Gasoline, Iranamok, and the Midterms

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Things look bad for the GOP in part because the Iran War has gone bad.

Adie Tomer and Ben Swedberg at Brookings:

• The Iran conflict has raised U.S. gas prices by $1 per gallon, meaning the country’s median-earning, two-driver households will spend $70 more per month on gasoline—equal to about 1% of their post-tax income.
• Over 18 million U.S. households in the lowest-earning income quintile will be even more impacted, spending an extra 5% of their post-tax income on gasoline.
• Elevated gasoline prices will likely impact the midterm elections: The average constituent of a current Republican House member drives 26% more miles than the average constituent of a Democratic member.

Michael Birnbaum and Scott Clement at WP:

President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, amid growing economic pain and fears of terrorism as a result of the military campaign.

Sixty-one percent of Americans say that using military force against Iran was a mistake, with fewer than 2 in 10 Americans believing that the U.S. actions in Iran have been successful. About 4 in 10 say it has been unsuccessful, while another 4 in 10 say it is “too soon to tell.” The polling numbers indicate a broadly unpopular war effort and growing economic fallout at a time when the White House has been trying to convince Americans that they are better off under Trump than under Democrats.

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The historical comparison to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam — conflicts that polarized Americans in the moment and ultimately came to be seen as failures — is especially notable. It took years for the Iraq War, which was launched in March 2003, to reach the level of disapproval that Trump’s war has in just two months. Fifty-nine percent of Americans in mid-2006 said the war in Iraq was a mistake, while similar numbers felt the same about the war in Vietnam in the early 1970s, according to Gallup polls.

Americans were dying and getting wounded in far higher numbers in those eras, making the current opinions all the more striking. More than 50,000 Americans had died in Vietnam by 1971, when Gallup found that 61 percent of Americans said sending troops to fight there was a mistake. And by April 2006, the month before a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 59 percent of Americans said the Iraq War was a mistake, 2,402 U.S. troops had died there, and the U.S. military was embroiled in some of the bloodiest fighting of the conflict. The Pentagon has announced the deaths of 13 American service members so far in the war against Iran.

Maine Senate Race and the Big Picture

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills withdrew from the D Senate primary, leaving Graham Platner as the presumptive nominee to face Susan Collins in the fall.

Dan Merica and Matthew Choi at WP:

Mills’s decision — and the trajectory of her campaign — tells us a lot about this moment in politics. On paper, Mills was the undisputed favorite for the Democratic nominee. All Mainers knew her, many had voted for her multiple times, and she had the kind of track record that someone like Schumer, who was desperate to get her to run against Collins, thought would make her successful.

The opposite is true for Platner. He is a first-time candidate whose baggage is so significant that it would need to be checked, not carried on, when flying out of Bangor International Airport, including deleted Reddit comments that were dismissive of sexual assault and the Nazi symbol he had tattooed on his chest and later altered. Even some of his backers were skeptical of his staying power when he launched his campaign.

...

This race has taught political watchers a few things: Voters, especially Democrats who watched their party lose the 2024 presidential race against Trump, are angry with the politics of this moment and the status quo that got the nation to this point. That anger is so deep that candidates who look good on paper but hark back to the politics of yore are easily expendable for someone who, warts and all, makes them feel something.

Platner’s entire image embodies a slice of Maine that most people outside the state don’t understand. With his baggy sweatshirts, his ties to the water as the owner of an oyster farming business and even his gravelly voice, Platner clearly connected with Democrats on a deeper level. In a state that is known for judging people who are “from away,” Platner is notably not.

 Adam Wren with Dasha Burns at POLITICO quote Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM):

“I think there’s just a mood right now in the country where there’s so much economic pressure on hard-working regular folks, and you can either connect with that or not, and that’s how I’ve made decisions in these races: based on whether I think that person is going to do the best job of connecting with that frustration that regular people have right now.”

The deep unsettledness Heinrich describes is upsetting traditional Washington norms around electability, he told Playbook. “I just think who is electable is evolving, and our analysis of these races, and who’s going to be the strongest in a general, which is really what’s most important here, from a majority standpoint, needs to evolve with where the electorate is today.”

After all, that electorate is one that sided with a trail of controversial online comments from Platner regarding political violence, the military, police and more that drew months of attention and headlines.

“We’ve gotten over-analytical as a party, and sanitized and thinking about resumes,” Heinrich said. “None of these candidates are perfect, but I think there’s an expectation by voters today that if you seem perfect, you’re probably hiding something.”

 

Voting Rights And World War G

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog::

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, struck down a Louisiana congressional map that a group of voters who describe themselves as “non-African American” had challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. By a vote of 6-3, the justices left in place a ruling by a federal court that barred the state from using the map, which had created a second majority-Black district, in future elections. Although Wednesday’s ruling did not strike down a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, as Louisiana and the challengers had asked the court to do, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in her dissent (which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) that the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito had rendered the provision “all but a dead letter.”

Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns at POLITICO:

Excitable Republicans hailing the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act as the start of a golden age of neverending House majorities may need to pause and take breath.
...

How far can they go this year? With the ruling less than 24 hours old — and with the midterms just six months away — there’s uncertainty about what’s possible. But even in a maximalist scenario for Republicans, none of the experts Playbook spoke to believed this ruling will net the GOP more than a handful of House seats in November.

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ABOUT THAT UNCERTAINTY: Four big factors will ultimately decide the extent of further Republican redistricting this year.

1. TIME PRESSURE: This was an extraordinary moment for the Supreme Court to drop this ruling. (In Louisiana, absentee ballots for next month’s primaries have already been sent out.) Those Southern states keen to redistrict before November are in for an almighty scramble. What’s possible will vary state to state.

2. GOP APPETITE: Not every state-level Republican will want to redraw maps on short notice. Some may see 2028 as a more realistic target. Others may be reluctant to move mid-decade at all. Don’t forget that state legislatures in Republican-run Indiana and Democratic-run Maryland already resisted pressure to accept redrawn maps this cycle.

3. TRUMP: The president remains the decisive factor. How hard the White House pushes for new maps this cycle remains an unknown factor, but may prove critical in how many states move immediately. Trump sounded keen yesterday —- “I would think that they would want to do it,” he told reporters — but had only just learned about the ruling.

4. LEGALITY: This wasn’t the “clean kill” Republicans hoped for, watering down rather than completely gutting Section 2 of the VRA. Experts believe there are legal uncertainties still to be ironed out. Pro-VRA litigation — even if ultimately fruitless — could slow the process down.

Democrats will likely retaliate.  (And after the midterms, they might control more legislative chambers.)

Reid J. Epstein at NYT:

Some Democrats who backed new redistricting commissions in the 2010s now look back on those efforts as tying one hand behind their back for the future.

“It seemed like a pitchfork moment. It did seem good,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The lesson is that there are some states that are never going to be able to do this. If you’re not going to do it nationally, you’re going to have an unlevel playing field.”

The California and Virginia referendums to let Democrats seize redistricting power represented mea culpas about political idealism that could spread to other blue states.

One of the nation’s oldest redistricting commissions is in Washington State, where voters in 1983 adopted a provision to shift map-drawing power from elected officials. Now Shasti Conrad, the state’s Democratic Party chairwoman, said that it could be undone if Democrats were to flip a handful of seats in the State Legislature and seize supermajority control next year.

If they do, Ms. Conrad said, Washington voters are likely to be asked in 2027 to allow lawmakers to enact a new congressional map. Now, Democrats hold eight of 10 House seats in the state.

“People have been asking, ‘What can Washington do with redistricting?’” Ms. Conrad said. “They’re seeing other states like Virginia do it, so why can’t we?”

Democratic regrets over their redistricting hurdles tend to quickly morph into the party’s most reliable political stance over the last decade: blaming Mr. Trump.

Generic Ballot, April

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Things look bad for the GOP.

From Emerson College Polling:

The April 2026 Emerson College Polling national survey of likely voters finds Democrats have a 10-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot, leading Republicans 50% to 40%. Ten percent are undecided.

“Democrats’ strength is driven by an increase in support among Hispanic voters, women, and independents,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “Hispanics break for Democrats by a 35-point margin, 61% to 26%, women by 21 points, 55% to 34%, and independents by 19 points, 50% to 31%.”

President Trump holds a 40% job approval rating and 56% disapproval among likely voters. This is a two-point decrease in the president’s approval and a five-point increase in disapproval since March. Data was collected before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

“Trump is underwater among Hispanic voters, 70% to 29%, compared to this time last year when they were split: 44% disapproved and 41% approved,” Kimball said.

Voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, 56% to 38%, foreign policy, 54% to 39%, and immigration policy, 53% to 43%.

The Seashell Indictment

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  Just as an authoritarian leader would, he is abusing the legal process to punish his opponents.

Ryan J. Reilly, Monica Alba and Gary Grumbach at NBC:

The Justice Department secured an indictment Tuesday charging former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the life of President Donald Trump by posting a photo of seashells on Instagram.

The two-count indictment, posted Tuesday afternoon, alleges that a reasonable person would interpret the image of the shells, arranged to spell out “86 47,” as “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States."

Justice Department attorneys sought the indictment in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where Comey has a beach house and where he posted the beach scene photo. The Department of Homeland Security previously investigated Comey, who has long been a Trump target, over the May Instagram post, even subjecting him to questioning by the Secret Service.

Comey had deleted the post, saying it never occurred to him that it would be interpreted as being violent. "Eighty-six" is a term commonly used in restaurants when an item is sold out, and it's also informally used to mean "cancel" or "get rid of."

In a subsequent Instagram post in May, Comey said that he assumed the shells he saw on a beach walk were "a political message" and that he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," adding that he opposed violence "of any kind."

Comey said in a video posted after his indictment that he was innocent, that he was not afraid and that he still believed in the independent judiciary.

"They're back," he said of the Trump administration. "This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won't be the end of it."

Comey said it was very important to remember that "this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be."

Comey's lawyer had no immediate comment Tuesday. The White House referred all questions about the matter to the Justice Department.

At a news conference Tuesday, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not offer any evidence that Comey "knowingly and willfully" made a threat, which is a core component of the charges. Pressed by NBC News about how federal prosecutors could prove Comey's intent, Blanche said there had been a "tremendous amount of investigation" and that, in general, the Justice Department proves intent with witnesses and documents and potentially by examining the witness.

The WHCD Incident and Social Media

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the role of social media in American politics. Immediately after last night' incident at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, social media crackled with misinformation and partisan talking points.

Shooter at WH correspondence dinner is dead. pic.twitter.com/qEq7hjKYM8

— Debra Lea (@thedebralea) April 26, 2026

There was no security at WHCD. No metal detectors, pat downs, nothing. pic.twitter.com/ccWi6GWQ5n

— Debra Lea (@thedebralea) April 26, 2026

MAGA accounts tweet in unison about the need for a White House ballroom following WHCD incident pic.twitter.com/3acgko7qv3

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 26, 2026

Growing Doubts About Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments

Peter Baker at NYT (4/14):

President Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.

A series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements capped by his “a whole civilization will die tonight” threat to wipe Iran off the map last week and his head-spinning attack on the “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” pope on Sunday night have left many with the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.

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A Reuters/Ipsos poll in February found that 61 percent of Americans think Mr. Trump has become more erratic with age and just 45 percent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” down from 54 percent in 2023. Roughly half of Americans, 49 percent, deemed Mr. Trump too old to be president when asked in a YouGov poll in September, up from 34 percent in February 2024, while just 39 percent said he was not too old.

Dana Blanton at Fox News: 

A 56% majority of voters say the Trump administration has not been competent at managing the federal government, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday. Two in 10 Republicans join most independents (7 in 10) and Democrats (9 in 10) in holding that view, while 4 in 10 non-MAGA Republicans also agree.

Overall, 43% think the White House has been competent at running the government.

Those numbers aren’t unusual. Trump’s marks are in line with those for the Obama administration in 2015, when a high of 44% said it was competent, and the most recent ratings for the Biden administration, when 38% said it was competent in 2022 (that’s down from 51% competent in 2021).

"It may come as cold comfort to the White House, but there’s a tendency for voters to be harsh toward all presidents," says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who helps conduct Fox News polls with Democrat Chris Anderson. "The president’s numbers show how difficult it is to win independents and out-partisans."

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Another 55% say Trump does not have the mental soundness to serve. That’s up 7 points since late 2024 and near the high of 56% in 2023. In comparison, 65% said former President Biden lacked the mental soundness to be president around the time he dropped his re-election campaign in July 2024.