COMMENTARY: ‘It will be a nightmare and a bloodbath’

The off-year elections this week mark the beginning of a ferocious 12-month battle for control of the House of Representatives, a battle that will have an indelible impact on President Donald Trump’s final two years in office. The Democrats have won the first skirmish, with decisive victories in Virginia, New Jersey and California, but it’s a long war. And the stakes are huge.

If Republicans lose their minuscule three-vote margin, Trump’s legislative program would stop dead. More important, a Democratic majority would control all the House committees, giving them the power to hold hearings, conduct investigations, subpoena witnesses and — above all — possibly impeach the president.

“The president is obsessively focused on the midterms,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN. “He remembers what happened the first time he was in office.”

During his initial tenure, Democrats won 41 seats in 2018 and reclaimed the majority for the first time in 10 years. They then impeached Trump twice, and while the Senate acquitted him both times, he’s “obsessively” determined to avoid that humiliation again.

That’s why he has triggered an unprecedented escalation of partisan warfare in state legislatures around the country, bullying Republicans to redraw Congressional districts to favor their candidates and forcing Democrats to retaliate in the states they control. California voted overwhelmingly to alter the state constitution and help Democrats win as many as five new seats.

“This redistricting war is the opening salvo of a battle that must be won,” Stephen Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser, told The New York Times. “We must have these victories. If Trump doesn’t hold the House, they will impeach him. It will be a nightmare and a bloodbath.”

Speaking of nightmares, the Democrats have been living one since Trump took office again. Few presidents have used their powers so effectively to dominate the political world, exciting his supporters and exiling his enemies. In the latest ABC/Washington Post poll, 68 percent call the Democrats “out of touch” with most Americans.

But this week’s result show that the party still has a fighting chance next year, and one explanation is simply history: In 20 of the past 22 midterm elections, the president’s party has lost ground. “For some reason, you lose the midterms,” Trump mused recently. “I don’t know why. It doesn’t make sense.”

Actually, it does. Magnetic candidates such as Trump lure many marginal voters to the polls that don’t show up when their charismatic leader is no longer on the ballot. Moreover, all successful candidates make promises that they cannot keep. A certain sense of disappointment inevitably sets in, and that’s exactly what’s happening with Trump.

While he won 49.8 percent of the popular vote last year, his favorable rating has dropped to 41 percent in the ABC/Post poll and to 37 percent in the latest CNN survey.

A primary explanation for Trump’s slump is one word: prices. The Biden administration failed to curb inflation, especially the cost of gas and groceries, and Trump capitalized by making this promise: “Under my leadership, we are quickly going to turn this economic nightmare into an economic miracle.”

Yes, the stock market is booming, but ordinary Americans, including many Trump voters, simply haven’t felt any improvement, let alone a “miracle.” In the ABC/Post survey, only 37 percent view Trump’s handling of the economy positively, while 62 percent are negative. For 52 percent, their economic situation has actually declined since he took office, while only 27 percent say it’s gotten better. In an NBC poll, two-thirds of Americans say Trump’s record has “fallen short of expectations” regarding the cost of living.

Exit polls tell a similar story. Voters in all the contested states called the economy their biggest concern, and many blamed Trump. “He was a factor for many voters in each of the places where exit polls were conducted,” CBS reported. “And more said their vote in these races was to oppose him, than support him.”

For many families, the government shutdown has only aggravated their economic woes. Nearly 42 million Americans — 12.3 percent of the United States population — depend on SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps, and those payments will be cut in half this month. Millions of others face sharp increases in their insurance premiums as subsidies adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic have been allowed to expire. Trump airily dismisses the problem, saying these programs “largely” benefit Democratic voters, but that’s flat-out false.

The same gloomy pessimism and economic discontent that helped propel Trump into the White House a year ago now threatens to turn his tenure into a nightmare.

Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.