Epstein files until Trump agreed. And there are emerging concerns among some GOP members over the aggressive stance toward Venezuela by a president who once boasted of avoiding new foreign military involvements. But if we didn't have some conflicts, there'd be nothing for media to distort.
The Founding Fathers had this crazy idea that the legislature, presidency, and judiciary would provide checks and balances on each other’s anticipated ambitions. Those Fathers in 1776 were quite young to be inventing a nation. George Washington was 44, Thomas Jefferson 33, Alexander Hamilton 21, and James Monroe still a teenager at 18.
In an age of short lifespans, they set minimum ages to get into Congress (25 for the House, 30 for the Senate). But they did not anticipate career politicians and, thus, neglected to set a maximum age.
As one result, California’s Nancy Pelosi, who’s 85 (CA-11), will have been in the House for 39 years when she leaves. Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois will have been in Congress 44 years when he exits in 2027.
Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California died in the Senate after 31 years at age 90. After 17 years in the New York State Assembly, Brooklyn native Jerry Nadler (NY-12), now 78, says he’ll retire after 34 years in the House.
After six years in the State Assembly, 18 in the House, and now 27 in the Senate, Democrat leader Chuck Schumer is still there.
As one sign of simmering change in his party, the inventor of this year’s Schumer Shutdown will likely be challenged in a primary in 2028, possibly by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), now age-eligible for the Senate.
The senator took considerable flak from his party’s progressive House members for ending the record-long government shutdown this fall. As I wrote recently:
Schumer and (Democrat House Leader Hakeem) Jeffries are both from Brooklyn. So is Bernie Sanders. Two Jews and a black are so-called leaders of the national party of diversity, all from the same borough of the same city that just chose a democratic socialist as mayor.
Such challenges by younger Democrats have become familiar divisions across the country, especially from the Left, which feels party opposition to Trump has not been sufficiently forceful. If Democrats take House control next year, new showtime impeachment efforts are virtually certain.
Historically, the GOP should be in political trouble. The party of the sitting president has lost Senate seats in 15 of the last 20 midterms and 18 of the last 20 House midterms. (The exceptions were 1998, GOP overreach on Monica Lewinsky, and 2002, the aftermath of 9/11.)
Republican voters have a well-earned reputation for not always showing up for midterm votes. And Trump’s name, always a major motivator, will not be on any ballots.
One uncertainty: The attendance pattern of Trump’s newly constructed party base of working-class voters has yet to be determined.
However, Karl Rove notes a favorable outlook this time:
The Senate map favors the GOP. Twenty of 22 Republican-held seats up next year are in red states, where the party should win if it doesn’t nominate scandal-ridden candidates. Two Democratic seats are in states Mr. Trump carried, five in states Kamala Harris took by single digits.
There are more Democratic House members in districts Mr. Trump won (13) than Republicans in districts Ms. Harris carried (three). The GOP’s chances will likely be improved by redistricting in Texas and Ohio.
Democrats are desperately attempting to gain traction on something, anything. Maybe release some Epstein photos? Nope, that didn't work.
And Democrats have yet to figure out their primary calendar for 2028. Which states come early will play a key role in determining candidate momentum.
