A former Republican congressional nominee and a former Democratic president are working the same angle from opposite sides: convince voters to hand Congress to Democrats and choke off the populist mandate before it can deliver.

The establishment playbook is in plain view. The Des Moines Register gave its platform to a former GOP candidate explicitly urging Republicans to vote against their own party's congressional candidates. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is swooping into Ohio to boost Democrat Sherrod Brown's Senate bid. The message from both: Trump needs to be checked, and only Democratic control of Congress can do it. Translation for the voters who sent Trump back to the White House: your mandate should be neutralized by the same institutional forces you rejected.

Christopher Peters, the 2016 and 2018 Republican nominee for Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, wrote in the Register that Republican voters should "slip out the side entrance" this November and not vote for Republican candidates for Congress. Peters, who distanced himself from Trump in 2016, argues that "a Republican majority means no meaningful oversight" and that only a House or Senate "in other hands" can hold hearings, issue subpoenas, and "use the power of the purse."

Peters cites Trump's "election denialism, Jan. 6, American citizens killed on American soil by federal agents, embracing authoritarian regimes while alienating allies, appointees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth, the Iran war, and $6 diesel." He admits he doesn't think "either party currently represents the values and interests of the majority of Americans" — but tells Republican voters to hand Congress to Democrats anyway.

In Ohio, Obama is hitting the same note. The former president released a video urging voters to support Brown, who is running to retake a Senate seat currently held by Republican Jon Husted. "This race is going to be close. It could determine which party controls the Senate and whether Ohioans can count on the people in Washington to be fighting for you," Obama said. He'll campaign with Brown at an October 24 rally.

Brown is leading Husted and campaigning hard against the Iran war and Trump's tariffs. "Jon Husted's support for the war in Iran and reckless tariffs have made the price of gas, diesel, and groceries more expensive," Brown said in a recent statement. "Ohioans want someone who will stand up to the rigged system, not benefit from it." About three in four Ohio voters told CNN the cost of living has risen under Trump, and the president is 30 points underwater in approval in the state.

WJLA framed Brown's campaign as a sign of "greater resentment of the president" whose "economic agenda has fallen flat." The Register framed Peters's argument as a principled stand for Congress as a "coequal branch." What neither framed is the obvious: this is the same uniparty voters rejected, coordinating to reclaim power through the midterms.

Husted has tried to create distance from Trump's agenda but voted against efforts to stop the Iran war and block Trump's tariffs. "We are proving to the American people, the Republicans are fighting for them, we're fighting for lower energy costs, but the Democrats wanna be obstructionists all the way to the very end," Husted said earlier this month.

Peters is right about one thing: "every Republican seat counts toward the majority that decides whether Congress checks this president or protects him." The question neither he nor Obama will answer: why should voters who sent Trump to the White House want Congress to strangle the mandate they gave him?