Iowa is flashing a giant red warning light for November

On Tuesday, Iowa House Republicans were shown polling that should scare the hell out of them.

The warning, as it was relayed to me, was stark: If you represent a district Trump carried by 15 points, you may still be within the margin of error. If you represent a Trump +10 district, you may already be under water.

We need to save our own country before we save anybody else. America first cannot become America eventually.

And this environment could end up being worse than the “thumping” of 2006.

I slept on whether to share this publicly because I do not want to black-pill people six weeks before a critical election. But there is still time to do something about it, and pretending the problem does not exist will not make it go away.

If the environment is this bad in Iowa — where Donald Trump has been the most popular political figure of the last decade — I shudder to think what it looks like elsewhere.

Iran has become a massive political albatross on par with the COVID lockdowns of 2020.

Whatever you want to call it — war, not-quite-war, prolonged military operation, strategic pressure campaign — voters are experiencing the consequences as another expensive Middle East entanglement with no clearly defined victory. Fuel prices are hurting. The public is frustrated bordering on furious. Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from the policy.

We are risking what remains of the Trump presidency on this.

If Democrats take control of Congress in January, much of the domestic agenda voters elected Trump to pursue will stop cold. Some of it will be reversed. Some of it will be tied up in investigations and appropriations fights. Add what the courts are already doing, and the remaining two years could become an exercise in siege warfare.

The damage would not stop in D.C.

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PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images

States like Iowa have spent the last 20 years moving dramatically to the right, with Trump accelerating that transformation. A national collapse would spill down the ballot and put those gains at risk.

That is why this half-war, quasi-war, whatever-we-are-calling-it has become such a catastrophic misuse of political capital.

Many of us never thought it was worth the cost. Increasingly, the voters seem to agree.

We need to save our own country before we save anybody else.

If a plane is in trouble, you put on your own oxygen mask first. Not because everybody else is unimportant, but because you are useless to them if you pass out.

America first cannot become America eventually.

I desperately want this presidency to succeed. I want it to fulfill the promise voters saw in 2024. But whatever this is right now, it isn’t working. And Republicans do not have to sit here and take the loss.

There is still time. There is still plenty of ammunition. Democrats have given Republicans more than enough material to run against. But the president needs to get on the stump now.

The messaging needs to get much sharper and much more aggressive.

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John Tlumacki/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Stop wasting money on stupid ads about how often some Democrat missed a committee vote. Tell voters what Democrats are actually voting for. Put the cultural, economic, and constitutional stakes in plain English.

And most important, explain the mission in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. What does victory look like? What ends the operation? What are Americans being asked to pay, and for how long?

Because from the cheap seats, this increasingly looks like another Middle East quagmire in which ordinary Americans pay twice — once at the pump and again through their taxes.

If there is a compelling answer to that, the administration needs to give it. Soon.

Republicans are not out of ammunition. They are almost out of time.

And while we are at it, somebody please make sure Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are getting the finest health care in America.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally on X.

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