As GOP’s Prospects Dim, Trump Shines in Dallas

Politics At the midterm convention, the president offered Americans cash—if Republicans win. Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump was in fine form Wednesday night in Dallas—smiling, tanned, full of bounce, ready to rile up the adoring fans at the first-ever midterm convention for either major party. This was Trump in his classic form, discursive, wisecracking, outrageous, but good-humored and not too serious. It was a refreshing performance from a president who in the past year or so has too often seemed tired, angry, and aporetic. He joked about winning the 2020 election, but without the unattractive earnestness that so often mars his exposition of this particular hobbyhorse. He spent several minutes ridiculing the physique, dress, and speech of his own party’s Senate nominee in Texas, which is the sort of devil-may-care, not-quite-nice, not-quite-petty insult comedy that brought him to the biggest stage in the land of Barnum and Billy Sunday. There are two questions: First, are the American people tired of the routine? It has been a full decade and counting since the Era of Trump began; the iconoclasm and sharp elbows are less striking in a world that has adopted them as its own idiom. There just may not be much alpha left in this index. Second, even if the schtick is fresh as ever, is it enough to overcome the serious material headwinds for the Republicans? To his credit, Trump played to the Republicans’ advantages: He hit the Democrats for struggling to shed the excess and insanity of the intense identity politics of the early decade. He harped on the stock and labor markets’ near-unbelievable performance. He emphasized the unambiguous success of the administration’s border-enforcement policies. These points aren’t nothing. But it remains to be seen whether he convincingly papered over the GOP’s disadvantages. He insisted on the necessity and justice of the Iran War for preventing the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons, but selling the war after it’s been launched and people are already suffering the economic consequences for it is not strong rhetoric. His ridicule of the Democrats’ appeals to “affordability” seems like a loser when prices are still rising—more slowly than in the Biden era, granted—and credit is getting much tighter. Nor is it clear that appeals to the “communism” of the Democratic left are going to score many swing votes 35 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and 10 years after Bernie Sanders made a very convincing effort toward becoming president. One suspects the answer, though, is in the element of the speech that everyone will remember for all time: the “Trump dividend” of $5,000 for every American adult, should the Republicans win the midterms. (A student of history can’t help but smile to see American democracy coming into its purest, most advanced form.) The headline hysteria about this proposal, while tiresome—you’d think that after so many years the press would know that Trump only grows stronger from hysteria—does raise a salient point: However it is implemented, such a payout would be stupendously expensive at a time when Treasury yields are wandering into fairly rarefied mountain paths. The only reason you make a promise like this is because you don’t really think you’ll have to deliver. (Although a cynic might note that, if, by some chance you do need to deliver on such a long-shot bet, you can take a cue from that great American engine of social dynamism, bankruptcy law—default on the obligation after you’ve already gotten what you want.) Trump has acquired a legend. He is treated as an immortal, someone to whom the usual laws of political physics don’t apply. This has always been overstated. His first term was a series of policy frustrations ameliorated by the balm of a booming economy, and his election loss in 2020 seemed to show some very conventional political weaknesses. Yet it is true that he is buoyant, and, even better, that he is lucky. He has been particularly aided by a period of severe debility for the Democratic party, starting with the Hillary–Bernie fight in 2016 and perduring, largely along the same lines, until the present day. The Trump legend, like most legends, has a kernel of truth. Subscribe Today Get daily emails in your inbox But Wednesday night, Trump himself did not seem to believe it. So why was he smiling? Because the midterms don’t actually matter. May as well do what you love best: wallow in the adulation of a crowd, crack jokes, and remind the country that you are the singular axle on which the life of this great republic turns. “You know, State of the Union, you have to be very staid. That’s much easier to do than what I do. Believe me, that’s easy to do, ladies and gentlemen. It’s an honor to be your president,” Trump said. “Thank you. And you do that for about an hour, and then everybody’s falling asleep. This is a much harder routine, let me tell you, but we’re also out here to have a little bit of fun.” It’s good that at least one person is enjoying this.