President Trump’s escalated attacks on House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) have created opportunities for Democrats racing to seize control of the lower chamber in this year’s midterm elections. But they also carry plenty of political risks.
Trump is widely unpopular on the national stage, and Democrats want to showcase their opposition to the president in an effort to bring voters to their side in November — a contrast highlighted by Trump’s attacks on Jeffries. But they’re also taking great pains to keep the focus on the universal issues of affordability and healthcare — and not make the elections just a referendum on Trump, which has backfired on the party in the past.
The dynamics are forcing Jeffries to walk a delicate line in his ongoing feud with the president, straddling the dual roles of street fighter ready to engage Trump at his own games and policy leader operating above the fray to promote an agenda Democrats hope will appeal to working-class people across regional divides and political ideologies.
The delicate dance has grown more challenging in recent days as the clash with Trump — aired publicly and in highly personal terms — intensified after a Supreme Court ruling that weakened a landmark voting rights law of the civil rights era.
The high court declared last week that Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in a 6-3 decision, curtailing Section 2 of the voting law that has long enabled advocacy groups to force new majority-minority districts. Jeffries, a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the decision was “illegitimate,” arguing that it was “designed to undermine the ability of communities of color” and accusing the court of rigging the midterm elections.
Trump, in a Truth Social post on Sunday, blasted Jeffries, calling him “a Low IQ individual” and urging Republicans to seek ways to remove him from office.
“After saying such a thing, isn’t he subject to Impeachment? I got impeached for A PERFECT PHONE CALL. Where are you Republicans? Why not get it started? They’ll be doing this to me!” Trump wrote.
Jeffries, in turn, reposted Trump’s Truth Social post on the social platform X, captioned “Jeffries derangement syndrome,” a reference to “Trump derangement syndrome,” a label Trump uses to disparage those who disagree with him.
For Trump, the warning of yet another impeachment is part of a broader message that Democrats harbor irrational hostilities toward him personally, at the expense of the country’s economic health and national security. He’s fighting to energize conservative voters and his MAGA base in an election year when he’s not on the ballot.
“All they care about is Trump, Trump derangement syndrome,” Trump said Friday during a speech to seniors at The Villages retirement community in central Florida. “We’re dealing with lunatics.”
Former President Obama, who ranks among the most popular political figures in the country, said recently that his strategy, in the age of Trump, is to resist the temptation to respond to everything the president says or does, even if it outrages most Democrats. If he engaged in every debate, Obama warned, he would lose some of his influence and effectiveness in the drive to return his party to power.
“For me to function like Jon Stewart, even once a week, just going off, just ripping what was happening — which, by the way, I’m glad Jon’s doing it — then I’m not a political leader, I’m a commentator,” Obama said in a new profile in The New Yorker.
Jeffries doesn’t have the same luxury of remaining on the sidelines. In frequent press briefings and cable news hits, he’s been forced to respond to a continuous blizzard of Trump controversies — everything from the president’s prolific pardons and deportation surge to the prosecution of political rivals and the Iran war. Still, he’s also been careful to advance the underlying argument that Trump’s greatest threat is to the economic well-being of working-class people — the same voters Democrats want at their side in November.
“Costs aren’t going down in the United States of America, costs are going up,” Jeffries told reporters recently in the Capitol. “And a big part of the problem right now, particularly as it relates to skyrocketing gas prices, is Donald Trump’s reckless and costly war of choice that is making life more expensive for the American people.”
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said on MS NOW’s “The Weekend” that Trump is “drowning in his dismal poll numbers and is hanging on [for] dear life.”
“You’ll hear more from him as his polls continue to drop, as they are right now,” Espaillat added.
Trump, for his part, has dismissed the trend of rising consumer costs as a political ruse drummed up by Democrats to damage him politically. Gas prices are “not very high,” he said last month, and affordability is a “Democratic hoax.” He’s insisted he’s fixing a problem he inherited from President Biden.
“It’s amazing. I come into office and I say, ‘Wow, look at how high these prices are.’ And the Democrats start screaming, ‘affordability, affordability,’” Trump said in Florida. “They’re the ones that caused the problem.”
If there are political perils for Democrats focused too keenly on Trump, there are also risks for Trump dismissing the impact of his policies — particularly his global tariffs and the war with Iran — on consumer costs, which have spiked for many staples in the 15 months since he returned to office.
Frank Luntz, a prominent GOP pollster, warned this week that his research reveals that the top anxiety of voters heading into the midterms is the cost of everyday items like gas and groceries, followed closely by the cost of healthcare.
“It’s not the economy in general,” Luntz said in an interview with CNN. “Voters are not concerned about jobs, they’re not concerned about economic development [or] economic growth. It’s affordability, affordability, affordability.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill, feeling uneasy about the economic outlook, have increasingly touted Trump’s tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on the campaign trail and are eyeing another reconciliation package this year that would address healthcare reform, housing costs and other GOP priorities.
In the meantime, however, there is also grumbling that their party isn’t doing enough to address rising costs.
“If we lose the midterms, it will be because we didn’t talk about what moms and dads are worried about when they lie down to sleep at night and can’t, and that’s primarily the cost of living,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said on Fox News’s “The Big Weekend Show” in late April.
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