Donald Trump reacts next to Melania Trump during a rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
President Donald Trump is taking a "massive gamble" on a midterm strategy that defies logic, according to MS NOW, and based on history, it appears primed to backfire badly.
Traditionally, the party that occupies the White House tends to suffer considerable losses in any given midterm cycle, as voters take out their frustrations with the president on their party. These losses are also typically magnified the more unpopular a president is. As such, unpopular presidents tend to try and avoid the spotlight during the midterms in order to minimize the damage.
Not so for Trump, with MS NOW's Ryan Teague Beckwith arguing in a Tuesday piece that Trump is taking an approach that is far from "typical" for a president, but entirely on-brand for him: making everything about himself. This, he noted, can be seen in the decision to hold the GOP's "unprecedented midterm convention" in Dallas, right in the heart of the GOP stronghold state of Texas. Usually, convention locations are chosen to help a political party's fortunes in a certain area, but given the GOP's strength in Texas, this decision indicates a desire to make Trump the center of attention to try and coax out the voters who only show up when he is on the ballot.
"Unpopular presidents usually try to fade into the background during midterm elections," Beckwith wrote. "They raise money behind closed doors in friendly territory to help the party, while letting candidates distance themselves from the White House and run on local issues. Trump’s convention will do the opposite, putting him center stage and nationalizing congressional races. The goal is to energize the Republican base, where he remains massively popular, and narrow the turnout gap. As it stands, Democratic voters are significantly more likely in recent polls to say that they intend to vote in November and that they view this midterm as more important than similar elections in the past."
Beckwith noted further, however, that this sort of approach is not without precedent, having played out poorly for former President Barack Obama in the 2010 midterms, when Democrats took an absolute beating from voters.
"President Obama tried this on a much smaller scale in the 2010 midterms, holding large rallies at colleges in battleground states in an effort to re-create the energy of his historic presidential campaign. The results were not encouraging. While Sen. Harry Reid won in Nevada, Democrats lost key races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that year."
He concluded: "If it works, Trump won’t just have beaten history. He’ll have proved that a second-term president can nationalize a difficult midterm, strengthened his grip on the Republican Party and confirmed that he remains the party’s undisputed kingmaker ahead of the 2028 presidential primary. If it fails, Democrats could retake not just the House but the Senate as well, stall much of his agenda and block his nominations for the next two years. The failure would also leave Republicans wondering whether tying the party so closely to Trump remains the best strategy, potentially even upending the next GOP presidential primary."