Daily Kos84%
Iran war keeps dashing GOP’s midterm hopes 85%
By Emily Singer83%
7/20/2026, 5:01:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Post Hoc (False Cause), and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 31.4% saturation with 204 hits. Analysis detected 1,868 faulty-reasoning hits from 650 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 76.7% and a BS Rank of 85% (3,378 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 84.60% of the article peer group.
Republicans had been breathing a little easier when President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran had calmed, leading gas prices to ease as traffic resumed in the Strait of Hormuz.
It caused Trump’s approval to rise slightly as well as the generic congressional ballot to tighten.
But war is once again raging.
Not only is Iran launching deadly attacks against American troops as well as ships trying to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen are also now declaring their own naval blockade in the Red Sea.
It's caused oil prices to surge again amid fears of shortages, and that is trickling down to fuel prices in the United States.
The average price per gallon in the country is now $4 per gallon, according to AAA’s tracker.
And that is causing the GOP headaches here at home.
“It’ll weave back into the affordability issue.
It makes it very difficult,” Republican Sen.
Thom Tillis of North Carolina told the media outlet NOTUS, regarding how gas prices will impact Republicans in the midterms.
“Just when we’re getting to a point where we’re kind of leaning more towards easing the [inflation] rate, [now] it’s probably not.”
Indeed, a landmark 2016 study found that for every 10 cents gas prices rise, presidential approval falls 0.6 percentage points.
The correlation has weakened slightly in recent years.
Political polarization has prevented the bottom from truly falling out for either political party.
Yet, because Trump’s war in Iran so clearly is the cause of spiking gas prices, the correlation could be stronger this year.
And given that gas is up 13 cents in a week due to Trump's war—with higher prices coming, according to experts—Republicans could once again see their poll numbers trend downward.
Worse for Republicans is that, save for ending the war, which Trump has not been able to do, Trump's tools to ease gas prices are literally running dry.
Trump has used the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate even higher fuel prices by injecting more supply into the market, but that reserve is now at its lowest level since 1983.
According to the market data company Barchart, there are approximately 43 days of supply left, which could lead to price hikes around Labor Day weekend—a popular travel time for Americans and the time when election season kicks into high gear.
On top of rising prices, the Iran war being back in the news is itself problematic for the GOP.
Americans broadly oppose the conflict and are angry that Trump launched a foreign conflict when he had promised not to.
In fact, experts now fear this will turn into yet another “forever war.”
“We are looking at a new normal: recurring US-Iran clashes, periodic American or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian control over the [Strait of Hormuz], higher oil prices and a larger, longer-lasting American military presence in the Middle East,” Ilan Goldenberg, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the pro-Israel group J Street, wrote in a post on X.
He added, “Iran’s leverage will eventually depreciate as countries build pipelines, diversify energy supplies and establish alternative trade routes.
But that could take years.”
Ultimately, this all feeds into Democrats’ message that Trump isn’t focused on affordability and instead got the country embroiled in a war that not only raised prices but also has not made Americans any more safe.
“We have a president who promised to keep us out of war, who said he was going to focus on bringing prices down.
He’s done the exact opposite, right?”
Democratic Sen.
Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told NOTUS.
“Just when the president said he wanted to cool things down, he’s heating them up, and so prices will go up as he heats up the war.
Prices will go up, and the American people are going to take a hit.”
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100%flagged-word coverageIlan Goldenberg
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