After Midterm Beatdown, Trump Becomes Lamest of Lame Ducks

In formal terms, is officially a lame-duck president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, the next election cycle (outside of the governors races in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana next fall) will be to replace him, and the opposing party now controls both houses of Congress by substantial margins.

In reality, it’s worse than that. Sure, Trump still holds the immense powers of the executive branch. But after the scale of Tuesday’s wipeout, his political juice is down to zero. Not one person outside the Republican Party has any reason at all to care what he says or worry about the political costs of crossing him. So many voters abandoned the GOP, with Trump’s approval rating in the thirties, that he simply wasn’t wanted on the campaign trail in most of the country. However one prioritizes the different reasons for the debacle, everything on the list of major failures traces back to Trump, his decisions, and how he and his appointees executed them. Trump owns the entire defeat. One doubts that we will see a lot of enthusiastic Trump rallies over the next 18 months — maybe not even in the 2028 campaign. Even has begun seeking distance from Trump, albeit only on the , which has always been at odds with Vance’s public political brand. We have right-populist commentators such as Matt Walsh declaring, “The worst thing conservatives can do now is feel any obligation at all to defend this bulls***. It’s indefensible and we all know it.”

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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In formal terms, is officially a lame-duck president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, the next election cycle (outside of the governors races in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana next fall) will be to replace him, and the opposing party now controls both houses of Congress by substantial margins.

In reality, it’s worse than that. Sure, Trump still holds the immense powers of the executive branch. But after the scale of Tuesday’s wipeout, his political juice is down to zero. Not one person outside the Republican Party has any reason at all to care what he says or worry about the political costs of crossing him. So many voters abandoned the GOP, with Trump’s approval rating in the thirties, that he simply wasn’t wanted on the campaign trail in most of the country. However one prioritizes the different reasons for the debacle, everything on the list of major failures traces back to Trump, his decisions, and how he and his appointees executed them. Trump owns the entire defeat. One doubts that we will see a lot of enthusiastic Trump rallies over the next 18 months — maybe not even in the 2028 campaign. Even has begun seeking distance from Trump, albeit only on the , which has always been at odds with Vance’s public political brand. We have right-populist commentators such as Matt Walsh declaring, “The worst thing conservatives can do now is feel any obligation at all to defend this bulls***. It’s indefensible and we all know it.”