A second-term president faces a choice between pursuing policy gains by spending political capital or building political capital through popular moves that improve future election odds. Early in the second term, an aggressive right-wing agenda, controversial appointments, and sweeping legislative efforts signaled a preference for instant policy gratification. In mid-2025, priorities shifted toward the 2026 midterms. The president intervened in Republican primaries to elevate stronger candidates and launched a mid-decade partisan gerrymandering effort aimed at securing control of the U.S. House. Attacks on Democrats began to function as part of a strategy to hypermobilize the MAGA base and force swing voters to choose sharply between party agendas. Court decisions improved Republican prospects in gerrymandering disputes, making a GOP midterm win more plausible.
"Normally, a president, particularly a second-term president, must choose one of two prime objectives: Down one path is achieving policy gains, even if that means cashing in hard-earned political capital; down another is trying to build up political capital via popular moves that increase the odds of victory for the president's party in future elections."
"In the opening months of Trump's second term, it definitely looked as if he was choosing the path of instant policy gratification. He pursued an incredibly audacious right-wing agenda with maximum aggression, along with wildly controversial high-level appointments, to accentuate the message that it wasn't just the Republican Party that won in 2024 but an ideological movement and a cult of personality. It was pedal to the metal 24/7, electoral consequences be damned, with Elon Musk's rampage through the federal bureaucracy and the kitchen-sink One Big Beautiful Bill Act setting the tone for the entire administration."
"Suddenly, though, in mid-2025, Trump shifted gears and began focusing on the 2026 midterms. First, he intervened in Republican primaries to clear many fields for the strongest candidates. Then he launched an entirely unprecedented mid-decade partisan-gerrymandering blitz designed to tilt the playing field for control of the U.S. House. In that context, Trump's habitual over-the-top attacks on Democrats began to look like part of a coherent, if risky, strategy for winning the midterms by hypermobilizing the MAGA base and forcing swing voters to choose between starkly different party agendas."
"Republicans got lucky (in the short term, at least) via U.S. Supreme Court and Virginia Supreme Court decisions that gave them a significant net win in the back-and-forth gerrymandering wars, making a successful midterms outcome for the GOP much less of a pipe dream than before. If only, you heard Republicans say, the president could exhibit a laserlike focus on lifting his own terrible job-approval assessments and add"
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