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Americans hate data centers but Donald Trump tells them they’re “backwards and poor” for opposing them. Democrats like Zohran Mamdani are an existential threat to the nation, Trump says, but he glad-hands with him in front of the cameras. Democrats running for Congress are “crazy” “radical” “lunatics” who are completely out of touch with the average American. Meanwhile, most of those Democrats are spending their time talking about the cost of groceries, gas, and healthcare.
The economy is both somehow booming but Trump and Republicans will also bring costs down. Which is it? No one seems to know.
Across the country and in Trump’s constant appearances on every platform imaginable — does this guy ever work, by the way? — Republicans are desperately trying to coalesce around a messaging platform of “we’ve done everything right so vote for us or else the bad, crazy Democrats will take it all away.”
Trump, meanwhile, dismisses Americans’ concerns about the economy and data centers, spends more and more money on vanity projects, seems to be completely uninterested in ending the war he started in Iran, meets with Mamdani, starts trade wars with allies, and is now picking a fight with the White House press corps, something that even many Republican voters simply do not care about. None of this is helping Republicans’ chances in November.
Democrats continue to lead generic ballot polls from every major pollster. Greg Abbott is now in danger, per the latest polls, of losing the governorship in Texas. Also in Texas, James Talarico continues his path to an upset over Ken Paxton to become the state’s first Democratic senator in 38 years. Abdul El Sayed maintains his narrow chance at an upset in Michigan. At least one poll has Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon tied in her race for one of Florida’s seats in the Senate.
Republicans are in trouble, but their blind allegiance to Trump requires them to ignore the danger signs. Some have begun to distance themselves from Trump, but many more are clinging to the sinking ship.
The first major problem with Republican messaging less than 40 days ahead of the election is its fundamental incoherence: things are going very well, but also anything that’s going badly — like inflation and the economy — is Biden’s fault.
Telling Americans that the high prices they’re feeling with their own wallets simply aren’t real doesn’t seem like a particularly good messaging strategy considering the decline of consumer sentiment. Blaming rising prices on Biden might work for some, but not all.
Appearing on Fox Business on Tuesday, RNC chair Joe Gruters was asked why recent polling from Fox shows voters preferring Democrats over Republicans on the economy.
“Voters have a short memory,” Gruters said, claiming that “under Biden,” “gas prices were higher than they are now.”
Sure, but that was then. While it might make some highly-motivated members of the Republican base feel better to hear that gas prices were technically higher (for a brief time) under Biden, it does nothing to motivate voters who are dealing with those prices now — under Trump. And that includes a record high on diesel that will probably continue to rise.
So, Trump and Republicans ignore reality or blame Biden for it at their own peril. The president is polling at historic lows and those numbers continuing to drop. Democrats are polling higher than Republicans even on issues that used to be in the GOP’s wheelhouse — national security and the economy.
Trump has said he wants Americans to imagine that he is on the ballot in November. Democrats would very much like that, too. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Republicans don’t really have a plan and everything is sort of a mess because they have to do what Donald Trump decides on a whim each day.
Mixed messaging, desperate spending
At the “Midterms Convention” in Dallas, Trump called Democrats “the most extreme and dangerous group of candidates for the House and Senate ever to seek office.”
“In state after state, the Democrat establishment has been overthrown and replaced by crazed lunatics and radicals,” Trump went on. “They call themselves Democrat socialists, but actually they’re communists.”
Among these radicals is Mamdani, who Trump called “a 100% Communist Lunatic.” Why, then, in the midst of a campaign that Trump and Republicans have billed as a fight for the survival of the nation, did Trump politely defer to Mamdani during their appearance together last week?
Part of the reason is Trump’s fragile ego, which requires him to suck up to anyone who remotely looks like a winner. The other reason for this strategic misstep is that, just like their stewardship of the U.S. government, Trump and Republicans don’t really have a plan other than that they would like to be in power so they can hurt people. Clearly, though, they don’t think they can win votes on the merits of their own policies.
Vice President JD Vance said as much in a private meeting with House Republicans. At the meeting, Vance told Republicans running for re-election to simply mention El Sayed if their opponent wasn’t an outright radical, as Vance clearly believes El Sayed is. In response, El Sayed didn’t take the bait.
“If the whole Republican caucus meeting is not about what we can do to actually make lives better but instead what we can talk about so that we can change the subject from what lives are because of their policies, fine, talk about me,” El Sayed said. “But you know what I’m going to talk about? Gas, groceries, how hard it is to see a doctor, the fact that our kids’ schools still look like they did 30 years ago.”
Republicans are now dumping money into congressional races, including Senate contests that they thought they had locked up. They’ve given up in Georgia, refusing to significantly fund Mike Collins’ race against Sen. Jon Ossoff.
So, El Sayed isn’t really a radical, as long as Americans can actually hear what he has to say and don’t simply listen to people like Vance. Mamdani must not be that much of a radical, either, if Trump is willing to meet and work with him. But this is just the second part of Republicans’ messaging problems a few weeks from Election Day.
Data centers
Across the country, Americans of all political stripes are rising up in opposition to data centers. Folks are showing up at local government meetings to oppose the projects, which have benefited from untold billions in tax breaks, are driving up utility costs, and polluting air and water. Much of this is in the service of tech companies trying to make breakthroughs on AI.
Faced with this groundswell of real, on-the-ground voter sentiment, Republicans have largely failed to coalesce around consistent messaging over data centers. A handful of Republicans running for Congress have publicly opposed data centers. In Texas, Abbott finally succumbed to public pressure and halted permits for data centers, part of a growing trend of public opposition actually stopping the projects from being developed. House Republicans last week passed the initial version of a bill that would effectively protect Americans from paying increased utility rates if data centers are developed in their communities.
Still, Republican candidates on the campaign trail can’t get their messaging straight on whether they oppose or support data centers that are increasingly unpopular among their own voters. In Ohio, Jon Husted is getting hammered in attack ads over his support for data centers. In Texas, Paxton talks a big game about his opposition to data centers but as attorney general fought to develop the facilities — and holds millions in investments in the projects, the Lever reported. In Iowa, Rep. Ashley Hinson’s exact position on data centers is unclear. In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan has supported bringing data centers to the state.
Last week Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said that data centers use less water than golf courses — risking alienating another key constituency of the GOP. Byron Donalds, running to become Florida’s next governor, has come out in favor of them. He’s also removed references to Trump from his campaign website. Again, this is all very contradictory.
Leading the charge against voters’ wishes is Trump himself, who has never met a development project that is opposed by working Americans that he didn’t like.
Under the guise of national security, “beating China,” or just plain making the piles of cash that Trump and his tech billionaire buddies think AI is worth, the president has gone whole hog on data centers. Meanwhile, two-thirds of Americans oppose them.
In response, Trump calls them poor bumpkins.
Costly wars on trade and in Iran
Trump’s trade wars and his attacks on Iran aren’t helping the inflation crisis. Both are causing costs to go up. The Federal Reserve has identified tariffs as a significant cause of inflation. Even Trump’s former Treasury Secretary has said that his constant fighting with other countries — including allies like Canada — and his impetuous tariff-levying aren’t good for the U.S. economy
But many Republicans blindly stand by Trump. He’s the deal-maker, after all. Except these deals aren’t working out, and Americans know it. Republicans are also on the wrong side of Trump’s war in Iran. Just seven House Republicans and three GOP senators have voted to restrict military operations in Iran. But some have started to buck Trump.
Rep. John James in Michigan, Hinson in Iowa, Husted in Ohio, Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin, and Rogers in Michigan — all have come out with some variation of “We need to end this war quickly.”
“The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly,” Rogers says in a new campaign ad. “When it does, energy costs will plummet.”
Two months ago, Rogers supported giving Trump congressional authorization for the war.
The war has never been popular, due in no small part that it was almost entirely unnecessary and involved another instance of contradictory messaging — Trump had somehow destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities but they also were close to developing a nuclear weapon. How were both possible? Republicans never bothered to explain that to Americans.
Now, it’s less popular than ever, and Trump’s approval ratings are taking a major hit. Most polls have him at his lowest approval rating ever, and approaching historic lows for any president. In recent months, polling on Trump’s handling of foreign policy has plummeted.
But many congressional Republicans have stood by their man, sending their voters’ sons and daughters off to a war that Trump appears to have started out of boredom. Now he’s bored with the war itself, which is why Iran’s theocratic leadership is still hanging around. And in just the last few weeks, Iran and its proxy forces in the region have notched important victories.
While the U.S. isn’t losing the war, we aren’t winning it either. The longer it goes on, the worse position we’re in, and that includes Trump, who is too arrogant to acknowledge any of this.
Maybe Republicans will be forced to acknowledge how bad the president is for them after a bloodbath at the polls in November. Until then, it’s all just desperate, confusing talk.
Things can change and we should be skeptical about polls and all that, but it's looking more and more a case of not if a blue wave happens but where, how, and by how much.