Both parties aiming to lose the off-year elections

This election is a contest to see which party can do its best to lose. Looking forward from mid-September, President Donald Trump’s Republicans seem to be well ahead at this. But the Resistance (or don’t they call themselves that any more?) Democrats are putting up a contest.

Second-term presidents tend to make political mistakes by doing things they think are right. Franklin Roosevelt and court-packing, Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra, George W. Bush and the Iraq surge. You can see two examples of this in the second Trump term.