President Donald Trump has stated plainly which historical fate he most wants to avoid. Six weeks before the midterms, it is starting to look closer.
“I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people,” Trump told Axios in June. “I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.” But veteran journalist Mark Halperin published an analysis for The Daily Mail showing how that fear is staring the 80-year-old president in the face.
Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which are widely blamed for deepening the Great Depression, and his name became shorthand for economic collapse. He was also president the last time Kansas voters sent a Democrat to the Senate, in 1932.
That 94-year streak is now in question. The Cook Political Report has moved Kansas’ Senate race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” as Sen. Roger Marshall faces an unexpectedly tough challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton. The race is close enough that Vice President JD Vance recently visited the state to campaign for Marshall.
Marshall has also started to break with the White House on immigration, the issue that helped put Trump in office. On Wednesday, the Kansas Republican posted that when ICE operates, “it needs to coordinate with local law enforcement.”
Iowa conservative radio host Steve Deace, a MAGA supporter, posted this week that Republican pollsters had delivered grim news about his home state, as well.
“Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006,” Deace wrote. He was referring to the year Republicans lost both chambers of Congress under President George W. Bush.
Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik said a “noticeable shift toward Democrats” has happened since early September. He cited “a failed war in Iran, rising prices, brazen self-enrichment by Trump and his family, and the increasingly erratic behavior of an out of touch Commander in Chief.”
Trump’s team points to the GOP’s big fundraising advantage and the weak Democratic brand, and they pointed out that Republican candidates are competitive in blue-leaning states such as Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota, but Halperin argued that’s just bluster.
“What has been most telling to me is the reaction that I’ve received over the last week to my reporting in the Daily Mail about the prospect of a Blue tsunami,” Halperin wrote. “I have not heard from one Republican strategist, among the many I know, who has taken issue with my reporting. In fact, a flurry of emails, texts and phone calls, from both MAGA-ville and more traditional conservative sources, say either I have it exactly right or that I am understating just how grim things are.”
“Time is running out,” Halperin added. “There’s a chance that voters have already locked in their decisions and no amount of TV ads will sway them. We’re nearing the point where there may only be one option left for the GOP: panic.”
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