The Atlantic: Trump Might Already Be a Lame Duck
Trump Might Already Be a Lame Duck
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/05/trump-lame-duck-midterms/687350/
https://archive.ph/hS1Lb#selection-609.0-609.34
Trump has never really cared about the Republican Party per se. He basks in its adulation, and it’s beneficial to him when the GOP controls Congress. But he’s never adhered to its orthodoxies or honored its heroes. Neither has he been willing to brook internal dissent in the name of the party’s big tent. He demands absolute fealty but displays little loyalty. He can’t help obsessing over his personal priorities—such as his proposed ballroom or his retribution campaign against perceived tormentors—to the detriment of his party’s political interests. On ballots, Donald Trump (MAGA) would be more accurate than Donald Trump (R).
With little more than five months until the midterms, that divergence between what Trump thinks is good for Trump and what is good for the Republican Party has never been wider. Trump’s priorities appear in many ways to be hurting the GOP’s chances in November, when it already faces stiff odds of keeping control of Congress. The war he started with Iran put Americans’ economic struggles front and center when the price of gasoline jumped. Any semblance of a national legislative agenda has evaporated as he pushes long-shot bills that his own party declines to take forward. And his obsession with construction in and around Washington, D.C., it is safe to say, doesn’t suggest a chief executive focused on the problems of everyday citizens.
Meanwhile, Trump has wielded his clout inside the party like a broadsword, endorsing primary opponents in races against incumbents who defy him. Trump has a perfect endorsement record this year: All 118 candidates—for House, Senate, and governors’ races—he has backed in primaries have won, according to a Fox News count (though many of these races were not really contested). Even though Trump’s power over his party appears at its pinnacle, many Republicans believe that the president has actually accelerated his own political decline. Many of those primary winners may struggle in November, darkening the GOP’s prospects for keeping control of Congress. And at least some of the defeated incumbents, who will serve on Capitol Hill until next January, now feel liberated to push back on what they dislike in Trump’s agenda. Others in the Senate who are not up for reelection are bitter about the president’s role in their colleagues’ defeat and have shown little interest in helping him pursue his personal-grievance campaign.
“The problem is he has nobody around him who is willing to tell him, ‘Sir, the stuff you are talking about is not possible, and you are shooting yourself in the foot every time,’” one Republican Senate adviser told us. “He essentially has lame-ducked himself in pursuit of retribution, and either the staff has failed to make a reasonable argument against these actions, or they have told him this and he is no longer listening.” Either way, the party loses.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Well, seriously though, with this R party I would never write trump off. Regardless of midterms, poll numbers or anything else, they are still capable of blindly obeying him. So we'll see.
Ratings don't matter. Nothing matters but the hate that identifies them.
To the end.
The Heritage Foundation are scumbags of the worst kind. They need to be arrested. 
… as the old saying goes.
With the ever present potential for ratfuckery and who-knows-what shenanigans, I’m not convinced that the upcoming midterms are in the bag for us.
