Everywhere you look, the MAGA coalition that propelled Donald Trump back into the Oval Office is fracturing. The president’s poll numbers are plummeting across key demographics and dragging down congressional Republicans hoping to keep their jobs in November. Two weeks ago, the outlook for the GOP was looking especially grim, with predictions showing the House would almost surely be lost in the midterms and Republicans hanging on to the Senate by a thread.
Then, in the span of about 10 days, everything shifted.
The redistricting war Trump had begun, which had been looking like Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia, suddenly swung back in Republicans’ favor. The U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to a rush of racial redistricting across the South, and Virginia’s Supreme Court reversed Democrats’ gains in Virginia.
The resulting Republican gerrymandering is acting as a superglue binding the GOP’s splintering hopes for surviving the midterms, but that gerrymandering leaves the party as fragile as ever in the long-term and at risk of falling apart once Democrats can fully respond in kind.
This is a preview of Hayes Brown’s latest column. Read the full column here.
