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USThe Guardian

‘Brilliant James’ helped return Trump to the White House. Can he conquer the midterms?

Photo: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

James Blair’s data-driven approach delivered victory in 2024 but president’s unpopularity and idiosyncratic style do not bode well this time They are both young, bald and fathers of four. They are also the brains behind Donald Trump. But while Stephen Miller is infamous as the US president’s ideological enforcer, James Blair could, in the words of Time magazine , “be the most important person in Donald Trump’s Washington you’ve never heard of”. That imbalance is deceptive, however. Blair has sufficiently impressed Trump to earn the nickname “Brilliant…

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USThe Guardian

‘Talking to every single person matters’: ‘prairie populists’ canvass the rural US heartland to win in midterms

Democratic and independent candidates stump the US midwest and prairie states, hoping to win over Republican strongholds In this final stretch of the US midterm elections, Democrats and independents could win back communities and towns across America’s rural heartlands through a combination of resurgent “prairie populism”, local despair over the impact of Donald Trump ’s agenda and an old-fashioned tenet of shoe-leather politics: showing up everywhere. When Dan Osborn rolled into one of the most rural counties in Nebraska earlier this month, he started…

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