Midterms

If a midterm is a referendum on a presidency, it is one that presidents usually lose, especially Republican presidents. Since the Civil War, the president’s party has gained seats one only three occasions: 1934, 1998 and 2002. Only on the last of those was recipient of the public’s inexplicable affection was a Republican president, in this case George W. Bush. And in that instance the public’s affection was explicable in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. So yes, Republican losses tonight will constitute a diminution of Donald Trump’s presidency. The question is not one of nature but of degree. Will the diminution resemble a mild paddling of the kind that a pornographic actress might perform on the presidential backside with a rolled-up magazine?

‘Remember, remember the 5th of November/ The gunpowder treason and plot . . .’ Well, it’s not Guy Fawkes who is planning to blow up things this November. It’s our version of the Picts: blue-dyed political marauders swarming over the ramparts in Hollywood, universities, Democratic campaign offices, and woke, acronymic former news channels. If you calibrate the performances just right, it can look like a confident pep rally. ‘We’re really going to show those knuckle-dragging, toxic male Caucasian deplorables this time! Two, four, six, eight, whom do you repudiate? Trump! Trump! Trump!’ The networks and newspapers and internet sites are abuzz with polls and prognostications.

Will the King be toppled? No one is likely to observe of Steve King of Iowa, as nasty a piece of work as has ever served as a Congressman, ‘My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made unto the King.’ Intel and Land O’Lakes have rescinded their financial backing for him. King isn’t running any ads or even much of a campaign for reelection. His challenger J.D. Scholten, by contrast, has raised some $641,000 in the past two days. At the same time, the press is brimming with stories about young people turning out in droves to vote. The Cook Report has revised its predictions to indicate that the Democrats may win up to 40 seats in the House.

The law of political gravity favours the Democrats in the midterm elections less than two weeks away. They will gain seats in the House of Representatives no matter what they do, barring an upset of a kind that has happened only twice in the last 80 years. Curiously, both exceptions to the rule that the president’s party loses ground in the midterms were either side of the 2000 election. The Democrats under Bill Clinton picked up five House seats in 1998; the Republicans under George W. Bush gained eight in 2002. There were unusual circumstances at play in both instances: Republicans in 1998 were getting ready to impeach Clinton, while in 2002 the Bush administration was preparing for the Iraq War while the memory of 9/11 was still fresh in voters’ minds.

Poor Paul Manafort. His defense attorney Kevin Downing asked if he could appear in his street clothing rather than a dark-green prison jumpsuit for his sentencing on Friday. Manafort, who has spent millions on bespoke suits, has always placed a premium on his public appearance. Judge T.S. Ellis III, however, was having none of it: ‘This defendant should be treated no differently from other defendants who are in custody post conviction.’Another former Donald Trump associate also got kicked in the shins this week, but the source wasn’t a federal judge. Instead, it was Trump who delivered the blow, dismissing his old chum and confederate Michael Cohen as a nobody.

For all the encomiums she delivered to Trump and his coterie today, Nikki Haley delivered an unexpected blow to the Trump White House by announcing her resignation. Her announcement caught Trump flatfooted, coming after the previous evening’s revelries at the White House, where he turned a ceremony for newly minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh into a political pep rally that is likely to further enrage his detractors and opponents. The sudden defection of one of his big stars is exactly the kind of television programming that Trump loathes, particularly on the eve of the November midterm elections, which Politico says look increasingly ominous for Republican control of the House of Representatives.

It’s Donald Trump’s party now, but Republicans are still struggling with what that means. The primaries weren’t especially kind to insurgent candidates who imitated the president’s brash style — albeit almost uniformly without his humor or marketing flare — or wrapped themselves in the MAGA flag. That’s not to say Trump didn’t have an outsized influence in the party’s nominating contests this year. He most certainly did, as Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp and Kris Kobach — the Republican gubernatorial nominees in Florida, Georgia and Kansas, respectively — can all attest. So can soon-to-be former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. When Alabama’s Rep.

The 2018 midterm elections, like the 2016 presidential contest, are proving to be far more interesting than conventional wisdom ever suspected. Two years ago, pundits were sure that Trump would lose, right up to the early evening of election day. This year, the conventional wisdom has it that Democrats will take back control of at least the House of Representatives, probably by a landslide, if not the Senate as well. But two critical polling indicators suggest the GOP’s hand is getting stronger. President Trump’s approval ratings are solidly into the 40s in recent polls, and even hit 50 percent in the most in the Rasmussen survey last week (which, to be sure, has consistently shown better numbers for Trump).