CNN —
It is extraordinary for a defeated ex-president to play a starring role in the first midterm election since he lost power. Yet Donald Trump’s decision to use the 2022 elections as a stage to avenge his 2020 defeat and President Joe Biden’s strategy of making the man he vanquished the focus of the Democratic campaign are shaking up conventional wisdom about November’s critical vote.
A race expected to turn on Biden’s unpopularity and high inflation had already been shaken up by the overturning of a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion by the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority Trump had solidified. Now, the ex-President has roared back to center stage, powered by his inflammatory efforts to turn the midterms into a proving ground for his false claims the 2020 election was stolen and reverberations of the FBI search of his resort in Florida.
History would suggest the Democrats – as the party of a first-term president – will face a drubbing in the midterms.
But Trump has yet again shattered expectations and is turning what had been shaping up as a referendum on Biden and the economy into one on his own grievance-fueled politics.
And as well as offering a rerun of their bitter duel two years ago, both men may be offering a preview of a fearsome 2024 presidential race – even if recent polls have shown large chunks of voters in each party might prefer a fresher line up.
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