It happens to every president sooner or later — the moment when they are still in power but their influence wanes as politicians and voters look to the future. Last week’s GOP election losses raise the question of whether President Donald Trump’s lame duck moment has arrived.
“Welcome to the dawn of Trump’s lame duck era,” said Politico. Republicans are beginning to realize the president “will soon be gone.” While Americans should not “expect an immediate stampede” away from the president’s less-popular policies, there are “growing signs” that GOP officials are maneuvering around the fact that “they’ll still be around” after their term-limited leader has departed the political scene. Most Republican senators, for example, resisted Trump’s demand to get rid of the filibuster to end the government shutdown. That unwillingness could be challenging to a president whose operating style is to “run roughshod” over his party’s preferences in Congress.
Past his sell-by date?
Trump “seems to be defying the lame-duck precedent” at the moment,” said Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. No president has ever been “more dominant” within his own party, and while congressional Republicans may have misgivings in private they “publicly sing his praises.” But Trump is also “well past the usual sell-by date” for most presidents, having served as the GOP’s presidential nominee in three different elections. The last Republican to do that was Richard Nixon, and it “didn’t turn out well for Republicans.”
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The GOP “appears to be fracturing” as it prepares for the “vacuum” that will be created when Trump leaves the scene, said Michael Wilner at the Los Angeles Times. Infighting over antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes and blame-casting for the GOP’s poor election performance are among the “vicious” fights going on among Trump’s supporters as they prepare for what is next. The “countdown to the midterms” signifies that the president has “precious time left” before the 2028 presidential contest gets underway and begins “eclipsing the final two years of his presidency.”
Third term talk
The president still has a “lot of juice,” said David M. Drucker at Bloomberg. While voters “often tire of reelected presidents,” Trump now has an approval rating of 93% from Republicans. (Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama were “both at roughly 80%” with their party’s voters during their second terms.) That popularity with the base gives him more power than his predecessors. Any Republican thinking of a run for office must “win Trump’s endorsement and then win the voters — in that order.”
Trump keeps talking about a third term even though it is prohibited by the Constitution, said Time. That may fend off lame-duck status by helping him “maintain his relevance and power over the GOP.” But Republican losses last week are giving Democrats a “way out of the gloom,” said Edward Luce at the Financial Times. There is much to come, but it is now clear that the “opening act of Trump’s second term is over.”
