Midterms

The midterm elections are still 6 weeks out, but the news cycle is starting to really focus on them. We don’t have any meaningful races in Colorado, so there hasn’t been much interest, but the races at the federal level are a different beast.

I’m going to share my extremely cold take: the Republicans are screwed.

The best analysis I read broke it down like this:

1. Donald Trump won the 2024 election largely on a “Cost of Living” mandate. People remembered the economy of 2019, where gas was cheap and wages were riding, and were sick of the high prices of the Covid inflation. No matter your thoughts on Bidenomics, people wanted less pain at the grocery store
2. Trump comes in, instantly creates the Tariffs which may have long-term gain (doubt), but certainly have short term pain. Waved away by supporters as TDS
3. Trump launches the dumbest possible war in Iran, causing prices to spike. Diesel at $6+ a gallon, grocery prices are up, everything that is not AI is down
4. While all of this is happening, Trump enriched himself with crypto scams, and spent a MASSIVE amount of time
   1. Hosting an MMA tournament in the White House
   2. Building a ballroom
   3. Complaining about the Reflection Pond
5. The biggest strength (and weakness) of Trump was his personality, but the 2016 version of Trump where he was essentially doing standup comedy on stage is gone. His age has finally caught up with him, and he comes across as tired.
   

As I said, there are still six weeks to go. But I think the damage is done.