特朗普不肯做的一件事：让共和党中期选举候选人少受他的拖累

The one thing Trump won’t give GOP midterm hopefuls: Less Trump

2026-09-15T04:01:29.725Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/15/politics/trump-republican-midterm-chances

Here’s what Republican candidates need as midterm elections draw near:

Gas pump prices that aren’t a gut punch. An easing of record diesel costs currently hammering farmers and hiking food prices. A dip in inflation would be nice — and what about that war supposedly won six months ago finally ending?

Perhaps an unpopular president could, for once, exit the spotlight to allow them to focus disqualifying attention on their local Democratic foes. And Donald Trump might also show a smidgen of empathy to voters alarmed by high grocery prices and apocalyptic warnings about AI.

Here’s what GOP nominees have to deal with instead:

Gasoline prices averaging $4.31 a gallon. (But if your truck guzzles diesel, you’re shelling out $6.20 a gallon — up from about $3.60 when Trump took office in January 2025, according to AAA and government data.) Wholesale inflation ticked up in August, as did the Consumer Price Index. Despite what the White House says, most food prices aren’t down. And a new trade war with Canada threatens yet more taxes on consumers.

Trump can’t put a date on when his deeply unpopular war with Iran will stop. And voters who question his judgment over the Middle East quagmire may be equally spooked by his assurance that their AI fears are a “Hoax” and that all will be fine because the US has a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”

The gap between a workable political environment for the GOP and the one it is stuck with tells the story of a campaign that has Democrats hoping to win the House and looking unexpectedly competitive in Senate races where Trump won in 2024.

Remarkably, Republicans’ headwinds are largely the result of the president’s choices, hunches, personal fixations and refusal to tune in to voter perceptions that his economic “golden age” is a mirage. If Trump were deliberately picking the path most likely to damage his own party, it couldn’t look much different.

The Trump-everywhere-all-at-once campaign is also giving Democrats a break. The opposition party has blundered through political oblivion since the 2024 election. There’s little sign that it has fixed the many problems with messaging and policy that allowed Trump to regain power. And recent polls show that it’s just about as unpopular as the GOP. Running a campaign all about Trump looks complacent and has so far produced little progress toward a Democratic rebrand.

But it might work anyway.

How Trump hems in GOP candidates

Trump’s ubiquity is having tangible negative effects on Republican candidates even as he argues that polls showing he’s unpopular are wrong.

Michigan GOP Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers is slamming his Democratic foe, Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, as a friend of terrorists and controversial Internet influencer Hassan Piker. Rogers argues El-Sayed is more interested in representing Palestinians than the Wolverine state.

But Trump gives El-Sayed an easy pivot back to the mainstream. He parried questions about Piker on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday by saying, “They want to make this about a streamer in California. I want to make this about affordability in Michigan, and they can’t talk about it because it’s their policies that are driving (prices) up.”

El-Sayed rejected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s claim that progressives were “barbarians inside the gate,” countering: “The barbarian is in the White House.”

Trump’s shadow also looms over Kansas. No one expected GOP Sen. Roger Marshall to face a tight reelection race, but his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton is lumping him in with Trump’s unpopularity. “Courage is when you stand up to your president and your party, and you say, ‘This is hurting people back home,’” Hamilton said at a Saturday campaign debate.

Marshall’s hopes are darkened by diesel prices punishing farmers with higher operating costs. And the Iran war’s energy crisis also means fertilizer — made with natural gas — is more expensive. “I can’t run away from diesel. And I’ll take responsibility from the standpoint that certainly the Strait of Hormuz is impacting this,” Marshall told RFD-TV in August.

Kansas might be one of the those red states that spark Democratic dreams but return home to the GOP in November. Still, Vice President JD Vance saw the need to drop in to the state Monday to try to give Marshall a leg up.

Ideally, in a difficult year for Republicans, candidates would localize races and run on their strengths. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, for instance, described Rogers in Michigan and New Hampshire Senate nominee John Sununu as “common-sense problem solvers.” But they’re having trouble defining themselves thanks to the Democrats’ Trump card.

Democratic New Hampshire nominee Chris Pappas noted last month that his Granite State rival lost a previous Senate seat in 2008 because of a radioactive GOP president, George W. Bush. Now, Pappas said, Sununu is “saddling up with another unpopular Republican president.”

And some of Trump’s policies mean that some key swing state races look like toss-ups.

His reignited trade war with Canada has rocked Senate races in Michigan, Maine and Ohio. All three states are heavily integrated with cross-border trade and all have tight races that could decide who runs the chamber.

Maine’s ultimate GOP survivor, Sen. Susan Collins, has criticized the trade war. But her Democratic foe Troy Jackson is jamming her with a classic incumbent’s curse as he bemoans the president’s impact on the states’ logging, fishing and tourism industries and asks, “What has she done to get Trump to back off?”

In other states, Republicans are hampered not by what Trump has done, but by who he’s chosen. His feud with Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp — who refused to help him steal the 2020 election — led him to push a MAGA favorite to the GOP nomination. But Rep. Mike Collins trails in the polls. And Trump may have inadvertently handed a platform for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff to emerge as a national figure and potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Trump’s midterm playbook has baffled many Republicans.

But fans might argue he’s a conviction politician — a welcome change in an era dominated by focus groups. He’s acting on what he believes is a mandate to impose tariffs to rescue US industry; to ramp up immigration enforcement even if it alienates more moderate voters; and to impose dominance on the world. Ever since Trump returned to for a second term, his White House has given the impression that it will use every moment to change America and the world. And it’s also true that unless Trump loyalists show up to back GOP nominees, the party has little chance in the midterms in any case.

Still, he could make life easier for his fellow Republicans.

When he’s hit the road to promote economic wins — including higher-than-expected tax refunds, cuts to some prescription drug costs and a stock market bull run — he mocks his aides for bothering to write the script he ignores.

But there’s one gift from Trump that may placate GOP candidates: cash.

His $400 million super PAC war chest is starting to dole out contributions to vulnerable Republicans — even if some skeptics wonder how much of his haul Trump is willing to part with. Troubled MAGA Senate candidates like Ken Paxton in Texas and Michael Whatley in North Carolina are desperate for a potentially lifesaving boost.

And Trump would also be spending to shield himself.

His intensely personal approach to the 2026 elections means an overall GOP loss would go beyond the bloody political nose all presidents expect from midterms. It would be an indictment of his character, conduct and political movement.