Snake in a Corner

With the midterm elections only nine months away, the writing seems to be on the wall. Since 1938 the president’s party has lost ground in 20 out of 22 elections. But not so fast, Democrats! Losing ground is not the same as losing control. Since the 1850s the majority party only lost control a third of the time. At the risk of being Debbie Downer let me warn that this season may be no different. It’s true that the bar for Democrats gaining control of the House is low, since the Republicans’ majority is based on a razor thin margin.

One can easily imagine the rising tide of anxiety in Trump’s feverish and overstimulated brain at night. A majority win for Democrats opens the door for a third impeachment. Even with only a small chance of conviction by the Senate, an impeachment would give a modicum of justice for his victims of fraud, graft, kidnapping, murder, and sundry other violations of law and the Constitution too numerous to count, to say nothing of a bombshell from the Epstein files, should sexual assault of minor children be added to the list.

Trump will not be a competent leader in the struggle ahead. He may have Mein Kampf by his bedside, but he has not read The Art of War. When going to war, the author Sun Tzu warns, “The worst policy is to attack cities,” certainly not those fortified with the moral resolve of Angelinos, Chicagoans, and Minnesotans. On January 6 Renee Good, a mother of three, was murdered by the ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Eighteen days later a pair of ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, in the same city. What was first seen as a tragedy now appeared to look like a trend. Upwards to 100,000 people in Minneapolis took to the streets in protest. A few days later a Maris poll of 1,462 people found that 65% of respondents agreed that ICE had “gone too far,” while 22% felt ICE’s activities there were “about right.”

Maris Poll taken January 27-30, 2026. Fair use.

A Quinnipiac Poll taken a week after Pretti’s murder found that 61% of voters thought that the Trump administration had not given an honest account of the fatal shooting. There are always questions one can ask about a poll’s validity, but two different polls showing similar findings suggest that these data are reliable. Despite the bland language the polls employed, Americans saw blood in the street and were not happy about it. The results were not figures that Republicans wanted to see voters take with them into the voting booths in November. Democrats, by comparison, seized the moment to attempt to put brakes on ICE, though the mealy-mouthed management of the advantage by Chuck Shumer in the Senate was to push for a “reform” package rather than abolition of the paramilitaries entirely, as if a gang of thugs could be converted overnight into a well-trained police force simply by attaching body cameras to their flak jackets.

During his campaign rallies Trump recited the same poem more than a dozen times in which a woman rescues a poisonous snake which in turn bites her. Says the snake to the dying woman,

“Oh, shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin,

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!”

Though Trump insinuated that immigrants were the reptiles, he could have just as easily been talking about himself. Like the snake in the story, Trump can’t seem to stop himself from striking out venomously. One night he posts a racist trope about the Obamas. The next day he threatens to withhold transportation funds from New York and New Jersey unless they rename Dulles International Airport and Penn Station after him. This is not the way to build political capital. Even his allegedly solid MAGA base has eroded. Last April 78% of Republicans saw themselves as MAGA Republicans. By year’s end, that number had declined to 70%.

As the historic record shows, sagging polls do not mean that Trump can’t prevail in the midterms. Like a poisonous snake he may unconsciously identify with, he can move fast and bite things. He augments his vast presidential power with lawlessness. If Trump cheats and the rest of us play by the rules, according to game theory the advantage goes to Trump. In addition, since the Supreme Court has already given him wide immunity for his actions, even the law is on his side. And finally, in the last decade there have virtually no Republicans who have stood up to him, even as he now threatens to be driving their bus over a cliff in November.

When someone can’t be constrained by truth and the law, there’s a lot of damage he can do, no matter which way the political winds blow. As Trump’s anxiety about the midterms increases, he is likely to become more erratic and dangerous, not less. His provocation of the mob of January 6 is no harbinger of a peaceful and orderly election. Quite the opposite. Here’s a short and most certainly incomplete list of what to look for in the coming months.

· He has already started a gerrymandering frenzy among both parties to tilt the number of Republican seats in the House in his favor. At this point this tactic appears to be something of a draw, though this battle is not over.

· He will continue to flog the country with the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged,” and use that charge to claim the same thing will be true in the midterms before and after the elections.

· He will continue to call for “nationalizing” elections despite its illegality and the demurrals from his party.

· His rhetoric will intensify outlandishly to awaken his declining base. This will not likely be from mental illness as much as desperation in someone facing narcissistic injury who is given to compulsive lying. His nocturnal, brain boiling rants on Truth Social, are likely to get more frequent and vitriolic.

· Expect a new flood of frivolous litigation aimed at impeding the vote at every point in the cycle: voter registration, the casting of ballots, and how they’re counted afterwards. Republicans have already lost over 60 cases in courts around the country, but expect that tactic to continue. Mail-in ballots are likely to be a major focus of attacks.

· Trump will press for passage of the SAVE act requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

· Republicans may try to purge voters with Latin, African, or Asian names or inconsistent signatures from voter rolls.

· He or his attorney general may try to extort states into surrendering voter rolls as Pam Bondi recently attempted to do in Minnesota. Bondi has made similar demands from 43 other states. At least ten states have already complied.

· Trump’s impounding of ballots from the 2020 voting in Georgia must be seen as a practice run for seizing ballots from elsewhere in 2026.

· ICE paramilitaries serve as Trump’s personal enforcers. They already see themselves as immune to prosecution, with an added layer of protection from likely pardons. So it is likely he will expand his assaults on American cities to intimidate potential voters and attempt to provoke violence. This in turn he may use to invoke martial law or the Insurrection Act of 1807.

· To intimidate actual voters, Trump may order paramilitaries to surround polling places on election day in cities which lean towards the Democrats.

· He may attempt to cancel elections entirely. In that case, we will have a national crisis of historic proportions.

There is a common thread to these tactics. They will intend to discourage and frighten people from voting, especially people of color. Trump will attempt to confound the voting process before, during and after the vote; and if possible, he will prevent voting entirely.

There you have it. Freedom is not free. If we love democracy, our work is cut out for us.