Halfway through the term, Trump rallies are getting longer, the rhetoric hotter. His grievances are ever more pronounced, with consequences for a political coalition Trump hasn’t been able to expand. No one questions that the onetime reality-TV star offers a form of political theater that leaves his base enthralled. “Trump understands that politics is, to some degree, performance art. He’s a natural performer—he’s a good one, and the crowds love it,” said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

But Trump’s blend of personal attacks and insults, his focus on enemies and preoccupation with seemingly peripheral issues such as the size of his crowds, risk scaring off the suburban voters and college-educated women whom Republicans hope to keep in the fold. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling shows that among suburban woman, Trump’s job-approval rating dropped from 44 percent to 39 percent from February to March.

Read: Trump cares about only one audience

Recent appearances seem untethered to any sort of strategy to drive a policy agenda ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Last week, Trump returned to the notion of repealing Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act—an effort that failed two years ago, when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.

“The president raised this issue fairly early in his discussion with us over lunch” last week, Senator John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, told me. “He spent a fair amount of time talking about it.”

Yet the White House put forward no concrete plan for swapping in a replacement that would protect the millions of people insured under Obamacare. Senate Republicans have shown little appetite for reviving the issue without a clear path forward. And Trump, bowing to reality late Monday, abruptly reversed course. He sent out a series of tweets saying that the health-care vote won’t take place until after the 2020 election, a gambit that hinges on a trio of uncertainties: his own reelection, Democrats losing the House, and Republicans retaining control of the Senate.

Read: What is the point of a Trump rally in 2018?

Soon after Democrats won the House in the 2018 midterms, some White House aides spoke hopefully about forging agreement on long-held bipartisan goals. Heady talk about passing an infrastructure package is now receding as both sides dig in for the next election.

Rather than shaping a national consensus, Trump is using his rallies to sharpen differences with congressional adversaries and road-test fresh attacks. He has been heaping scorn on the living and the dead; at Democrats and Republicans; at TV anchors and print reporters; at past presidents, and even at renewable-energy sources. One thing that has escaped the president’s wrath: TiVo. “One of the greatest inventions in history,” Trump said in a speech last month.