Trump’s Risky Midterm Strategy Puts the GOP in a Bizarre Position

How Trump created a bizarre and risky midterm scenario for the GOP

America no longer seems to believe that he, alone, can fix it.

At his 2016 convention, Donald Trump billed himself as the unique force who could end America’s troubles.

A decade later, at a midterm Republican pseudo-convention on Wednesday night, he sweetened the offer, with a pitchman’s promise of a $5,000 jackpot for every voter. But polls reflect a wide gap between the president’s pledges and how voters view his performance. He’s therefore taking a huge risk by making the midterm elections all about himself.

“Let us finish the job we began with the greatest two years in the history of the presidency,” he said onstage in Texas.

But there isn’t much ticked off from the updated fix-it list unveiled in Trump’s second inaugural address, in 2025, when he promised to “rapidly bring down costs and prices” and that his new term would be remembered by “the wars we never get into.”

Americans are still angry about the prices of food, housing and healthcare. Gasoline costs are spiking because of a war in Iran he’s claimed multiple times to have won, but that now he says won’t end until after the November 3 midterms.

Hours after Trump made his midterm case in Dallas, average gas prices shot up to $4.28, according to AAA — the highest level since June 2.

If Trump won a mandate on the economy and national security in 2024, he’s now close to squandering it.

This created a bizarre core campaign dynamic — which Trump cemented Wednesday night.

The not particularly trusted out-of-power party is desperate to divert attention from its own liabilities toward the unpopular record of the president. And, amazingly, the deeply disliked incumbent is doing all he can to help them.

“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said Wednesday night.

Democrats won’t need to be asked twice to tell voters about a president with an approval rating in the 30s who is underwater in polls on almost every major issue.

Trump, everywhere, all at once

Only this president would dare to hold a two-day “Trumpapalooza” with himself as keynote speaker on both nights.

After Trump on Wednesday blasted Democrats as radical far-left socialists and communists, GOP strategists might prefer he now step back to allow candidates to localize their races and try to disqualify their individual opponents.

But he’s determined to be the issue in every ZIP code.

“I am going to visit,” he said Wednesday, previewing a relentless tour of election hotspots.

Of course, anyone who thought the president might take a back seat must have slept through the last decade.

The 2026 election was always going to be all about Trump. Love him or hate him, almost everything in US and global politics has revolved around him since he descended his golden escalator in summer 2015.

Trump won two presidential elections because — not in spite — of the fact that he made it all about himself. His outsider persona, self-created image as the ultimate winner, and often-coarse manner rewrote the rules of politics. And he listened to economic angst of citizens who felt disenfranchised and disrespected by a globalized economy and leaders they saw as contemptuous elites.

Now that the president seems to care less about such matters, his hunger for the spotlight is making it almost comically easy for Democrats to make the case against the GOP.

“Donald Trump is hoping that a flashy primetime event will make you forget that, well, his trade war is killing costs for families at the grocery store, his war in Iran is killing ranchers and farmers and their way of life, and his war on people — on the working people, the working families of this country — are raising the costs of healthcare and housing,” Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said in Texas on Wednesday. These stark comparisons explain why some vulnerable Republicans have stayed away from Trump’s Texas party — although many candidates from swing House races and key Senate contests are there.

It may not make much difference either way.

After a decade of Trump’s dominance over a Republican Party he transformed, there is no non-Trump platform for candidates to run on. And he’s already driven out most MAGA heretics.

The GOP’s big political problem But the president could be doing more to help his own side.

Some conservatives are frustrated the billionaire president hasn’t shown more empathy to Americans who view his economic “golden age” as a mirage. It’s not a great look that as he piles up personal wealth in office, he’s mocking the key election issue of affordability. All presidents lose touch after a few years in the West Wing. And Trump has made that cage more gilded than ever with his taste for gold trinkets and marble legacy projects.

Trump on Wednesday argued he’d slashed crime, stopped illegal immigration, crushed the fentanyl trade, enriched Americans with tax cuts and lowered healthcare costs. There’s some truth in this — although his methods may be driving away more moderate voters. And his claim to have rapidly cut prices is not accurate.

But has he lost his political touch?

His refusal to understand public fury — across party lines — over AI data centers seems like the kind of issue the 2016 version of Trump might intuit spells political danger.

Trump’s big error It’s usually a losing strategy when politicians try to talk voters out the reality of their daily lives.

In this sense, his $5000 “dividend” seems more like an attempt to distract than to highlight his own success. (The payment, which Trump promised to every American adult if Republicans retain their House and Senate majorities in November, would probably struggle to make it through Congress. It would also likely add $1 trillion or more to the national debt.)

New CNN polling from the tight Maine and Michigan Senate races — which could decide who runs the chamber next year — makes the point. About two-thirds of likely voters in each state disapprove of Trump’s performance, and voters who are angry or dissatisfied far outnumber those who are satisfied and enthusiastic. The economy and cost of living are easily the top issue in each state. When asked the classic question that can doom incumbents, voters say by a more than 2:1 margin that they are financially worse off than they were two years ago.

Other polling proves that voters unequivocally dislike what Trump sees as his triumphs. They hate his tariffs and his war in Iran, and while he was partly elected over a promise to secure the southern border, he’s driven away many independents with his Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns on undocumented migrants.

But it’s not clear the president really cares about what irks persuadable voters.

His social media feed in recent days — a window into his off-script preoccupations — features a bizarre hinterland of topics that don’t include the price of groceries.

He is fixated on changing the names of lakes and oceans on maps. He claimed, “The Moon is Ours” and unveiled an idea for the dress uniform for his Space Force command that had rather dark historic echoes. His grand building projects similarly speak of a presidency focused on building a personal legacy, rather than addressing the economic problems that plague Americans.

But there’s one reason hogging the limelight that may make some sense. Trump has historically reached voters other politicians haven’t, and shattered the Democrats’ core coalition among the white working class in Rust Belt states.

Can he conjure up the magic by posing one last time as the scourge of elites, the traditional media, and the social and cultural shifts that his base hates?

It might not save the GOP’s hold on one or both chambers, but perhaps it may mitigate their losses.

The Republican Party made its choice long ago. It rode to power on Trump’s movement and cannot credibly sever itself from him now.

“In actuality I really am running. We don’t really know it, but we are. I mean, we’re running together,” he said Wednesday night.

The only path is still the same: All Trump, all the time.