When it comes to the war in Iran, my supposition is that the economic negativity driving the country — and creating an environment where Democrats could do very well in the midterms — is entirely about one thing: the price of gas. The war is incredibly unpopular, but it’s different from the war in Iraq. Both were very expensive, but Iraq brought coffins back at a scale we haven’t seen here. The biggest difference is what Americans are paying at the pump.

According to AAA’s live average, gas is at $4.44 nationally. It’s higher in states like California and New York, but even here in Texas, where we have relatively low gas prices, it’s edging toward $4. During the memorandum of understanding, that son of a b***h kissed the twos. Before the war in Iran, it was sitting around the twos. It’s not good right now.

The question is whether this is Iran’s play. Iran is extraordinarily sophisticated in its understanding of the American electorate and the American democratic system. Are they timing their greatest chaos in the region to spike the price of oil as high as possible during election season? The United States appeared to have established a flow of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, but now we’ve seen missiles and drones fired at American vessels and major damage to Saudi Arabia’s 745-mile east-west pipeline.

Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

That pipeline can move four to five million barrels a day — roughly 4 to 5 percent of the global supply. Saudi Aramco has already told three European refiners they won’t receive their full September allotments, forcing them to buy emergency stock on the open market. Because oil is a globally traded commodity, that drives up the price. Chevron CEO Mike Wirth has warned that stockpile releases and access to previously restricted oil stored abroad had constrained prices, but those buffers are now played out. Iran has been warning about $200-a-barrel oil since the beginning of the conflict.

The obvious historical comparison is Jimmy Carter. But this isn’t 1979. Headline inflation was 11.8 percent then, compared with 3.4 percent now, and unemployment was 6 percent instead of 4.1 percent. We’re doing better by those measures, but will any of it matter? Gas was 98 cents a gallon in August 1979. In August 2026, it was $4.20, and it’s even higher now.

The sunniest version of Trump’s tariff policy was that he’d become the greatest energy president of all time and drive gas prices low enough to give him room to negotiate better trade deals. All of that went out the window with the rush into Iran. Even if you don’t totally hate the war from a foreign-policy standpoint, you can understand that this is political poison. It’s strychnine for the average voter. Electing Trump was, in part, a cry for economic relief from people who didn’t trust Joe Biden to provide it. The numbers currently suggest Democrats will receive that same benefit of the doubt. Whether it holds when people vote is the question.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:25 - Gas Prices

00:16:34 - Update

00:16:59 - Data Centers

00:18:20 - ICE

00:19:34 - Kennedy Center

00:21:46 - Interview with Michael Cohen

01:00:02 - Wrap-up

I’m struggling to find anything that dissuades me from a position I think is probably too aggressive: Democrats are going to ransack. They’re going to pillage. They’re going to take things that aren’t usually theirs. The polling, the energy, and the environment all point in that direction, and I haven’t seen the midair maneuvering Republicans would need to put together a coherent message. Their argument is basically, “You’re really going to turn the keys back over to those guys? They’re lunatics and they’ve learned no lessons.” That’ll work with some of the base, but I don’t think it’ll be enough.

I took a random sampling of 15 polls and looked at the five issues Americans say they care about most. Number five is foreign affairs and war. Number four is democracy and democratic values. Number three is healthcare. Number two is immigration. Number one, of course, is the economy. Foreign affairs and war aren’t showing up because people are pumped about the war in Iran. Democracy is an almost entirely Democratic-signifying issue, and voters nearly always trust Democrats more on healthcare.

Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Immigration is the first good news for Republicans because nobody trusts Democrats on immigration. Some Democratic voters are worried about overenforcement, and even a Republican congresswoman from Miami has told Trump that he’s listening to the wrong advisers and going too far. But by and large, Republicans can argue that they’re correcting something that’s been wrong for a long time. Then you get to the economy, which is normally sewn into the DNA of the Republican Party. The problem is that when voters say “economy” right now, they mean inflation and gas prices — two areas where things have come in hotter than Trump swore they would.

The rest of the top issues include crime, Social Security, housing affordability, government ethics and reform, the SAVE America Act, Trump himself, and abortion. I don’t see many things there that Republicans want to discuss. I see plenty that Democrats would like to discuss because Republicans have taken a position and now have to defend their solutions. It’s easier to run against a problem than defend a solution, and Trump is very good at doing things. He explores every legal option to do a thing, which creates a lot of surface area for Democrats to run against.

Across the last 10 midterms, the five most common issues were crime and drugs, immigration, foreign affairs and war, healthcare, and the economy. The economy appeared in every one. But some issues that used to matter have disappeared. Morals and family values were major concerns in 1994, 1998, and 2006, but they’ve completely fallen off the political radar. If anything, shedding the morals-and-family-values label helped make the Republican Party more potent. Gun policy was important in 2018 and 2022 but didn’t make the current top 10. The federal budget deficit made the list only in 1986. Nobody cares about it now, which is why nobody is particularly interested in changing it.

In 2018, the top issue was healthcare, followed by immigration, the economy, and gun policy. In 2022, it was inflation, followed by abortion, crime, gun policy, and immigration. This year looks a little more like the Bush era, with foreign wars and foreign policy returning to the center. But the biggest difference is enthusiasm. Democrats are doing jumping jacks, keeping their heart rates up, ready to run through the door like the Kool-Aid Man to vote. I don’t see that same enthusiasm among Republicans, and I don’t see a message telling voters what Republicans will do about the things they care about most — at least not yet.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:40 - Midterm Issues

00:18:04 - Update

00:19:55 - Paramount Settlement

00:23:09 - Trump and Mamdani

00:27:17 - Trump TV and the Press Pool

00:31:50 - Interview with Gabe Fleisher

01:16:09 - Wrap-up

Trump says he’ll give every American $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate. That’s about $1.3 trillion, and the country is already $40 trillion in the hole. Is it a bribe? No — well, yes. Is it a political bribe? It’s unconventional, but I have a hard time separating it from politicians promising government services and warning that those services will disappear if you vote for the other party. The more important point is that even if Republicans keep Congress, this ain’t happening. There’s no political will for it, and I highly doubt the votes exist.

So why are we talking about it? Because Trump would rather have a conversation about whether a $1.3 trillion gift is feasible than talk about $4 gas, high diesel prices, inflation, or the state of the economy. Promising $5,000 reframes him as somebody who understands that people need cash. After a brief improvement in economic sentiment, things look dour again, and Trump now says the Iran war will end shortly after the midterms. Even through his rose-colored glasses that sometimes turn BS brown, he’s admitting this won’t be over before November.

Politics Politics Politics is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Republicans are heading into a massive fight. New polling has Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas ahead by four or five points, while Lindsey Graham’s sister leads by only two in South Carolina. I’d still bet on Ken Paxton over Talarico, but Talarico is moving toward the center. He says he opposes trans athletes competing where fairness and safety are at stake and would sign a law banning sex changes for minors. Not long ago, that would’ve been called an attack on trans children. Now a more liberal candidate is saying it because he believes the issue is an exhaust port on his Death Star. I’m ending this week more inclined toward My Blue Heaven than I was on Labor Day.

The White House is also promising $500 rebates to roughly one million Obamacare customers in 30 states who were allegedly overcharged. That’s separate from Trump’s $5,000 promise, and neither announcement means money has reached anybody. This looks like an answer to Democrats’ warnings about the expiration of Obamacare subsidies — one of the issues that drove the earlier government shutdown. Is it really going to happen? I have no idea. But it puts the administration where it wants to be: talking about what it’ll do for voters who are hurting for money.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has interrupted Republicans’ effort to use a new congressional map in Missouri, clearing the way for the older map approved by the state Supreme Court. Republicans wanted one more House seat from the redraw, but election officials need usable instructions before ballots go out. The broader redistricting push was hot and heavy a few months ago, but it was also slapdash. That’s the Trump administration: Somebody has an idea, everybody says it’s great, they start doing it, and they figure out whether it’s possible about halfway through.

John Fetterman also appeared by recorded video at the Republican midterm convention to introduce fellow Pennsylvania senator Dave McCormick. Fetterman called himself a Democrat, praised McCormick, and discussed working with Trump to protect steel jobs. If you think that means he’s switching parties, he poured cold water on it. He remains a proud Democrat and says he votes with the party 80 to 90 percent of the time. But imagine Democrats reach 50 Senate seats and Fetterman becomes vote 51. I’d love to ask Abdul El-Sayed which he’d prefer: a Democratic majority that depends on Fetterman, or Fetterman revealing his “true colors” and becoming a Republican.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:11 - Trump’s $5,000 Promise

00:06:30 - Polling

00:09:42 - Interview with Katherine Dee

00:31:29 - Trump’s $500 Refunds

00:33:09 - Supreme Court

00:34:29 - John Fetterman

00:36:29 - Interview with Katherine Dee, con’t

00:58:42 - Wrap-up