Donald Trump, a man who has spent a decade screaming about winning, appears to be doing everything in his power to lose. The midterm elections are weeks away, postal ballots are already going out, and the president of the United States is busy insulting voters, backing impeached candidates, and fighting two simultaneous wars nobody asked for. If this is a winning strategy, it is the most elaborate practical joke in American political history.
Two Wars, Zero Votes
Start with Iran, because everything starts with Iran now. As the Guardian reports, the conflict Trump launched on February 28 has lurched back into active shooting this past week, with American strikes hitting Iranian targets including a wedding party, killing four people. Tehran responded by striking Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain. Mission accomplished, apparently.
The economic wreckage is landing directly on American voters. Petrol prices are climbing. Grocery bills are climbing. US government borrowing costs have been on a steep upward curve since the day the war started, hitting a fresh high this week. Higher borrowing costs mean higher interest rates, which means people casting their ballots in November are going to be doing it right around the time their mortgage payments and credit card bills tick up. Trump ran in 2024 on a promise to crush inflation. How's that going.
And then there is the MAGA base to consider. These are people who genuinely believed Trump was going to end the forever wars. They bought the brand. Now they are watching American bombs fall on a Middle Eastern country while petrol costs more than it did under Biden. The disenchantment is real, and it is showing up in the polling.
He Started a War With Canada. Canada.
It would once have been genuinely insane to type this sentence: the United States is in a state of economic war with Canada. Yet here we are. Trump's tariffs triggered a Canadian dollar-for-dollar retaliation, and the states absorbing the worst of that pain are Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, and Texas, according to the Guardian. Notice anything about that list? Those are the states with the most competitive Senate races this cycle.
Iowa is the case study in how completely Trump has torched his own party's position. Democrats have not won an Iowa Senate seat in nearly 20 years. Canada buys roughly a third of Iowa's exports. Trump blew that relationship up, and now, the Guardian reports, Democrats have a genuine shot at a seat they had no business competing for. This is not bad luck. This is self-inflicted.
Then there is the pettiness. Trump renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America. Apple and Google, in an act of corporate cowardice that deserves its own article, updated their map apps accordingly. It's the kind of gesture that makes you look unhinged to everyone except the very specific online crowd that finds this sort of thing thrilling, and that crowd does not constitute a Senate majority anywhere.
Data Centers: The Hill He Chose to Die On
If you were looking for the single clearest example of Trump's apparent determination to antagonize the largest possible number of voters, look no further than data centers. Seven in ten Americans, according to the Guardian, say they would not want one near where they live. That's not a partisan split. Even Republicans are deeply concerned about the environmental footprint, the water consumption, the energy drain. Anxiety about AI and what it's going to do to people's jobs is running hot across the political spectrum.
So what did Trump post on Monday? "The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centres is if they want to end up being backwards and poor." He did not just take the wrong side of a 70-30 issue. He insulted the 70 percent for having the wrong opinion. This is a man who could walk into a bakery and find a way to make enemies of everyone who eats bread.
This is a pattern, not an accident. The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland points out Trump has a near-supernatural ability to land on the wrong side of 80-20 issues and then double down on them publicly. Demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom. Putting his signature on the dollar bill. Strong majorities oppose these things. He keeps bringing them up anyway.
Ken Paxton, Republican Senate Nominee in Texas
Somehow it gets worse. Ken Paxton is one of the most politically radioactive figures in American life. As Texas Attorney General, he was impeached by his own fellow Republicans on charges that included bribery and abuse of public trust. This is a man whose colleagues, in a deep-red state legislature, looked at his conduct and said: no, this is too much, we have to remove him.
Trump endorsed him for the Texas Senate seat anyway. As a result, as the Guardian reports, even Texas is now shaky. Texas. The state that Republicans have won so reliably for so long that spending money there has traditionally been considered a waste. Democrats now have to take it seriously as a pickup opportunity because the Republican nominee is a guy his own party impeached.
Put the full picture together and you have a governing party that is fighting two economically devastating wars, alienating farmers in farm states, insulting voters on data centers, and running an impeached candidate in a seat they should win in their sleep. The question is not whether a blue wave is coming. The question is whether Republicans will have a Senate majority left to show for the last two years when it gets here.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this is all just stumbling. That Trump is a chaos agent who means well but keeps landing poorly. That the war with Iran was a tough call made in good faith, the Canada fight was necessary on principle, and the data center post was just a guy speaking his mind. You are supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to a man who has spent fifty years demonstrating that he never does anything by accident when it can be done for personal benefit instead.
Here is the theory the Guardian floats, and it is not as crazy as it sounds: Trump might actually prefer a Democratic Congress. A Republican majority on Capitol Hill means Republicans own whatever happens next. A Democratic majority means Trump gets to spend two years as the embattled outsider, the persecuted patriot, the man the establishment is trying to destroy. That is a story he knows how to sell. It is the story that got him elected twice. Winning the midterms would make him responsible. Losing them would make him a martyr again, and martyrdom is the only mode in which he is truly comfortable.
Meanwhile, real people are paying more for groceries and petrol. Real people are watching their mortgage costs climb because the government needs to borrow at higher rates to fund a war with Iran that is not going particularly well. Iowa farmers are losing Canadian export markets they spent decades building. Whether Trump loses the midterms on purpose or by spectacular incompetence, those people are paying the price either way. The joke lands differently when it's your credit card statement.
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