Having lived through a lot of military conflicts that initially enjoy bipartisan support, I thought it was important to note at New York that Trump’s Iran War is different:

As expected, on March 4 the U.S. Senate rejected Tim Kaine’s War Powers Act resolution ordering Donald Trump to cease attacks on Iran within 30 days unless he gets congressional authorization. It was basically a party-line vote, with (as is often the case) Rand Paul voting with Democrats for the resolution and John Fetterman voting with Republicans to kill it. The vote was mostly symbolic anyway since the House counterpart resolution was on the road to failure, too, and Trump could veto any war-powers measure that arrived at his desk.

But what the Senate vote did establish is that Trump can conduct his war on Iran without interference from Congress indefinitely — or more specifically, until the Pentagon runs out of money to prosecute it. And once again, his party is fine with giving this supposedly peacemaking president a blank check, even though he’s done a wretched job of providing any coherent rationale for going to war, any consistent set of war aims, or any clear timetable for winding it all down. The branch of the federal government with the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war seems ready to stand aside.

If the war does drag on long enough to exhaust the vast new funding Congress gave the Pentagon last year, there’s already talk of giving it more. Senator Lindsey Graham, credited (or blamed, by some) for talking Trump into a regime-change war against Iran, made that clear this earlier this week, notes Politico:

“During closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill … senior intelligence and defense officials described a vast military operation that many members anticipate will require extra funding on top of the nearly $1 trillion Congress has already given the military over the last year.

“’I think there will be a supplemental coming,’ Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters upon leaving his classified Senate briefing. ‘We’ll have to approve that.’”

Actually, they won’t “have to” approve additional funding. If the money runs out, suddenly Democrats will have some leverage over this war, just as they do over all spending that’s not provided for in a filibusterproof package like last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which by all accounts isn’t happening again prior to the midterms and won’t happen at all if Democrats flip control of the House in November). And despite their tendency to write blank checks for this administration, cries for more money for the war in Iran could arouse questions from conservative fiscal hawks, as a separate Politico report observes:

“Passing any emergency funding will be a major fight on Capitol Hill, with Democrats already decrying the lack of details about how much the military is spending and Republican fiscal hawks wary of more spending. Reuters reported Tuesday that Deputy ‌Defense ⁠Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work on a roughly $50 billion request.”

This does create a messaging problem for those Republican fiscal hawks who happily vote to let the president do whatever he wants with our country’s massive war machine but aren’t sure they want to pay for it. Just as importantly, a debate over war funding in Congress would provide a forum for Democratic questions about the purpose and duration of a conflict no one had reason to anticipate just a few weeks ago.

So for now, Republicans fully own this war, and share responsibility for the president’s decision to make it his top priority for the foreseeable future. It comes at the expense of other international obligations, and instead of any action on an “affordability agenda” his advisers and GOP lawmakers have been begging him to undertake ever since Democrats began winning off-year elections in 2025. Trump’s party better hope it all goes very well and ends very quickly.

From “CNN Data Guru Sees Warning Signs for GOP After ‘Dumpster Fire’” by Julia Owned at The Daily Beast:

CNN’s data guru said the closely watched primaries in Texas yielded a “tremendous” turnout for one party and a “dumpster fire” for another.

Harry Enten said 2.3 million Democratic voters in Texas came out for the hotly contested Senate primary between State Rep. James Talarico and House Rep. Jasmine Crockett, marking the highest-ever turnout at more than twice the average this century, with only 92 percent of the estimated vote in so far.

At New York, I offered some thoughts about the opportunity costs (and for Democrats, opportunities!) of Trump pursuing a war of choice in an election year:

Donald Trump’s “war of choice” against Iran is a big departure from his administration’s alleged determination to focus on improving the domestic economy and addressing concerns about affordability before crucial midterm elections this November. But aside from the president’s spectacular failure to stay on message, there is a more specific problem with the sudden lurch into a regional war in the Middle East. To the extent Trump had an actual affordability agenda (other than calling concerns about living costs “a hoax”), a central pillar was keeping energy prices low by demolishing any obstacles to maximum exploitation of fossil-fuel resources. Aside from the beneficial effect this might have on prices for other goods and services influenced by energy costs, the “drill baby drill” mentality was designed to reduce gasoline pump prices, one of the most visible inflation indicators from the perspective of regular folks.

Suddenly, the United States has produced an energy-price crisis for itself and for the whole world, Reuters reports:

“Traffic through the Strait ​of Hormuz was closed for a fourth day after Iran attacked five ships, choking off a key artery accounting for about 20% of global oil and LNG supply. …

“The conflict risks triggering a renewed spike in inflation that could choke off economic recovery in Europe and Asia if the war is prolonged in a region that accounts for just under a third of global ​oil production and almost a fifth of natural gas.

“Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, on Tuesday said it may be forced to cut production by more than three million barrels per day ​in a few days if oil tankers cannot move freely to loading points, according to two Iraqi oil officials.”

While other countries face the most dire immediate economic consequences from a war that Trump is now projecting to last a month or more (“whatever it takes,” to be precise), it’s about to affect Americans too:

“American motorists could soon pay more at the pump amid spiking oil prices due to the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran, with experts predicting gasoline prices could rise sharply this week.

“The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, a type of oil primarily produced in the U.S., jumped 6.2% on Monday to $71.19 per barrel, according to data from FactSet. Brent crude, the international benchmark, surged nearly 9% to $79.31 per barrel on Monday, its highest point in more than a year.

“Gas prices in the U.S. could start moving higher as soon as Monday, according to GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan, who predicted that some gas stations could be charging as much as 30 cents more per gallon by the end of the week.”

And the indirect effects could be even more severe, as Canadian energy expert Rory Johnston told our own Benjamin Hart:

“I think if this lasts a couple more days, we’ll see it reflected at the gas pump in terms of overall gas prices. Diesel will be even more acutely affected. I think the big impact will be on freight and shipping rates, and that’s going to hit consumers more on the price of produce, the price of random consumer goods. That’s the type of stuff that diesel will complicate more. So I think you will see an impact at the price of the pumps, but the biggest impact won’t be as visible to consumers immediately. It will take a while to work through the supply chain.”

As part of their furious spin about a war that’s already unpopular outside Trump’s Republican base, administration gabbers are arguing that Trump’s expansion of fossil-fuel production is giving him the strategic flexibility to wreck global oil markets without catastrophic consequences, notes the New York Times:

“The Trump administration has said that it has more leeway to act aggressively in the Middle East because the world is flush with oil and gas, thanks in part to record U.S. production, and has less to fear than it once did from energy price shocks.

“The ongoing war in Iran could put that theory to the test.”

While it may be comforting to Americans to be told they won’t be paying as much for this war as they might have had Trump not impatiently brushed aside environmental fears about fossil fuels, it doesn’t explain the decision to subordinate economic policy to another presidential military adventure. Yes, MAGA true believers are buying Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear-weapon and missile programs posed an immediate threat to the United States, but other Americans aren’t at the moment. So his decision go in this radical direction sure looks like a conscious choice to subordinate the daily concerns of his own people to a globalist agenda and an alliance with Israel that already troubles a majority of Americans.

Even as Republicans cheer this war, Democrats have an obligation to discuss the agenda being blown up by the explosions in Iran.

Ben Kamisar writes in “Poll: Majority of voters disapprove of how Trump has handled Iran” at NBC News: “A majority of registered voters disapprove of how President Donald Trump is handling the situation in Iran and believe the U.S. shouldn’t have taken military action against the country, according to a new NBC News poll…Though support for the White House is mostly polarized along party lines, a small but notable slice of Republicans is unhappy with the decision to launch a war in the Middle East. There was also a significant split between younger and older voters in the early days of the attacks…Fifty-four percent of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, compared with 41% who approve and 5% who say they either don’t have an opinion or aren’t sure. A similar share, 52%, say the U.S. should not have taken the military action, while 41% say it should have and 7% say they aren’t sure…The poll is an initial snapshot of how American voters are digesting a major new military endeavor launched by a president who campaigned against past “endless wars” when he sought to return to the White House in 2024…“This is a lower level of support than in most of the major military action that we’ve seen,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who conducted the poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates…The results show clear, if expected, partisan polarization over the issue: An overwhelming majority of Democrats, 89%, say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran. Among independents, 58% agree…The new NBC News poll also found a deep divide over the Iran war by age, with younger voters far more sour on the strikes than older voters…Two-thirds of voters under 35 say the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran, a sentiment shared by 53% of those ages 35 to 49. A slim majority, 52%, of those 50 to 64 support the strikes, while those 65 and older are split…There is also an educational divide in the survey — an increasingly common feature of polarized American politics. Voters without college degrees are about evenly split over the strikes, while those with bachelor’s or postgraduate degrees overwhelmingly believe the U.S. shouldn’t have struck Iran.”

A new CNN poll found that “59% of Americans disapprove of Iran strikes and most think a long-term conflict is likely,” as Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy write at CNN Politics: “Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of the US decision to take military action in Iran, as most say a long-term military conflict between the two nations is likely, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS…The poll, fielded shortly after US and Israeli attacks launched the war with Iran, finds majorities express doubts about President Donald Trump’s handling of the situation. Most say they lack trust in Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran, with 60% saying they do not think he has a clear plan for handling the situation and 62% saying he should get congressional approval for any further military action…Just over a quarter (27%) feel that the US made enough of an effort at diplomacy with Iran before using military force, with 39% saying the US did not try hard enough at diplomacy first and 33% unsure…The poll was conducted Saturday and Sunday, after news reports that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, had died in the attacks and largely before reports emerged of the deaths of six US troops…Overall, 59% of Americans disapprove of the initial decision to strike Iran, with 41% approving. Strong disapproval (31%) roughly doubles strong approval (16%). A marginally higher share (44%) say they favor the US trying to overthrow the Iranian government, with 56% opposed to that…Just 12%, though, would favor sending US ground troops into Iran, while 60% would oppose it and 28% are unsure…Most, 54%, say Iran will become more of a threat to the US as a result of this military action, with just 28% saying the strikes will make Iran less of a threat.”

In “Senate Republicans vote down legislation to halt Iran war in Congress’ first vote on the conflict,” Stephen Groves. Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick write at Associated Press: “Senate Republicans voted down an effort Wednesday to halt President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, demonstrating early support for a conflict that has rapidly spread across the Middle East with no clear U.S. exit strategy…The legislation, known as a war powers resolution, failed on a 47-53 vote tally. The vote fell mostly along party lines, though Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky voted in favor and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against…The war powers resolution gave lawmakers an opportunity to demand congressional approval before any further attacks are carried out. The vote forced them to take a stand on a war shaping the fate of U.S. military members, countless other lives and the future of the region…“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”…Six U.S. military members were killed over the weekend in a drone strike in Kuwait…Trump has also not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops. He has said he is hoping to end the bombing campaign within a few weeks, but his goals for the war have shifted from regime change to stopping Iran from developing nuclear capabilities to crippling its navy and missile programs…“We should be careful about opening a door into chaos in the Middle East when we cannot see the other side of it,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said in a solemn floor speech after the vote concluded…“Nobody gets to hide and give the president an easy pass or an end-run around the Constitution,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat leading the war powers resolution.” In the House of Representatives, several members had something to say about the war. “One of them was Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. “I learned when I was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, that when elites in Washington bang the war drums, pound their chest, talk about the costs of war and act tough, they’re not talking about them doing it, they’re not talking about their kids,” Crow said. “They’re talking about working class kids like us.”

In Texas, State Rep. James Talarico won the marquee Democratic primary contest for the nomination to run for U.S. Senate against  the Republican nominee, who will be designated in a run-off election.  Democrats have reason to hope that their party will be unified for the midterm elections. Kayla Guo reports at The Texas Tribune, via click2houston.com, that Talarico’s opponent in the primary election, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett “said she had called Talarico to congratulate him on winning the nomination, and she suggested she would remain involved to boost the party in November. “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person,” Crockett said in her statement. “This is about the future of all 30 million Texans and getting America back on track. With the primary behind us, Democrats must rally around our nominees and win. I’m committed to doing my part and will continue working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.” Guo adds, “A Democrat has not won a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since 1988. And while Texas is not on national Democrats’ list of targets to retake the Senate, party leaders in the state see a prime opportunity this year to finally flip Texas, hoping that backlash to the Trump administration, a brutal Senate primary on the Republican side and the possibility of facing hard-right, scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton will all set the stage for an upset…The contest at the top of the Democratic ticket, meanwhile, drove over 1.5 million primary voters to the polls over the 11-day early voting period, more than doubling early turnout during the last midterm primary election in 2022, according to VoteHub.” A couple of lessons from the contest: 1. Money is still important. Talarico way outspent Crockett. Tasha Telaperas reports at Axios that Talarico’s campaign spent 7.6 million in advertising, plus he befitted by a couple million spent by PACs, compared to $845K spent by Crockett for TX. 2. Court the Latino vote in TX, as did Talarico, who “formed an alliance with Bobby Pulido, a Tejano music star,” who also won his own Democratic primary for TX-15. Talarico’s brand of Christianity, which called out cruel treatment of immigrants as unchristian, probably also helped him with Latinos and liberals. No doubt some voters liked Crockett, but believed Talarico’s moderate liberal tone had a better chance to win against the Republican nominee this year. Although Crockett didn’t win the primary, she could still become America’s most influential Democrat in the 2026 election, if she galvanizes November turnout in support of Talarico in Dallas and Houston — and especially if  Democrats win majority control of the U.S. Senate as a result.

Some insights from “Cornyn, Paxton in ugly runoff: 5 takeaways from Texas, North Carolina primaries” by Caroline Vakill and Julia Mueller at The Hill:

Texas Republicans are bracing for an ugly Senate runoff, while Democrats wait to see the outcome of its contest for the upper chamber, with primary season in full swing.

Voters in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas headed to the polls Tuesday to kick start the 2026 midterm cycle. Texas held competitive primaries for Senate, state attorney general and a number of House districts, which included several awkward Democratic matchups.

The Tar Heel State, meanwhile, weighed in on the primaries to succeed retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in addition to a heated House race between an establishment Democrat and younger progressive challenger…Republican runoffs were also projected in Texas’s 9^th, 23rd and 35^th Congressional Districts.

Vakil and Mueller note further:

In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) are projected to head into a May 26 runoff. Cornyn, Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) vied for the GOP nod, but no candidate was able to win more than half the vote outright to avoid a runoff on Tuesday…Republicans are already bracing for an ugly multi-month brawl, with tens of millions of dollars already spent in the GOP primary thus far…  “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn told supporters at his watch party, according to CBS Austin.

Meanwhile, the Senate Democratic primary between Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and state Rep. James Talarico had not been called as of 1:15 a.m. EST Wednesday. Talarico had more than 50 percent with about over 75 percent of the votes reported, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Vakil and Mueller add:

Litigation in Dallas County over extended voting on Tuesday roiled the Democratic contest, raising questions about whether a final tally would emerge on Election Day…The Texas Supreme Court’s decision to temporarily pause a lower court’s ruling allowing an extension of voting hours in Dallas County has not only stirred the Senate Democratic primary, but is also impacting a prominet House contest for the party…Dallas County has separate polling locations for both political parties, and confusion over this practice sparked calls from Democrats for the country to extend voting hours for Texans seeking to cast their vote at the correct polling location…A Texas judge allowed voting to be extended two more hours in the county before The Lone Star State’s highest court temporarily halted that decision, asking that any votes cast after 8 p.m. ET be separated from the final tally.

But it wasn’t all abut Texas, as Vakil and Mueller add:

The picture was less murky in North Carolina, where former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley were projected to win their respective primaries for Senate early Tuesday. The Tar Heel State is seen as a key pickup opportunity for Democrats given Tillis’s retirement.

Further,

Democratic turnout surged in Texas and North Carolina, adding to signs of the party’s midterm momentum…In Texas, early turnout in the Democratic primary outpaced Republicans and exceeded totals from recent cycles, energized by the marquee Senate race…  Roughly 1.4 million voters cast ballots in the Democratic primary during early voting, which ended Friday, according to unofficial data from the Texas secretary of state’s office. Across the aisle, roughly 1.2 million voted early in the GOP election…In 2018, when Democrats came within just a couple points of flipping another Senate seat, roughly 1.1 million turned out across early and Election Day voting in the party’s primary, compared to 1.5 million in that year’s Republican contest.

More here.

From “Iran conflict could worsen America’s affordability crisis” by Courtenay Brown at Axios: “The Iran conflict abroad threatens to worsen the affordability crisis at home, as an oil price spike ripples through to pump prices Americans see every day…Why it matters: This has become one defining tension of President Trump’s second term — foreign policies that could undercut core domestic promises to lower prices for American consumers, just months ahead of midterm elections…That tension has been on display with global trade: Trump imposed steep import taxes aimed at leveling the trade playing field, but the result has been higher goods prices for consumer staples…The big picture: Gas prices have been a deflationary tailwind for Trump. Prices in January were down more than 7% from a year ago, putting downward pressure on overall inflation…Turmoil in the Middle East could reverse that trend, though it is still unclear how long any price surge will last, or how steep it might be…A $10 rise in crude prices translates into a spike of roughly 24 cents a gallon, according to RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas…Zoom in: Gas prices are plastered everywhere, making them the most powerful political and psychological signal about the cost of living. Any spike in prices would compound the pressure on Americans’ budgets and further sour their perceptions about the economy…For the past half-century, when gas prices rose consumers’ overall inflation expectations have followed suit. (That link broke down last year: gas prices declined but consumers still expected higher inflation as a result of high tariffs.)” More here.

E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why “Why Trump’s Fearmongering Is Falling Flat With Voters” at The New York Times: In his State f the Union speech “Mr. Trump demonstrated something too often overlooked: He can win when he’s not the incumbent and can go on the attack (2016, 2024), but he leads his party to defeat when he has to govern and fails to deliver (2018, 2020)…The lesson for Democrats here is obvious: They need to get over their terror of Mr. Trump’s assumed magic and mastery — they’re ebbing — and their anxiety that the voters who decide elections share his contempt for so many of our fellow Americans. For the next eight months, Democrats must shelve their affection for gloomy self-analysis and needless arguments over which word to pick between “oligarchy” and “authoritarianism.”…Between now and November, their task is to keep the country focused on Mr. Trump’s failures on the issues that elected him: The economy (especially prices) and immigration. They are failures bred by what everyone outside the “Make America Great Again” base knows: Mr. Trump reserves his energies for his own interests and those of his allies. Everyone else — a majority of our fellow citizens — amounts either to an extra he occasionally brings onto the set for his performances or a villain he invokes to make himself the hero of the story.”

Dionne continues, “This is why the Democratic response to Tuesday’s speech, from Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, was in exactly the right key. She summed up this year’s midterm elections in three questions: “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?” That’s it. That’s the campaign. For good measure, Ms. Spanberger explained how voters can tell that Mr. Trump’s focus is not on working Americans. “Who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions and the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress?” she asked. “He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented.”…As important, she went straight at Mr. Trump’s cruelty, confident that most Americans don’t share it. She reframed the immigration debate in one sentence: “Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed — not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.” Repair something that’s not working? Yes. Rip “nursing mothers away from their babies”? No.”

Dionne adds, “If there’s one thing Democrats in the center and on the left agree on, it’s that the party has to reverse its declines among working-class voters. Mr. Trump is making their job a lot easier. The president used to be quite good at hiding his solicitude toward the very wealthy who contribute to his political and personal coffers. Not anymore. How many clips and photos have you seen of Mr. Trump happily hobnobbing with the superrich? And how many with men and women toiling on assembly lines or in warehouses? His alignment with billionaires is so obvious that even his loyal white working-class supporters are beginning to break away…The left’s anti-oligarchy messaging is often seen as conflicting with the anti-authoritarian, pro-institution messaging of more moderate Democrats. But Mr. Trump is leading an increasingly authoritarian government dedicated, above all, to his own narrow interests and to those of very wealthy people who help him achieve his ends…To distract attention from this battle, Mr. Trump regularly tries to provoke hostility toward the groups he hates. Maybe he could pull it off if Americans were happier about the economy. But since so many feel let down, the message of his diatribes is that the only thing he can deliver after 13 months in office is fear itself. It’s a tired act. A presidency built on reruns is rapidly losing its audience.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of major works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Can Democrats be effective populists? They’d certainly like to believe so. They’d particularly like to believe that if they turn up the volume high enough on economic populism, they can neutralize Trumpian populism and direct anger at the true elites who preside over a broken system. For example, Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate, James Talarico, generally seen as the Democrats’ best shot for flipping that state’s Republican-held Senate seat, has this pitch:

Similar pitches are being made by many Democratic candidates and office-holders, including Graham Platner of Maine and the party’s shining new star, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. What they have in common is a complete lack of interest in addressing what Talarico refers to as “the culture wars.” The real issues are economic; the culture stuff isn’t important (“a smokescreen”) and not negotiable anyway.

Can the Democrats get away with this? Can an economics-only populism really succeed in a populist era where anger at elites is so widespread and so many voters see the system as completely broken?

The answer is no. This narrowly-defined populism is doomed to fail.

An aggressive economic populist pitch by itself is not a get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged. It’s just a comforting myth for Democrats who don’t want to make hard choices.

Working-class voters are acutely aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. For the working class, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same. These voters harbor deep resentment toward the cultural gatekeepers who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are.

This is a bitter pill for most Democratic elites to swallow. In today’s America, they are the “Establishment” even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the “Man” and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are targets of populist anger is a central reason their populist pitch fails—and will fail—to get traction among the working class. Call it the “old wine in new bottles” problem—these voters hear the economic populist words but they sense that behind them is the same old Democratic Party with the same old elites and the same old cultural priorities.

It therefore follows that Democrats’ attempts to pose as populists will fail to convince without a strong dose of cultural populism. Unless Democrats are willing to align with populist sentiment on cultural issues and therefore confront their own elites and associated NGOs and institutions, working-class voters will not take them seriously as populists, viewing them merely as an alternative set of elites.

And an alternative set of elites who do a very poor job governing where they have the most power. Here again Democrats’ purely economic populism falls short. Deep blue states and cities are notoriously reluctant to confront the NGO-activist-industrial complex and the congeries of interest groups, including public sector unions, who drive up costs and make it near-impossible to govern efficiently and preserve social order. For ordinary voters, this amounts to siding with the Democrats’ own elites against the people.

No wonder that even with the thermostatic reaction against Trump and his administration’s excesses and failures, Democrats as a party are still not deriving commensurate benefits. As my Liberal Patriot colleague Michael Baharaeen notes:

As Baharaeen also notes, the one group that has moved most meaningfully to the left over the period is white college graduates (by 12 points). This group of course heavily populates the very elites that “populist” Democrats are so reluctant to confront.

Democrats will eventually have to take on cultural populism as part of their brand or just give up on ever being a working-class party again. Simple economic populism is hopelessly inadequate. The voters they need to reach overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration is wrong and should be deterred and penalized not indulged. They believe crimes should be punished, public safety is sacrosanct, and police and policing are vital necessities. They believe, with Martin Luther King, that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” and therefore oppose discrimination on the basis of race no matter who benefits from that discrimination. They believe biological sex is real, spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved, and medical treatments like drugs and surgery are serious interventions that should not be available simply on the basis of declared “gender identity,” especially for children.

So where are the Democrats’ cultural populists who are willing to robustly defend these sentiments? Essentially non-existent. That bodes poorly for the party’s long term prospects and likely ensures a long life for right populism to the country’s detriment.

After recovering from the dull headache induced by watching Trump’s State of the Union Address, I gave some thought at New York to the growing resistance of MAGA folk to any “pivot to affordability” prior to the midterms.

Virtually every Republican political strategist agrees that the economy, and particularly the cost of living, will be the dominant issue in the 2026 midterms. Convincing swing voters that Donald Trump is decisively bringing back the best-ever economy and lowering the price of essential goods and services — which he promised to do a thousand times during his 2024 campaign — is the key to the Republican Party’s hopes of defying the odds and hanging on to control of Congress in November. It’s reinforced by many polls that show the economy is the No. 1 concern for voters, and that there’s a great deal of anxiety, some of it generated by the rise of AI and the immense power of billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, that goes beyond prices at the gas pump and the grocery store.

But just as the midterm campaign season begins in earnest, Trump’s MAGA movement, and perhaps Trump himself, are showing signs that they really don’t want to dwell on the economy beyond braying that it’s better than ever, blaming Democrats for every problem, and implying that unhappy Americans are ingrates.

Immigration has always been the favorite issue of Trump’s base. What made Trump’s 2024 comeback magical to his most loyal supporters was that he finally stopped dillydallying around with border walls and travel bans and pledged to deport every single undocumented immigrant in the country, and maybe some documented immigrants as well, as part of an effort to purify a country cursed by diversity.

A year ago, the immigration issue was a net positive for Trump as border crossings plunged. But it soon became obvious that his mass-deportation program would go far beyond the “worst of the worst,” or the violent criminals Trump and J.D. Vance liked to talk about, to encompass millions of peaceful, productive people working in farms and factories and hospitals. Many were legally in the country under refugee protections the administration soon revoked. Some were small children, others even citizens, including bystanders who had the temerity to get in the way. And the whole enterprise was being supervised by the cartoon villains Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, deploying a huge army of hastily assembled and poorly trained masked thugs. When immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota and virtually the entire administration lied about it, the issue turned sharply negative for Trump and the GOP. Hence the demand in Republican ranks for an “affordability pivot” that would displace images of blood in the streets with hopes of relief from high prices and poor job security.

Then came the president’s State of the Union address, in which he churned through the affordability passages in a sleep-inducing manner and only came to life when he could return to savaging immigrants and the Democrats who defended them. And now a reenergized MAGA movement is waging a two-front war to keep immigration front and center in the national political discourse.

First, Trump supporters are running ads capitalizing on the Trump SOTU stunt in which he demanded that Democrats (who had agreed to a strategy of seated, “silent defiance” during the speech) stand up to validate a contrived choice between protecting “American citizens, not illegal aliens.” The big narrative line on the first ad I saw was: DEMOCRATS ARE FOR ILLEGAL ALIEN CRIMINALS.

We will see these images again and again in individual and partywide GOP campaigns between now and November, suggesting that Democratic protests over ICE tactics and mass-deportation overreach are just a veil for a fundamental disloyalty to the country. This was a big part of Trump’s 2024 campaign narrative, and it’s back with a vengeance now.

Second, MAGA influencers are joining Trump in insisting that congressional Republicans make promoting the SAVE Act, their top, and perhaps only, priority this year. The bill would deny voter registration to anyone who cannot produce very specific documents proving citizenship. Democrats universally oppose this legislation, partly because it addresses a completely imaginary noncitizen-voting plague and partly because up to 21 million U.S. citizens don’t have ready access to the documentation it requires. If imposed in the brief period prior to the midterms, the legislation would upturn voter rolls and suppress millions of valid votes.

SAVE Act proponents understand perfectly well that it will never see the light of day in the Senate. But they are nonetheless insisting that Senate Republicans keep it on the floor for weeks, maybe even months, in an effort to force Democrats to stop it via a “talking filibuster” that would have to go on and on. Senate Republican leader John Thune is beside himself about these demands, Punchbowl News reports:

“[House Speaker Mike] Johnson has met with and boosted MAGA influencers like Scott Presler, who are leading the charge.

“The online vitriol has become so heated that all of Thune’s social media posts — even one congratulating a Korean War hero awarded the Medal of Honor — are regularly spammed with calls to pass the SAVE America Act, some using threatening language.

“Thune has also been on the receiving end of public and private lobbying from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), both on X and during senators-only GOP Conference meetings.”

Advocates for the SAVE Act invariably cite polls showing strong bipartisan support for some sort of voter ID (which most states require anyway prior to voter registration or initial voting) that’s far short of what this legislation would demand. It’s likely that if Republicans insist on a monthslong national debate on the subject, support for this specific kind of voter ID would steadily shrink. But any way you slice it, a day spent ventilating about the completely made-up noncitizen-voting scourge (and all the attendant conspiracy theories and election denials justified by this myth) is a day when Republicans are not addressing affordability. That might be fine with MAGA activists, but GOP candidates in purple states or marginal districts will surely think otherwise. Aside from the peril associated with ceding economic issues to Democrats, a nation riveted on immigration is going to be reminded again and again that the Trump administration is carrying out mass deportation in a manner that large majorities of Americans are rejecting as cruel and unnecessary. It’s a lose-lose proposition for the GOP, but MAGA does not care.

• Boston Review is holding a forum on”How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism,” which features contributions by Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbaugh, along with:
• Cori Bush
• Amanda Litman
• Matthew Yglesias
• G. Elliott Morris
• Julia Serano
• Eric Rauchway
• Suzanne Mettler & Trevor E. Brown
• Thomas Ferguson
• Timothy Shenk
• Jared Abbott & Milan Loewer
• Jenifer Fernandez Ancona
• Lily Geismer
• Danielle Wiggins
• William A. Galston
• Henry Burke

Here’s a teaser from William A. Galston’s response: “I am sympathetic to Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach’s argument that the term “moderation” conceals more than it reveals and threatens to mislead party reformers who seek to strengthen the Democratic Party as a bulwark against autocracy. I fear, however, that much of their argument is open to the same criticism.The authors lead off by intimating that Kamala Harris might have won with a less moderate campaign. Maybe so, but they offer no evidence. In reality, she lost for several reasons: because she was the successor to an unpopular president from whom she did nothing to separate herself; because the issue of reproductive rights, on which she bet heavily, receded in importance compared to the 2022 midterm elections; because the Biden administration was seen (rightly, in my view) as having botched the two issues—inflation and immigration—whose salience rose the most relative to 2020; because her campaign did not even try to counter Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” attack ad that served as effective synecdoche for a host of unpopular progressive stances on cultural issues; because Trump was seen as a stronger leader more likely to bring needed change and better equipped to handle a crisis; and finally, because messaging about democracy being “at risk” did not work the way her campaign expected. Some 73 percent of voters regarded democracy as “threatened,” but Trump beat Harris by 50 to 48 in this group. He did even better among the 4 in 10 voters who saw democracy as “very threatened,” carrying them by 52 to 47.

Could Harris have overcome the multiple handicaps with which she began? The most obvious road not taken was a bold step to distinguish herself from the president she served. Those with long memories will recall that after Vice President Hubert Humphrey broke with President Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, he nearly erased the fifteen-point edge that Richard Nixon enjoyed in late September of 1968 and almost caught him at the finish line. Would a similar break—on immigration, say—have helped Harris? We will never know…”

• More here.

Looking back at the last Trump Midterms of 2018, and ahead to 2026, a destabilizing possibility occurred to me that I discussed at New York:

This week, there’s been a lot of attention focused on the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to its stunning decision blowing up the rationale for Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. In his bitter remarks about the decision, the president went out of his way to praise dissenters Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh.

It’s Alito who could make some additional political news later this year. To understand why, you must step back to 2018, when Trump faced his first midterm election as president and the dynamics looked grim. He had lost the popular vote in 2016. His job-approval ratings had been underwater from the second week of his term in office. One of his two big first-term initiatives, legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, had ended in dismal failure. And unsurprisingly, his party wound up losing 40 net U.S. House seats and control of that chamber.

But at the same time, Republicans actually posted a net gain of two U.S. Senate seats and increased their majority from a fragile 51-to-49 margin to a more robust 53 to 47. Why? Well, according to many GOP spin-meisters, it was to a significant degree owing to “Kavanaugh’s revenge,” as CNBC reported at the time:

“Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., both credited the so-called Kavanaugh effect for Republican victories in key Senate races against red-state Democrats.

“Graham, in a thread of tweets Wednesday morning, said that the constituents of those Democratic incumbents who voted against Kavanaugh ‘held them responsible for being part of a despicable smear campaign orchestrated by the left.’

“The ‘#KavanaughEffect,’ Graham said, should be renamed ‘#KavanaughsRevenge’ …

“Republicans in critical states for the party were ‘highly offended’ by the Democrats’ conduct during the confirmation proceedings, McConnell said, and the fallout from the process acted ‘like an adrenaline shot for GOP turnout.”

Graham, as you may recall from his feral attacks on Senate Democrats during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, chaired the Judiciary Committee during that confirmation fight and contended that accusations of sexual assault against the soon-to-be Justice were blatantly unfair — nay, villainous. So it was natural for him to claim the hearings enraged both Republicans and swing voters and saved the Senate (an interpretation that also inflated his own importance, as it happens).

It was a dubious interpretation of the midterms at the time, but the important thing is that many Republicans believed it. And that could feed a parallel development going into the 2026 midterms: a possible retirement by Kavanaugh’s senior and very right-wing colleague Samuel Alito.

Alito has been on retirement watch for a while now. He’s 75 years old (and will turn 76 on April 1) and recently celebrated 20 years on the Supreme Court. And as the intrepid Court watcher Joan Biskupic noted in 2024 after he twice lost an initial majority on a case, Alito’s influence within the Court has been slipping, leaving him visibly frustrated:

“Alito has long given off an air of vexation, even as he is regularly in the majority with his conservative ideology. But the frustration of the 74-year-old justice has grown increasingly palpable in the courtroom. He has seldom faced this level of internal opposition.

“Overall, Alito wrote the fewest leading opinions for the court this term, only four, while other justices close to his 18-year seniority had been assigned (and kept majorities for) seven opinions each.

“His unique year in chambers was matched by the extraordinary public scrutiny for his off-bench activities, including lingering ethics controversies and a newly reported episode regarding an upside-down flag that had flown at this home in January 2021, after the pro–Donald Trump attack on the US Capitol.”

There is also evidence that Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, would like him to step down from the bench so that both of them can openly express their political opinions.

Thus, there’s been speculation, mostly from the political left, that an Alito retirement could happen before or immediately after the current Supreme Court term. The Nation’s legal expert Elie Mystal, then Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Michael Joseph Stern, drew attention to the odd timing of a new Alito book. Here’s the clue on which Mystal focused:

“[T]he book is scheduled to be released October 6, 2026. That’s a curious date. The Supreme Court starts its 2026–27 term on October 5, the first Monday of October. Alito’s book is set to drop the next day.

“It sure feels like Alito doesn’t plan on having a real job the Tuesday his book launches and instead thinks he’ll be free to run around the country promoting it.”

There’s also a political reason Alito might want to step down at this particular moment. He clearly cares about his legacy on the Court and wants to solidify the conservative majority for which he and Justice Clarence Thomas have served as the point of an ideological spear. Trump is leaving office at the beginning of 2029, and it’s possible Republicans will lose their Senate majority in November. Confirmation of anyone remotely like Alito would be impossible with a Democratic Senate and difficult with a smaller majority than Republicans currently enjoy.

Add in the “Kavanaugh’s revenge” theory of 2018, and you can see why Republicans might really want to press for an Alito retirement and then a good, savage Senate confirmation fight over a controversial nominee to succeed him, possibly 40-somethings like Andrew Oldham or Emil Bove, both Trump-nominated Circuit Court judges. If Alito was to retire at the end of the current term (perhaps announcing the retirement earlier), then the shape of the future Supreme Court could become a base-mobilizing issue for the GOP, all right — but potentially also one for Democrats.

That leads us back to the idea that poor Kavanaugh’s persecution by Democrats “saved the Senate” in 2018. The alternative explanation is that Republicans had an insanely favorable Senate landscape that year in which three Democrats who lost (Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri) were doomed from the get-go by the rapidly rightward trends of their states, and a fourth, Florida’s Bill Nelson, lost by an eyelash in another red-trending state after being massively outspent by then-Governor Rick Scott.

Even if you believe the Kavanaugh fight provided Republicans with a net benefit in 2018, there’s no reason to assume the same thing will happen in 2026, a year in which the Senate landscape is far less favorable to the GOP than it was in 2018.

But between Alito’s motives for retiring, the GOP’s fear that it could lose control of the confirmation process, and the “Kavanaugh’s revenge” mythology about 2018, don’t be surprised if there’s a Supreme Court fight this summer or fall. Democrats would be happy to bid farewell to the author of the infamous decision reversing Roe v. Wade. Even if it hurts rather than helps their midterm prospects, Alito’s right-wing fans will be happy to welcome a younger version of the cranky conservative onto a life-time seat on the Court.