The Wave Trump Doesn't See Coming

Just before Labor Day, when the campaigns shift into a higher gear, I don't want to jinx anything, but I'll make the prediction: In the November 3 midterms, voters are going to put Donald Trump through the meat grinder. The smart consensus has embarrassed itself before. In 1998, everyone agreed that Bill Clinton's Democrats would lose 20 or 30 seats after the affair involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky. In the end, they gained five because the public despised the morality police around Newt Gingrich more than Clinton's very human weakness. The same smell is in the air today, and for Republicans it smells worse than their already grim prospects.

Three groups will matter. The first are people who have always seen Trump as a fascist thug and a fool and would still go vote even if Homer Simpson were the only one running against him. They are fired up, and there are millions of them.

The second are swing voters, naive enough to believe he could lower prices and fix the economy. He never had that magic wand, and by now they know it. If only they had known it back in November 2024. Of those who go to the polls, 80 or 90 percent will vote against him and his party. The third group are the betrayed MAGA faithful. He would lift the economy and finally crack down on immigration; the real warmonger had supposedly been Kamala Harris all along, while he would keep the peace.

That protective wall has been crushed like a grape under a tire. The economy stayed tough. On immigration, he went too far even for these people, and Joe Rogan reportedly compared ICE to the Gestapo this year. The Iran war did the rest, an obviously foolish campaign the country is losing, launched at Benjamin Netanyahu's urging, as the Israeli prime minister himself reportedly bragged on his own country's television. The young male audience online is turning away too, as Sidney Blumenthal recently described in detail.

The first two groups will flood to the polls and vote against every Republican. The third will stay home, discouraged, and it is precisely their absence that will make the difference. There is no defense against that kind of surge. A skilled politician could reframe the picture, especially since most people are only now, at the end of summer, really starting to pay attention. Could he still turn it around before the holiday? He may have the time, and he certainly has the money, which he apparently would rather hoard for himself and well beyond this year. What he does not have is the mind for it. His brain floats in a world where Trump is never wrong, and that cocoon once worked to his advantage, back when law firms and elite universities trembled before him and he could still force his own reality into existence. This time, reality is hitting back.