Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump at the Capitol on May 20, 2025
The signs of a blue tsunami keep accumulating by the day, from 2025’s dramatic Democratic victories—where Democrats overperformed Kamala Harris’ 2024 numbers by eye-popping margins—to continued overperformances in special elections, to President Donald Trump himself acknowledging reality in his own authoritarian way.
“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump mused, before making the leap to “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”
What’s funny is watching pundits and Republican operatives try to outthink gravity. Take New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who repeatedly advised Republicans that the solution for a midterm election blowout is for Trump to stop being Trump.
Brilliant. Why didn’t anyone think of that?
On Wednesday night, Mark Halperin reported that the “senior Trump political command” delivered a sober midterm briefing to key Republicans, including Cabinet officials. Among the findings: voters care about the economy (groundbreaking!), and that “Trying to argue about wages being up will not help; voters have to feel it.” They also admitted that “Taking credit for closing the border does not resonate much”—a striking concession that immigration, once a Republican strength, isn’t saving them.
But the best part? Trump’s own campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, effectively admitted Trump can’t save Republicans either.
“He acknowledged that Donald Trump will do what he wants to do, say what he wants to say, not be data driven,” Halperin wrote. “Everyone else has to stay on message and be driven by the data. In effect, two separate but related campaigns.”
That’s patently absurd.
Republicans don’t get to divorce themselves from Trump’s chaos. His dominance over the party is absolute. He demands fealty, and they’ve delivered it. Those who stray—on tariffs, on Epstein, on anything—face his wrath. Trump is more interested in settling petty internal scores than deploying his war chest to protect vulnerable Republicans.
There are no “two separate but related campaigns.” Republican candidates can’t claim to care about affordability while Trump loudly proclaims it a “hoax.”
They can’t run on his message because it’s unpopular. They can’t run on his personality because he is hated. And they can’t rely on discipline because Trump doesn’t care—about data, about strategy, or about being a team player. He never has. Even his own political team isn’t pretending otherwise.
And this betrays the GOP’s core insurmountable challenge heading into what will be a political bloodbath for Republicans: Trump can’t help them, and he’s actually a liability.
So while that meeting at least acknowledged the damage Trump is doing to the GOP’s midterm chances—to the point that they’re trying to construct a parallel campaign strategy separate from their albatross—a new story from Axios found Republicans either pretending none of this is happening, or with their heads fully submerged in the sand.
The story on the GOP’s midterm woes starts honestly enough.
“While it is tempting for many in our party to wish away these results,” a GOP operative told Axios, “the pattern is clear that there is at least a current 10-point Democratic over-performance from Trump 2024—and it’s built on a fired-up Democratic base and a sleepy GOP base.”
Axios also notes that Republican strategists admit Trump’s handling of the Epstein files has “turned off parts of his MAGA base, while energizing Democrats and anti-GOP independents.” Left unsaid: Trump’s starring role in those files isn’t helping either.
Still, denial is a powerful drug.
“Let’s not pretend a couple of low-turnout special elections suddenly signal a political earthquake,” said Mason Di Palma, communications director for the Republican State Leadership Committee. Kudos to Di Palma for not hiding behind anonymity, even if he’s hiding behind a convenient strawman.
No one is arguing that “a couple of low-turnout special elections” alone are driving predictions of a coming Republican apocalypse. Take the shocking Texas state senate Democratic pickup: the electorate was 51 percent Republican, and the GOP candidate still got just 43 percent of the vote—in a district Trump carried by 17 points. That’s a 34-point swing. Democrats were only 35 percent of the electorate, yet their candidate won with 57 percent.
You don’t get that kind of shift from low turnout and a depressed GOP base. You get it from defections.
And no, it’s just not a couple of special elections. We have last year’s dramatic Democratic victories, which were anything but “low-turnout.” Trump himself is openly musing about canceling midterms because the party in power almost always gets hammered. Even solidly red Iowa is changing its laws to weaken its own governor ahead of an election where Democrats have a real shot at winning that seat.
But cut that guy some slack; he’s paid to be optimistic. Much worse are the anonymous sources that showered the Axios reporter with ridiculous hopium.
“[Some Republicans] note that Trump's cash-flush political operation didn't aggressively work to turn out the president's supporters in any of the recent elections—something it'll do in U.S. House and Senate elections this November,” reported Axios. “They also point out that Trump plans to hit the trail aggressively, which they believe will help to turn out his supporters.”
Was that mythical turnout machine just sitting it out last year?
And here’s the deeper problem: When Republicans themselves are defecting, higher turnout doesn’t necessarily save you—but it can actually help Democrats. We saw a version of this in 2024, when Democratic turnout operations inadvertently brought new Trump-leaning Latino and young voters to the polls. GOTV is a blunt instrument, and it doesn’t come with ideological guarantees.
Even if Republicans mobilize their evangelical base, traditionally the focus of their GOTV efforts, that won’t counteract erosion among suburban voters, independents, and soft Republicans. And given Trump’s habit of using his cash to settle internal scores rather than build coalitions, the idea of a finely tuned turnout juggernaut feels more like fantasy than strategy.
As for Trump hitting the campaign trail, what could possibly energize Democrats more in an anti-incumbent, anti-GOP environment than a deeply unpopular president parachuting into competitive districts to rant about gilded ballrooms and golf courses before declaring affordability a hoax? Democrats will beg for Trump to show his toxic face anywhere near swingable voters.
Remember, Trump’s own pollster admits that his client will “do what he wants to do, say what he wants to say, not be data driven.” Which competitive district will that help?
So yes, things are tough for Republicans, and the man they insist is their savior is the very weight dragging them under.
Couldn’t happen to a worse bunch.
Markos Moulitsas is founder and editor of the blogging website Daily Kos and author of three books.
Reprinted with permission from Daily KosReprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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