【土曜版 #99】米中間選挙・徹底分析。「トランプ時代の終わりの始まり」か（ゲスト：今村卓さん）

Trump's Second-Term Approval Collapse and Its Structural Ceiling

Host Takafumi Nomura (野村孝文) opened by noting that Trump's approval stands at 39% with strong disapproval at 53% — the worst numbers since 2017 — and asked Imamura to explain why. Imamura's first point was structural: Trump's approval ceiling has always been somewhere just above 50%. Democratic voters and roughly half of independents are constitutionally out of reach, and the Republican base alone cannot push the number past that threshold.

That said, Trump's second term actually started from a somewhat elevated baseline. Under President Biden, prices had risen roughly 20% in cumulative terms, creating acute financial hardship. Voters who heard Trump explicitly promise that prices would come down gave him the benefit of the doubt. Imamura argues that this pledge to lower the cost of living was the single biggest factor that expanded Trump's 2024 coalition beyond white working-class voters to include Black and Latino Americans.

The Tariff Miscalculation and Deepening Hardship

Trump has consistently insisted that tariffs are paid by foreign exporters, and that they improve America's fiscal position. After a year, the data is in. Multiple economists and research institutions have found that 80–90% of tariff costs are absorbed by American importers or passed on to consumers. Exporters operating on thin margins simply cannot eat the full cost, so price pass-through was inevitable. Courts have additionally struck down some of the more aggressively imposed tariffs as unconstitutional.

Headline inflation has fallen from the 8–9% peak of the Biden era to 3.7% today, but Imamura stresses that voters do not experience year-on-year rates — they experience absolute prices compared to several years ago. New iPhone models have jumped in price because AI-driven demand has pushed up chip and memory costs. Diesel fuel is hammering transportation costs for trucks and buses. Mortgage rates have reached 7%, putting homeownership — what Imamura calls an ordinary American's "modest dream" — out of reach for many. Real wages have turned negative. Imamura notes a telling linguistic shift: where the conversation once centered on "affordability," Americans now speak bluntly of "hardship."

The Iran War and the Second Promise Broken

Trump's second campaign pillar was "no stupid wars" — a line that captured votes from Americans disillusioned by Afghanistan and Iraq. That pledge, too, is now a dead letter.

According to Imamura, Prime Minister Netanyahu persuaded Trump that he had a once-in-a-generation opportunity: destroy America's fifty-year adversary and eliminate its nuclear threat, securing a lasting legacy. Trump was also moved by what Imamura describes as the intoxicating sense of power that comes with the presidency — the ability to actually move military forces.

Before the Iran decision, the administration had pulled off what Imamura calls a "brilliant" operation against Venezuela: a swift combination of diplomatic and military pressure that shifted the regime toward a pro-American posture without destroying it. Iran proved to be an entirely different proposition. The regime is durable, controls the Strait of Hormuz, and has the capacity to inflict asymmetric damage on the United States. For six months Iran has sustained resistance using drones and cheap missiles. A ground invasion would mean massive American casualties, so the only option has been continued high-cost missile strikes. The midterm elections arrived with no end in sight.

Electoral Landscape: House Almost Gone, Senate in Play

The November 3 elections involve all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats. On the House side, even Republican insiders have told media outlets that the chamber is lost — a Democratic takeover is considered virtually certain. Gerrymandering carried out at the state level by Republicans this past summer — redrawing district lines to split Democratic-heavy areas and favor Republican candidates — has capped the number of competitive seats at around 40, so Imamura does not expect the 50–60-seat wave that defined 2006 or 2010. A maximum swing of around 30 seats is the working estimate.

The Senate picture has changed dramatically. Republicans currently hold a 53–47 advantage, and the seats up for grabs this cycle lean heavily toward red states, which led early analysts to dismiss any Democratic path to a majority. Since September, however, Republican candidates have been visibly underperforming even in reliably conservative states. Moderate Republicans who backed Trump in 2024 but are now fed up with inflation and the Iran war are either switching or sitting out. The possibility that Democrats could reach 53 seats is now on the table, and Imamura characterizes it as "something close to Republican self-destruction."

Impeachment Is Off the Table; Investigations Are Not

Even if Democrats sweep both chambers, Imamura sees impeachment as unrealistic. Conviction requires a two-thirds Senate supermajority. Today's Republican Party is effectively the Trump party, and there is no meaningful prospect of Republican senators voting to convict. The one historical precedent — Nixon's resignation in 1974 — came about because Republican senators went to Nixon personally and told him they would let impeachment proceed; Imamura rates the chances of that happening again as "extremely low."

The realistic Democratic playbook, he concludes, is relentless investigation: using the committee apparatus to probe whether Trump's policy decisions were compromised by conflicts of interest with his family's business ventures — the gray zones that American political norms have long treated as off-limits.