Republicans will hold an unprecedented midterm convention in Dallas on September 9 and 10, aiming to defend their majorities in Congress, even as poll after poll continues to show President Donald Trump with low approval ratings. The event is notable not just for its scale, but because it reflects how closely the party is tying its down-ballot message to Trump at a time when his standing with voters remains a central issue in the campaign. Andrew Egger of The Bulwark predicts that Trump will respond with unmitigated rage if the midterms go badly for Republicans on November 3.

"Next month, at an unprecedented midterm convention in Dallas, Trump and Co. will make the case again: Your Republican candidates are good because they're for Trump," Egger explains in the conservative outlet's analysis. "If this message fails — and it's easy to see why it would — Trump's rage will be incandescent. I go out there and bust my a– –for you worthless lumps, and you still can't get over the finish line!"

Egger adds: "The president is never one to keep these things to himself. The post-midterms crashout will be breathtaking — and a powerful sign of good things to come."

Given how "bleak" Republican midterm prospects appear, Egger argues it is quite possible that on Wednesday morning, November 4, Americans will wake up to "news of a ringing electoral repudiation of Donald Trump and his Republicans."

"Team Red will have lost the House; they may even have lost the Senate. Trump's chances of further major legislation will have gone up in smoke, and he may well be staring down the barrel of two years of pure legislative pain: no ability to get his nominees confirmed, no ability to stave off messaging bills aimed at his weaknesses, no way to avoid constant investigative scrutiny. He'll be furious. He'll be crashing out. And we already know exactly what he'll be saying," Egger predicts.

In that scenario, Egger stresses, Trump would blame fellow Republicans — not himself — for the GOP midterm "crashout."

"For all his happy talk, it seems like he's really starting to feel like his party is blowing it. And, of course, he's deeply convinced it's anybody else's fault but his. Which is preposterous. Trump has remade the entire GOP and all of American politics in his own lurid image, and it's an image that Americans have never hated more. Trump has always struggled to turn out his motley base when he himself isn't on the ballot, and that base is dwindling away day by day regardless," Egger writes.

"Everywhere you look, it's warning lights blaring on the dashboard…. In such an environment, you might expect GOP candidates to be sprinting away from the president at top speed, desperate to convince voters who have already soured on him that downballot candidates might still have something to offer. But they're in too deep; if they knifed Trump now, he'd turn on them, and voters wouldn't forgive them anyway. So all they can do is white-knuckle it to Election Day and pray for a miracle," he continues.

The convention, which President Trump and Vice President Vance are scheduled to headline, is the first of its kind ahead of a midterm election.

Source: Alternet