In Dallas on a September night, Donald Trump stood before his party's first-ever midterm convention and asked Americans to hold him in mind even where his name would not appear — a gesture that revealed both the strength and the fragility of his political grip. With House and Senate control genuinely uncertain, Trump pledged rallies, a $5,000 citizen dividend, and his own gravitational force to carry Republican candidates through November. Yet the same presence he offered as a gift carries risk: a Democratic base already stirred by primary turnout, and polls in Texas and beyond suggesting that