The president has told voters to vote like he is on the ballot, but that’s precisely what worries Republicans who are distancing themselves from him writes, Foreign Editor David Pratt
THERE was a lot of pomp and pageantry last week when Donald Trump welcomed China’s leader Xi Jinping to the White House.
Never one to miss a grandstander opportunity, perhaps the most memorable quote from what was otherwise a meeting short on substance, was when Trump gave Xi a tour of the new helipad he had recently constructed on the White House’s South Lawn.
“He loves good granite,” Trump told reporters, before touting what he described as a “great meeting” with Xi.
The reality though, as is so often the case when Trump moves into superlative mode, was much more prosaic.
As numerous commentators were quick to point out, the two leaders spent more time on ceremonial events than the 90-minute closed-door meeting at which the key issues of trade, AI security, Iran and in particular Taiwan’s sovereignty were briefly discussed.
There was an emphasis on “stable ties”, with Xi stressing that the two countries should “coexist in peace”.
For his part, this might suit Trump just fine, for as one administration official admitted before the meeting, its goal is “to prevent something very bad from happening ... it’s about keeping the tensions within manageable bounds”.
Achievable as that was, few doubt though that Trump would have liked nothing better than to have come out of the meeting with something substantial to show for it.
A “win” or “deal” of merit that he could present to the American people is precisely what the US president needs right now, as midterm elections bear down at alarming speed matched only in pace by Trump’s plunging approval ratings.
To say that many Republicans are worried about November’s looming midterm ballot would be a considerable understatement.
As some see it, the midterms are all about Trump and his policies, a point starkly summed up by one Texas-based political consultant who, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave a recent frank assessment to The Atlantic magazine.
“This is shaping up to be a nightmare political environment for every Republican, everywhere – period, full stop,” the spokesperson said.
Noting that petrol prices across the US are on average $4.50 a gallon, the consultant described the atmosphere as “a fucking disaster for anyone in a competitive race”.
Cost of living issues like mortgage rates rising above 7% in September and petrol prices, the latter inextricably connected to the war in Iran, look set to dominate November’s elections that could potentially cost the Republican Party control of Congress.
According to Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, the US-based financial intelligence and risk management company, the conflict in Iran has already cost the average American household about $1650 – or more than $220 billion.
It’s this kind of economic impact that is making for a political showdown between Trump and some Republicans increasingly likely.
While Trump and vice-president JD Vance are not up for election, the midterms are often seen as a referendum on the current administration and gains and losses for either of the two main parties can reflect that.
On November 3, all 435 seats of the US House of Representatives will be up for grabs, as well as one-third of the 100-seat US Senate. Other state-level positions can be on the ballot too.
As it stands, Democrats are projected to take the House of Representatives, while the Senate is a closer call. Either way, Republicans will likely lose the governing trifecta – House, Senate and presidency – that has enabled Trump’s agenda and removed constraints on his authority.
All this is bad news for a president already in deep trouble if those approval ratings are anything to go by.
Nate Silver is a prominent American statistician, political analyst, author, and professional poker player.
Widely recognised as a pioneer in data journalism, famous for applying rigorous mathematical and statistical models to predict outcomes in both sports and politics, Silver’s latest assessment in an aggregate of polls only adds to Trump’s ratings woes.
According to Silver, Trump’s net approval is at a new record low of -23.0. Currently, 60.4% disapprove of his performance and 37.4% approve.
Trump’s net approval is below what any past president since Harry Truman had at this point in their term, with Trump’s first term the closest at -11.6.
On four issues tracked by Silver, Trump’s net approval is -13.0 on immigration, -28.3 on trade, -32.1 on the economy and -46.4 on inflation.
Sensing that trouble is brewing, the White House last week launched a new 30-second television advertisement that features Trump’s voice saying: “Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America” and “America will never be a communist country”.
The advertisement uses 2024 remarks from Dana White, the long-serving president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), describing Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country that he’s lost”.
The ad’s disclaimer also reads, “paid for by the US government”, and came in a week when rather ironically, Trump banned three major news organisations – CNN, MS NOW, and Politico – from the White House.
As a number of American political commentators noted, that’s a step none of Trump’s presidential predecessors ever took, even if it was almost immediately blocked by a federal judge, owing to a lack of “constitutionally adequate due process.”
AdImpact, a US-based advertising intelligence and analytics company, estimated that the Trump administration spent more than $400,000 to run the ads, according to The Associated Press. The outlet also reported that the ad is running on primetime and morning shows on CBS and various Fox News programming.
As for the impact of the advertising itself after it aired, the White House almost immediately felt compelled to go on the defensive, insisting that “patriotism isn’t partisan”.
“The announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending – at home, at the border, and abroad,” the White House responded in a press release to criticism of the ad.
“These public service announcements are unapologetically American, clearly disclosed, and aimed at the country – not a line on the ballot.”
But many believe that it’s precisely that “line on the ballot” at which such an advertising campaign is aimed, as Republican jitters over the midterms mount.
Some critics say Trump himself arguably misread the prevailing Republican mood when back in August he encouraged voters to “pretend” he is “on the ballot”, a move that only heightened Republican nervousness and panic.
“So many Republican candidates in recent days have broken with Trump that it’s as if a secret memo went out announcing that the floodgates were officially open,” observed the New Yorker magazine’s respected political commentator, Susan B Glasser, who highlighted just a few examples.
In fact, almost everywhere you look across US political commentary right now, this sense of Republican alarm is palpable.
“Republicans are running out of runway,” Dave Winston, a longtime GOP pollster, warned last week in an op-ed in Roll Call, a prominent Washington DC-based political newspaper providing coverage of the US Congress.
Meanwhile, the conservative National Review declared that “the Republican abandonment of Donald Trump begins”, and Punchbowl News – which takes its title from the Secret Service’s official code name for the US Capitol – said this was the week that Republicans were hitting the “panic button”.
So where does this leave the Democrats in their midterm challenge?
Max Yoeli, senior research fellow, US and North America Programme at the UK-based think tank Chatham House, believes that even though the Democrats are projected to make big gains in midterms, this will not necessarily constrain Trump.
With a majority in either or both houses, Democrats can block Republican legislative moves, says Yoeli.
“This would likely push the White House to double down on its executive authority claims, including executive orders, emergency declarations and regulatory actions,” he adds.
He and other analysts say that even with both chambers, the Democrats would struggle to drive policy through legislation.
“A war powers vote to curtail military engagement in the Gulf or a resolution disapproving of a foreign arms sale, for instance, would face presidential vetoes and Democrats would not have the supermajorities needed to overcome them,” explains Yoeli.
In other words, if Democrats flip the House in November, and maybe the Senate too, and want something to show for it two years from now during the next presidential election, they’re going to have to find a way to get around Trump’s veto power.
Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch and former Washington Post correspondent is not alone in his belief that finding a way to bypass Trump’s veto “will require the kind of aggression – the kind of fight – the current crop of Democratic Party leaders has never shown”.
“Democrats need to be thinking and talking about what they can practically achieve – and how. And they need to have a battle plan so they can hit the ground running in January,” maintains Froomkin.
But post-midterms veto power or not, it’s Trump, the potential Republican election “liability”, who continues to focus the minds of many in the GOP right now.
The president has long insisted on loyalty, but in recent weeks, a growing number of Republican candidates and elected officials have distanced themselves from core pieces of his agenda.
As The Atlantic magazine recently highlighted, some of these candidates are crucially in states where polls show tighter-than-expected races for the GOP.
Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas spoke out this month about Trump’s calls to ban the sale of jets from the Canadian company Bombardier, whose US headquarters are in Wichita.
Then there are the Senate candidates Mike Rogers in Michigan, Ashley Hinson in Iowa, and Jon Husted in Ohio who have all called for a swift end to the war in Iran.
“Even in Trump’s adopted state of Florida, which he’s won three times, candidates are bailing,” The Atlantic concluded.
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Representative Byron Donalds, who is running for governor in Florida, recently updated his campaign website to remove multiple references to Trump – including a photo with the president and a banner noting that he was “TRUMP-ENDORSED”.
“Trump’s strength has always been primarily devised from his relationship to the voters,” says Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist and longtime critic of the president.
“Republicans have always been loath to cross him because of his sort of stronghold on the party,” Longwell explained in a recent interview with US broadcaster NPR.
She believes that what we are now starting to see is the “very beginnings of people recognising that Trump just doesn’t have the juice that he once did and starting to push back”.
If ever an image epitomised the reasons behind that pushback, it was one from two years ago of Trump taken during a New Jersey press conference.
Standing between tables piled high with fruit, beef, cereal, milk and other household staples, Trump blamed the Biden administration for sharp increases in groceries.
Complete with charts showing higher prices, the spectacle was aimed at undercutting the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and highlighted Trump’s central promise: he alone could tame inflation and lower the cost of living. Today that photography haunts Republicans as the midterms approach.
In a week that saw Chinese leader Xi Jinping visit the White House, it was another Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping back in 1983, who once characterised the shifting political promises of US presidents.
“The United States brags about its political system, but the president says one thing during the election, something else when he takes office, something else at midterm and something else when he leaves,” Deng wryly observed.
For Trump, the midterm is almost upon him, and within his administration and party stirs an increasing number who see the president and his policies as an election impediment. Come November’s ballot, it’s hard to see how a reckoning between them can now be avoided.
