The Midterms Have Entered the Chat

Monday, October 12, 2026

Governing and campaigning run through the same headlines.

What do the plague, diesel fuel, execution by firing squad, and $500 payments to Obamacare subscribers have in common? They were just a few of the many items that made headlines in the past few weeks, all of which seemed to relate to the upcoming midterm elections. While they aren't the same story, history tells us they are likely same-story-adjacent.

After all, presidents have always tried to shape midterm elections, but they've used different methods, from campaigning directly and asking voters to treat midterms as a referendum on their leadership to targeting dissenters or timing policy announcements around election concerns.

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Andrew Johnson’s “Swing Around the Circle” speaking tour directly attacked his congressional opponents, damaging his standing and leading to an increase in Republican majorities in both chambers. Woodrow Wilson asked voters to return a Democratic majority as a way to endorse his leadership in 1918. The Republicans won control of Congress.

FDR backed challengers to the conservative Democrats who’d blocked some of his New Deal. Barack Obama delayed immigration action until after the 2014 midterms. Donald Trump discussed a 10% middle-class tax cut before the 2018 midterms. Joe Biden announced student-loan relief before the 2022 midterms.

Such examples show that presidents weigh politics and policy around elections. That is an essential part of a president's job description, but governing a democracy may not always let them admit how much the midterms matter. This pattern is well-established: presidents make policy in an election year, and then we all debate whether it is good government, good politics, both, or neither.

One action can have multiple motives, and timing often raises a fair question. That matters because it gives us a way to look at this year’s presidential maneuvers as we head into the midterms. Some of the president’s announcements mention the midterms directly; others have drawn criticism for addressing key voter concerns without mentioning them. Critics and the press are weighing every move for signs of political motivation versus authentic policy.

And it is because the stakes are so high: control of both the House and Senate is up for grabs, and some traditionally Republican areas may flip. In the last week of September, a MarketWatch analyst reported that the Democrats’ chance of taking both the House and Senate was at 64%.

62%	On October 10, Polymarket put the odds of a Democratic sweep at 62%, with the party’s odds of winning the House and Senate listed separately at 91% and 63%, respectively.

These figures are market estimates, not poll results, but some potential race outcomes explain why we are fixated. Michigan’s Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, is in a tight race against Republican Mike Rogers, with a Fox News poll in late September putting El-Sayed just one percentage point ahead. In Texas, a tight race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton has put the race into the national conversation.

And while Congressional control is at the center, the national conversation is less about party lines than about other common voter concerns. The Washington Post profiled a Colorado voter in its 8th District and noted that health costs, fuel, immigration, and the oil-and-gas industry were top concerns. In speaking about campaign ads, the woman profiled said she wished it was about “improve, improve, improve,” rather than “fight, fight, fight,” as well.

That is a huge part of almost any midterm story: voters weigh several real concerns at once, and politicians throw promises or policy at those concerns. Perhaps that explains that mixed bag of recent headlines about the Trump administration and the midterms.

We can go back to September, when Trump first mentioned what would become a series of suspiciously timed payments. The first was a pledge by the president at the Republican midterm convention, and it was blatant. “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump Dividend.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN MIDTERM CONVENTION

So, not all that subtle a nudge to vote Republican. More importantly, Congress has never addressed or approved the roughly $1.2 trillion it would take to make that pledge real.

Then, a day later, an official White House announcement said that “hundreds of millions in Obamacare overcharges, collected by the Biden Administration,” were being refunded as $500 checks to roughly one million Americans. The checks began to appear in mailboxes on October 1.

Lastly, a day after the news began reporting on the mailing of the checks, another payment was announced. This $90 payment to more than 20 million eligible Original Medicare Part B enrollees is meant to help pay for Medicare premiums. The timing and message built into these payments make them an election-season issue.

Then came the plague. On October 2, the World Health Organization had announced that a possible case of pneumonic plague had killed a lab worker in Russia. On October 5, the administration announced that the president planned to speak with Vladimir Putin about the matter.

On October 9, Trump spoke with Putin and announced that Russia would supply diesel to the United States to help lower fuel prices. No one mentioned the plague until the WHO announced a day later that it found no plague pathogens. Naturally, analysts began to question whether the deal would meaningfully lower diesel prices ahead of midterms, and the timing of the call. Again, the timing and message, tied to fuel availability, made this an election-season issue.

Next came news of an execution on live TV. On October 8, the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad. Scheduled for December 3, after the midterms, some critics (including Republicans) condemned the broadcast as propagandistic. An ABC News report quoted a former military judge calling it “political theater,” while Le Monde noted the announcement “appears to send a message” just weeks before midterms. Once more, the timing and message built into this grim spectacle make it an election-season issue.

Then there is Iran. On October 8, Trump said that the United States would not attack Iran before the midterms. He said productive discussions were underway and explicitly named the midterm date. The Washington Post had indicated that Trump previously accused Iran of trying to harm Republicans at the polls. The timing and message built into this announcement make it an election-season issue.

These announcements share one very specific thing: their timing. Presidents have always tried to influence midterms, and sometimes voters reward them; sometimes they reject them altogether. Voters don’t have to guess what any president is thinking. They can investigate what's promised, what Congress has approved, and who benefits.

Midterms can effectively shape the second half of a presidential term, but history has yet to offer a reliable playbook for influencing them. Johnson and Wilson put their appeal on the ballot, neither FDR nor Obama were able to achieve party goals as intended, and Biden’s student-loan announcement was part of the campaign but not of the policy.

These things don’t reveal a president’s motives, and they can’t predict the outcome of the election. They demonstrate that governing and campaigning run through the same headlines. This year, the overlap has been somewhat difficult to miss. This administration can keep right on making announcements; it is the voters who decide how much those announcements really matter.

Faithfully,