The midterms ARE about Trump — and what he offers for America’s future

Ignore all the opining about President Donald Trump “making the midterms all about him”: It was never going to be any other way.

Midterms are always about the incumbent prez, with voters usually expressing doubts and discontent — that’s why the “out” party almost always gains seats.

What Republicans can do to counter those tendencies is pretty obvious: Remind voters of how very much the GOP has done right, fixing the messes left behind by President Joe Biden and the hyperactive Democratic Congress of 2021-’23 — and of how extremely weird the Democrats remain.

And weird not just on such “cultural” issues as trans rights and DEI: Most Democrats remain obsessively opposed to immigration enforcement, for example.

Half of them are still full-on Abolish ICE, with the rest looking to cut the agency’s funding and hamstring it with new rules in the spirit of the “sanctuary” cities and states that elect most Dems to Congress.

Remind the public that it appreciates Trump decisively closing the border, while Markwayne Mullin and Tom Homan now have Homeland Security and ICE now doing a steady, unobtrusive job at deporting the worst of the worst.

Voters should also realize that much of today’s remaining inflation is a hangover from the Biden spending sprees, and that a Democratic Congress will push to reopen the spigot, even as the hard left aims to starve Defense.

On that front, we must say that the call to send $5,000 to every adult American, however attention-grabbing, leaves us cold.

It’s not just that the cost seems blatantly unaffordable when the debt is already soaring far too fast: The idea just smacks of desperation, as if the White House brain-trust couldn’t think of anything better, even though Democrats can easily counter with a $10,000 bribe.

Which points to what’s most missing in the GOP message: a clear vision for the future.

The president and his party need to offer some real sense of what “finish the job” looks like: What program do they propose for Trump’s final two years?

Trump can and should celebrate recent gains in manufacturing employment and making prescription drugs more affordable, as well as wage growth that decisively beats the Biden record — “more of this” is a good start on concrete promises for the last quarter of his presidency.

Add in a thorough fraud-proofing of Medicaid and other programs now losing tens or hundreds of billions a year to scammers, plus “affordability” reforms like finally fixing ObamaCare.

He likely also should face the public’s worries over the Iran war head-on, explaining that US and allied forces are now squeezing Tehran — which is holding out, and doing its best to send oil prices soaring, in hopes that Democrats can win big enough to cripple the US war effort and throw yet another lifeline to the Islamic Republic.

Biden left Iran poised to go nuclear: Trump has no need to apologize for stopping that, rough as the necessary costs have been.

Democrats are eager not simple to make the midterms “about Trump,” but to convince Americans the president has lost track of their needs.

The winning answer to that is simply to show how everything he does is about keeping the nation safe and prosperous — while the opposition is still obsessed with weird priorities that put both our safety and our prosperity at risk.