President Donald Trump has spent much of 2025 and 2026 speedrunning his predecessor’s arc in office: Like Joe Biden, he returned to power with grand ideological goals – but then high prices and a focus on issues he deemed inessential soured the American public on his leadership.

And now, like Biden, Trump has scored a series of election wins, imbuing his party with false confidence. With Biden, those wins came in the 2022 midterms, when Democrats did unexpectedly well and hushed intraparty conversations about whether the Delawarean should run for reelection. Biden ultimately dropped out far too late, and Democrats were doomed in 2024.

Trump’s successes in the courtroom and GOP primaries over the past month are having a similar effect, seemingly convincing a Republican Party staring at potential doom in November that there is little reason to change course or break with a president whose popularity continues to steadily decline amid a horrendously unpopular decision to attack Iran and widespread discontent over the high cost of living.

But as Trump went on a winning streak in the news, his electoral standing continued to crumble. In the Silver Bulletin polling average, he dropped from -18 on net at the beginning of the month to -20 on net on Tuesday – an approval rating that should result in Democrats winning the House, no matter how much the Supreme Courts of Virginia and the United States decide to help the GOP draw and keep favorable congressional district lines.

Culminating in the ouster of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Tuesday night, Trump’s winning streak from Indiana to Louisiana to Kentucky was impressive. A month ago, GOP strategists thought it possible Trump could lose in all three. But it is indicative of both the financial war chest his allies have assembled – which is more than sufficient to overwhelm an octet of state senators and a quirky congressman – and of his popularity with the narrow slice of the country casting votes in GOP primaries, not a sign of a broader turnaround with the public.

Within the closed circuit of conservative media and politics, it may be enough to further quiet dissenters. Republicans long ago signaled most of their candidates would stick with Trump most of the time, arguing that only he can bring out a segment of conservative voters who otherwise ignore politics. Room to question that strategy within the GOP shrank over the past month.

“Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power. Fuck around, find out,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote on social media, using the movie tough guy language that is the lingua franca of the Trump administration.

Other Republicans seem to have gotten the message. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who represents a district Trump lost in all three of his presidential runs and is considered highly vulnerable in November, is set to campaign with Trump on Friday.

“For folks to be able to hear directly from the president on these issues matters, and my district is certainly not just one of the most competitive in the country, but it’s a district that the president moved significantly,” Lawler told the New York Post in announcing the trip, noting Trump improved in his district from 2020 to 2024.

Emboldened by his victories in Indiana and Louisiana, Trump decided to endorse Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for Senate on Tuesday, which prompted barely hidden rejoicing among Democrats, who think the ethically-challenged Paxton – a man who GOP super PACs backing incumbent Sen. John Cornyn have already spent tens of millions of dollars attacking – will put the state in play for Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

“Republicans are watching $100 million circle down the drain before their eyes as Donald Trump rejects their year of begging him to bail out John Cornyn,” DSCC spokeswoman Maeve Coyle said Tuesday. “While the Texas GOP has been embroiled in a ‘bitter,’ ‘costly intraparty war’ that has fractured their base and left them drained of resources, Democratic enthusiasm has surged to its highest level in decades. James Talarico is building the campaign to win, and Texans will send him to the U.S. Senate in November.”

Trump’s unpopularity could also help bail Democrats out of some questionable decisions. On Tuesday night, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms cruised to a primary victory in Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, defeating her closest competition by a 40-point margin. Some Democrats have worried about Bottoms’ viability in November, fretting over possible Republican attacks on her tenure as mayor, which included the chaotic summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd.

But Republicans have their own issues. Their two candidates who advanced to a runoff, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire Rick Jackson, are far closer to Trump than to popular GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in style and temperament. (Trump endorsed Jones.) In a political environment dominated by an unpopular Trump, Bottoms looks like a much better bet against an imperfect GOP nominee.

For her final ad before the primary, Bottoms mocked the dynamic between Jones and Jackson, arguing they were “two grown men fighting to kiss the a** of an a**.” (The censorship is present in the ad.)

“It’s embarrassing,” Bottoms declared in the spot. “Unlike some people, I’m not running for governor to be Donald Trump. I’m running for governor to stand up to him.”

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