The Guardian view on the Republicans’ midterms struggle: Trump has circuses, but voters also want bread | Editorial

It is no great revelation that Donald Trump is enriching himself as president. He raked in $2.2bn in 2025, with his position and his personal interests frequently overlapping. Yet this week’s poll finding that 34% of Republicans (and 66% of all American voters) think that he is using his position to make himself rich merits attention. Separately, voters in a Fox News poll last week put government corruption at the top of their list of concerns – just ahead of inflation and high prices.

Mr Trump pledged that people would be better off if they voted for him. The billionaires are; not the rest. He promised to lower the costs of groceries (they have risen again) and to cut the price of gasoline to below $2 a gallon. It’s more than double that, thanks to his reckless and illegal war on Iran. Tariffs have bumped up the cost of living too. Incumbents will always struggle when the economy does. But the gulf between his own prosperity and the daily life of his base now looks less like an inspiration and more like an insult. Cash offers seem unlikely to help much.

The president’s popularity rating sank to a record low of 36% in a poll on Wednesday. Mr Trump, of course, is not on the ballot. But he is touring red states as he seeks to shore up the vote in places where the idea of a Democratic victory looked laughable two years ago. Democrats are rightly cautious about their midterms prospects, having been burned too many times. But less than a fortnight from 3 November, with many votes already cast, polls suggest that they will take the House and could well claim the Senate too.

James Talarico. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

The party is still unpopular, though impressive candidates are performing far better than anyone expected in surprising places – notably Texas and Kansas. But they are now more trusted on economic issues. Independents are turning away from Mr Trump and his party, and many Republicans seem unenthused, for multiple reasons. The “Maga-sympathetic” pollster Rich Baris argues that “Donald Trump did this to himself”. His base believed Mr Trump was their champion. Now they suspect that he is “just another politician”.

There is merited concern about how the president has already used his power to tilt the midterms, and more about what he may do if his party fares as badly as forecast. Republicans still hope to reclaim ground through traditional if unsavoury means, massively outspending Democrats.

Yet while some polls are tightening, culture war attacks and salacious lies about opponents such as James Talarico in Texas do not seem, at least so far, to be as powerful as Republicans hoped. That’s not just because Democratic candidates are repositioning themselves. The toxic messaging of the presidential race – that Kamala Harris “is for they/them, President Trump is for you” – doesn’t land if voters believe that he’s actually for himself and his friends.

Republicans now point to France’s unrest and claim that a Democrat-dominated Congress would bring chaos and destruction to America. Their fearmongering has often motivated core voters. But while Democrats stick to the economic attack, Republicans are trying to change the subject instead of offering answers. Mr Trump’s bread-and-circuses politics is floundering, cage fights on the South Lawn of the White House notwithstanding, as voters ask what happened to the bread.