🧩 BND Motif Index · M747
Midterm curse
The president's party is said to lose the midterms almost every time, so an unpopular president heading into one is read as a foregone loss: history as the forecast.
🪨 Beliefs🗂️ Horserace🗂️ Elections
- 5claims filed under it
- 6left shows it came up on
- 2center shows it came up on
- 4right shows it came up on
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up, by the show's lean
🫏 left 6
🎙️ Pod Save America 🎙️ The Adam Mockler Show 🎙️ The Kyle Kulinski Show 🎙️ The MeidasTouch Podcast 🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ Today, Explained
⚖️ center 2
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, newest first, in our words, with where each was heard
- 2026-10-23 “The Iran war has destroyed the second term and will lead to a bad midterm election.”
🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton - 2026-10-23 “The president's party typically loses seats during midterm elections.”
🎙️ Fox News Rundown 🎙️ Up First (NPR) 🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC) 🎙️ Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words - 2026-10-09 “The Republican Party is currently in a very weak position.”
🎙️ The Kyle Kulinski Show 🎙️ The Adam Mockler Show - 2026-10-06 “President Trump has a very low approval rating heading into the midterms.”
🎙️ The Young Turks (podcast) 🎙️ Up First (NPR) 🎙️ The Adam Mockler Show 🎙️ The MeidasTouch Podcast 🎙️ Pod Save America - 2026-10-06 “Republicans are likely to suffer significant losses in the upcoming midterm elections.”
🎙️ Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 🎙️ The Kyle Kulinski Show 🎙️ The Megyn Kelly Show 🎙️ Today, Explained 🎙️ Fox News Rundown
M747 · first seen 2026-10-10 · last 2026-10-28 · what this is · how the index works