One thing is a given, so I have learned recently in asking questions about the congressional elections coming in November: the president is not going down without a fight, despite horrific polling that has steadily gotten worse.
Those polls indicate that the Democrats will gain control of the House. The question is whether the Democratic Senate candidates now running ahead of Republicans five contested states will prevail in four, enough to gain a one-seat majority in that chamber, giving the party a chance to control part of the national agenda for the next two years. The prospect seems more likely than it did over the summer. The tide favors the Democrats as long as the president’s self-inflicted military and political disaster in Iran, among other fiascos, doesn’t go away. And it won’t without dramatic changes in his policies.
What can Trump do to stem the Democratic surge that’s putting the Senate in play and his political dominance at risk? He seems to be befuddled to learn that US and Israeli bombs did not yield military success, even with the ill-advised assassination of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many in his immediate family. As a result of the war, Iran is seen by many around the world to have gotten the upper hand in the Middle East.
I have been told that the White House political operatives are planning as of today, as widely suspected and feared, to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to predominantly Latino polling places in an overt effort to suppress the vote, legally or otherwise, in tossup states where a Republican is at risk. The similar use of National Guard and US military units, though once considered, is not currently in the cards.
The mission is to do whatever possible, legal or not, to hold the Senate, and especially in Maine and Ohio, where Democratic candidates may narrowly turn out Republican senators, and in Texas, where Republicans have had a stranglehold on the state’s US Senate seats since 1993.
