The mystery underneath the 2026 midterms is a genuine paradox. President Donald Trump's administration has gotten inflation under control after Bidenflation sent grocery bills and rent skyrocketing, and by most measures, it's working. Yet polling consistently shows voters blaming Trump and Republicans for the cost of living anyway, and Democrats are making affordability the foundation of their midterm election messaging… right after “Stop Trump.”
For what it’s worth, there are economic indicators showing the economy is doing much better under Trump. The problem is that gas prices have spiked because of the war in Iran, and that single data point is loud enough to drown out everything else.
But there is a key truth behind any economic message: if voters don’t feel it, you really can’t convince them otherwise. Joe Biden tried and failed to claim that the economy was good on his watch, and people didn’t fall for it because they could see and feel how bad things were at the pump, the grocery store, and on their utility bills.
So what's the Republican Party supposed to do? Well, Trump's 2024 campaign may have already answered that question, just not with the message Republicans are leaning on now.
Trump's closing ads that year didn't rely on economic arguments alone. They used trans issues to paint Kamala Harris as out of touch, with the most memorable campaign ad line declaring, "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you."
It worked well enough that Democrats are still relitigating it. The 2025 Democrat autopsy called the ad an "irreconcilable problem" precisely because Kamala Harris never abandoned the underlying position it attacked.
Perhaps no ad is more closely associated with the 2024 campaign than the Trump campaign’s anti-transgender spot, with the tagline of “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”
And the autopsy casts the ad – and Harris’ comments which it was based on – as an irreconcilable problem.
It said the campaign’s pollsters “all recognized the attack as very effective.”
“If the Vice President would not change her position – and she did not – then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the autopsy says.
Elon Musk appears to think that formula still has juice.
Musk's America PAC has launched a large-scale anti-trans ad campaign aimed squarely at the 2026 midterms, and the group isn't pretending it's a persuasion play. It's a get-out-the-vote effort, designed to drive Republican turnout rather than win over anyone still undecided.
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The targets are specific. New ads are running against four Democrat Senate candidates in competitive races: Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Josh Turek (D-Iowa), James Talarico (D-Texas), and Mary Peltola (D-Alaska). The spots focus on transgender athletes, sex changes for children, and men in women’s locker rooms. The ads are running online and across streaming platforms rather than broadcast television.
This is the first batch of ads America PAC has released for the midterm cycle, and it won't be the last. Musk has reportedly authorized the group to spend as much as $100 million before Election Day.
That's an interesting bet, because trans issues aren’t exactly a top issue of this cycle. Economic concerns dominate voter priorities in poll after poll, while trans and LGBT issues barely register at all. “It's the economy, stupid,” as the saying goes, and no amount of clever ad targeting changes what's sitting at the top of everyone's mind.
But there’s an important caveat here: Musk isn't making the same bet Trump made in 2024. Trump used culture-war messaging to persuade swing voters who hadn't made up their minds. America PAC is using it to make sure Republicans who already agree with the party actually show up when perhaps they are feeling less inclined to do so.
Will it work? I don’t know. But it won’t hurt. If Republicans win in November, I wouldn’t be surprised if this strategy is seen as a factor.
