"I don't care."

It does fit on a bumper sticker.

President Trump talked about midterm elections in his interview with Reuters today:

“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Don’t take the bait on the second part about cancelling the election.¹ Stick with me. The “deep psychological thing” the president is describing is the system set up by James Madison, among others.

It’s a structural feature of the Constitution. One Madison articulated most clearly in Federalist 51.

“A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

What precautions? The other branches, and particularly the House, which would answer executive over-reach:

“the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. … Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”

Madison did not trust virtue or goodwill to restrain power. He trusted ambition fighting ambition. So he separated institutions, staggered elections, and gave each branch incentives to push back against the others. The House—elected every two years—became the pressure valve.

Here are some facts to keep in mind relative to the midterms:

The President’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterms (stretching back to 1938).

No President’s party has avoided House losses in modern history unless the President’s approval was well above 50%. Trump’s current approval is hovering around 39%.

Since the end of World War II, the average losses in the president’s party are: House of Representatives: 26–28 seats. Senate: 4 seats.

The president seems resigned to the math, which might not be the Greatest thing in the world if you are a vulnerable republican. Because it sounds like the president is not going to do anything to appease the political forces that might very well vote them out of office.

Here’s what I mean from the Reuters article:

When told that a Reuters/Ipsos poll found tepid support among Americans for taking control of Greenland, Trump called the poll “fake.”

“I don’t care,”² he responded when asked about the pushback by some Senate Republicans against the investigation into Powell. “I don’t care,” he said again, when reminded of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s concerns that White House interference in the Fed could harm the economy.

When asked about Americans’ worries about high prices, Trump reiterated that the economy was the strongest “in history” and said he had to do a better job of promoting his achievements. (He referred to a specially prepared thick binder that listed his accomplishments in office.)

These comments wouldn't be so tough for Republicans if the Madison system as Madison designed it still worked, where House members could respond to the general popular feeling with their own voices and through their own connections to the local political base. But presidents have become the national driving figures in midterm elections, as those midterm elections have become nationalized. And no president in modern times has captured his party’s political image as completely as Donald Trump. Whether the voters' historical reaction to the party in power is a psychological thing or not, the apparent disinterest from the only actor that could change that psychology, turns the historical pattern into something closer to mechanical inevitability.

1. The reason this is bait is that the president would like a big discussion to take place about his accomplishments. So far he's been unsuccessful. By flirting with the idea of not having an election, he's hoping the inevitable backlash will force attention to his claim: that he's accomplished so much elections are unnecessary.

2. Do you remember this phrase from your Schoolhouse Rock?