Will Pennsylvanians Punish Republicans Over the Iran War?
On February 28th, Donald Trump made a bigger gamble than ever took place at any of his Atlantic City casinos. Betting that a joint U.S.-Israeli decapitation strike on Iran would result in another overnight, low-cost operation that the president could tout as a quick victory, Trump has risked both his electoral coalition and the fate of his second term.
Instead of toppling Tehran in an instant, President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have jumpstarted a regional war involving more than half a dozen countries. Ceasefire offers have been rejected out of hand by both sides.
The president’s advisors should have warned him that in a war, the enemy always gets a vote.
From the Islamic Republic’s perspective, they must reestablish sufficient deterrence to forestall any future attack by making the cost in retribution far outweigh any benefit. And for three weeks, their strategy has been, rather than prioritize U.S. casualties, to maximize economic damage by closing the Strait of Hormuz and targeting energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. The more pain that Americans feel at the pump, Tehran predicts, the more pain the administration will feel domestically.
It’s a rule of thumb that the incumbent party loses seats in midterm elections. With the thinnest of margins in both chambers of Congress, and Donald Trump having already predicted last November that the midterms would be “rightfully brutal” on Republicans if they failed, he has now weighed down the GOP with a new war that was always guaranteed to raise prices.
The Keystone State may prove make-or-break for any chance at a Republican majority.
Pennsylvania has at least two House seats judged as tossups by political analysts, both with Republican incumbents who won last cycle with a less than 5,000 vote (1%) difference – Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (PA-7) and Scott Perry (PA-10) – and both of whom are vocally supportive of the president’s war with Iran.
From the moment the attack on Iran was announced with a 2 A.M. Truth Social post, the war has been underwater with independents (60% opposed) and Democrats (89% opposed). Fascinatingly, Pennsylvania Democrats have been arguably the most supportive among prominent party leaders in the country.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has been measured in his criticism of the war, focusing more on process than product, in the wishful thinking that close security cooperation with Israel will be a popular backdrop to his widely-anticipated 2028 presidential campaign. Meanwhile, the idiosyncratic John Fetterman was the only Senate Democrat to vote against a war powers resolution to stop the war with Iran, a country where he’s openly advocated regime change since last year. “I don’t follow the polls,” he opines.
But with gas prices spiking almost a dollar in less than a month with no relief in sight, that political piñata is only going to get bigger, with more Democratic challengers taking swings at it.
Much hoopla has been made by the White House over a new NBC poll that found 100% of self-identified MAGA supporters back the president’s war with Iran, a result that should not be too surprising after Trump recently declared that “Make America Great Again” was synonymous with all of his decisions. A person who self-identifies as a Trump supporter will support what action Trump has just taken, by definition.
Recall that even at the nadir of the George W. Bush presidency in October 2008, after the exposure of the fraudulently sold Iraq war and the economic meltdown of America’s banking system, Gallup still recorded a 55% approval rating among Republicans.
But no candidate can win with their base alone.
Donald Trump successfully broke through the Rust Belt’s fabled “Blue Wall” in the 2016 presidential election by drawing out fresh support from the white working-class, many of whom had been two-time Barack Obama voters. This crossover appeal, based on an admixture of immigration restrictionism and protectionism, narrowly gave Trump the first Republican victory in Pennsylvania since 1988 with a 46,000 vote (.72%) margin.
Eight years later, when Trump became only the second president elected to a non-consecutive term, he increased his margin in Pennsylvania to 120,000 votes (1.71%). For the first time in his decade-long political career he cobbled together a majority coalition that included not just MAGA Republicans but disillusioned Democrats and disaffected independents.
And it is these same polls that are repeatedly demonstrating that Trump is leaking support from these latter groups because of their opposition to the Iran war, ranging from a tenth to a third of his broader coalition. If sustained until November, those losses would result in a Democratic landslide in Pennsylvania and across the country.
So far, the U.S. military has incurred thirteen casualties in the Iran war (none from Pennsylvania). The Pentagon is preparing for combat operations to last until September at a minimum and has just requested a $200 billion supplement from Congress. 2,200 Marines have just been deployed to the Middle East in expectation of a landing force against Iran.
Every indication is that this war of choice will be longer, bloodier, and more expensive than Donald Trump ever conceived, lasting up to and beyond November 3. Having survived so many setbacks, scandals, controversies, and catastrophes, will his fateful decision to break his celebrated campaign promise of no new wars be the dice roll that finally comes up snake eyes?
