On Feb. 28, Donald Trump made a bigger gamble than ever took place at any of his Atlantic City casinos. Betting that a joint U.S.-Israeli decapitation strike on Iran would result in another overnight, low-cost operation that the president could tout as a quick victory, Trump has risked both his electoral coalition and the fate of his second term.
Instead of toppling Tehran in an instant, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have jump-started a regional war involving more than half a dozen countries. Ceasefire offers have been rejected out of hand by both sides.
The president’s advisers should have warned him that in a war, the enemy always gets a vote.
From the Islamic Republic’s perspective, they must reestablish sufficient deterrence to forestall any future attack by making the cost in retribution far outweigh any benefit. And for weeks, their strategy has been, rather than prioritize U.S. casualties, to maximize economic damage by closing the Strait of Hormuz and targeting energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. The more pain that Americans feel at the pump, Tehran predicts, the more pain the administration will feel domestically.
It’s a rule of thumb that the incumbent party loses seats in midterm elections. With the thinnest of margins in both chambers of Congress, and Trump having already predicted last November that the midterms would be “rightfully brutal” on Republicans if they failed, he has now weighed down the GOP with a new war that was always guaranteed to raise prices.
The Keystone State may prove make-or-break for any chance at a Republican majority.
Pennsylvania has at least two House seats judged as toss-ups by political analysts, both with Republican incumbents who won last cycle with a less-than-5,000-vote (1%) difference — Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (PA-7) and Scott Perry (PA-10) — and both of whom are vocally supportive of the president’s war with Iran.
From the moment the attack on Iran was announced with a 2 a.m. Truth Social post, the war has been underwater with independents (60% opposed) and Democrats (89% opposed). Fascinatingly, Pennsylvania Democrats have been arguably the most supportive among prominent party leaders in the country.
Trump successfully broke through the Rust Belt’s fabled “Blue Wall” in the 2016 presidential election by drawing out fresh support from the white working class, many of whom had been two-time Barack Obama voters. This crossover appeal, based on a mixture of immigration restrictionism and protectionism, narrowly gave Trump the first Republican victory in Pennsylvania since 1988 with a 46,000-vote (0.72%) margin.
Eight years later, when Trump became only the second president elected to a non-consecutive term, he increased his margin in Pennsylvania to 120,000 votes (1.71%). For the first time in his decade-long political career, he cobbled together a majority coalition that included not just MAGA Republicans but also disillusioned Democrats and disaffected independents.
And it is these same polls that are repeatedly demonstrating that Trump is leaking support from these latter groups because of their opposition to the Iran war, ranging from a tenth to a third of his broader coalition. If sustained until November, those losses would result in a Democratic landslide in Pennsylvania and across the country.
Every indication is that this war of choice will be longer, bloodier and more expensive than Trump ever conceived, lasting up to and beyond Nov. 3. Having survived so many setbacks, scandals, controversies and catastrophes, will his fateful decision to break his celebrated campaign promise of no new wars be the dice roll that finally comes up snake eyes?
Hunter DeRensis is communications director of the veterans advocacy organization Bring Our Troops Home. He wrote this for RealClear Pennsylvania.
