If Ronald Reagan was “the Teflon President,” for his ability to dodge political controversies, then there is probably no substance around to describe the non-stick quality of Donald Trump. His scandals — personal, political and, for a moment, criminal — are so numerous and well-documented that revisiting them will prove to be a fruitless endeavor.
The selective memory of the American electorate swept Trump back into the White House last year. Voters chose to remember the peace and prosperity that defined the first three years of Trump’s first term — which he neither created nor sustained — leaving its disastrous ending in January 2021 all but a distant memory.
The slogan “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” echoed from conservatives throughout the Biden years. High inflation and new global conflicts made it an effective rallying cry. Of course, this rhetoric ignored the actual role the president plays in affecting these circumstances — which, in Biden’s case, was quite minimal. The quip also took on a new, unintended meaning at the start of 2024 as the pandemic turned four and evoked a set of unsavory memories.
Today, however, the President is quickly finding the forgiveness of the American people exhausted. He is on the losing side of a battle that threatens to cut his final act short and make him a lame duck: His war with Iran. As the midterm elections loom, it is time for Republicans to heed the call to put country over party. It may just prove to be their most strategic move.
Trump’s first presidency suffered from an impotent executive branch and Congress, where holdouts from the Republican establishment still held considerable power and refused to kowtow to all his demands. Aside from the 2017 tax cuts, little meaningful legislation was passed. This wasn’t from lack of effort; in 2018, the former Republican standard-bearer John McCain delivered the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. Trump’s healthcare plan remains in the conceptual phase to this day.
Trump’s fumbling proved to be the main accomplishment of his first term. Favorable economic conditions rising from the ashes of the Great Recession outlasted the Obama years and carried the stock market to new heights under Trump — and a 40% cut to the corporate tax rate certainly didn’t hurt this run. Trump rode Wall Street’s coattails for over three years. While he talked tough on foreign policy, he sidestepped any high-stakes military operations, leaving the Afghanistan withdrawal and ensuing political fallout to burden his successor.
In February, Trump’s near-perennial streak of luck ended when he started his war with Iran. It turns out that even many of his most ardent supporters do not wish to wage a foreign war in the service of Benjamin Netanyahu. Brian McGinnis, a former Marine, was removed from a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing for shouting, “No one wants to fight for Israel.” Fittingly, the political damage of this gambit has been twofold: The negative optics of starting yet another chapter in the War on Terror, and oil prices that have skyrocketed close to their Biden-era levels. After all those years of complaining about high gas prices, the chickens came home to roost.
While the war has caused further cracks to materialize in Trump’s already faltering popularity, it has not necessarily translated into a one-to-one boost for the Democrats. Generic congressional ballots give them a roughly five-point advantage over the Republicans, but as November approaches, that margin is likely to grow larger. Independents, the real “silent majority” that decides elections, are distancing themselves further than ever from Trump. The voting bloc that won the president seven key battleground states in 2024 now splits for Democrats by a whopping 25 points.
Whether or not the Democrats manage to flip both chambers — which would require winning several heavily contested Senate races in red states — the unpopularity of Donald Trump’s presidency is liable to finally show its magnitude on a national scale. From that point forward, the narrative will flip toward the 2028 election, the first in 12 years in which an incumbent president is not eligible to seek reelection.
Republican loyalists will face a difficult decision: Whether to distance themselves from their lame-duck commander-in-chief. While many of these sycophants have refused to condemn Trump in the face of his most egregious acts — including when he unleashed a violent mob on them on Jan. 6, 2021 — the key difference is that the Trump of 2021 always had a chance for a comeback, however unlikely it may have seemed in those days. The Trump of today is more concerned about posting his likeness as Jesus and feuding with the Pope than making any effort at damage control before the midterms.
Speculating on the end of Donald Trump’s political career has been a source of embarrassment for many a political pundit over the years. Time and again, the president has shown that it is never a prudent move to count him out; he and his supporters have worn this constant underestimation as a badge of honor. However, November’s midterm elections will be the president’s final curtain call, and afterwards there will simply be no more races in which he can defy expectations. Perhaps, at long last, the age of Donald Trump occupying the center of the nation’s collective attention will close.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
