I don’t know what’s going to happen in the midterms, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in the midterms, and the boosters and pundits certainly don’t know what’s going to happen in the midterms. But something is going to happen in the midterms. And what happens in the midterms will make them either the most important midterms in the history of ever, or the least important. It all depends. Which means you shouldn’t take a chance, and you should get out there and vote all red just in case.
There is a substantial chance that these will be the least important midterms ever. Now, I know we’re not supposed to say that. I know we’re supposed to treat everything as if it’s existential, and there’s certainly the potential for existentiality here. But if the Republicans keep both houses of Congress, it’s going to turn out not to be a very important midterm. And, if the Republicans lose the House, particularly by a small margin – this seems to be the historically likely outcome – then it also won’t be that important in retrospect.
What do I mean? I mean, having Hakeem Jeffries wrangling the herd of cats that is a Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is a fate I wouldn’t wish upon anybody except a Democrat, which is convenient. The fact is, if they take the House, what are they going to do? On the legislative side, Donald Trump’s signature legislation has already gone through. President Trump passed the Big Beautiful Bill. We got the tax cuts, and we funded ICE for the foreseeable future. I guess they can pass a bunch of pinko-commie wishlist bills, like socialized medicine, defunding the police, and demanding that the United States withdraw from North America, but who cares? That kind of onanism won’t go anywhere in the Senate if we keep it. And I think we will probably keep it.
But even if we don’t keep it, President Trump will still have his veto. Look for the veto to become a leftist bugaboo like the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and heterosexuality. They can pass all the neo-Marxist bills they want, which Trump will veto. And they’ll stand there, looking stupid, a do-nothing Congress that is merely a spectator to the president’s pen-and-phone governance.
They’ll be stuck passing their pet bills merely to make a point, but the message they send may not play well outside of coastal California, Manhattan, and blue inner-city congressional districts. Much of the stuff they will pass is pure poison out in real America, but even the alleged moderates are going to have to get aboard because the Democrat majority’s margin is going to be so thin that it needs to be all hands on deck on the political Titanic. That means people who got elected pretending to be normal are going to have to vote for crazy things. Are they going to try to tell the mouth-breathing psychopath Democrat base that they couldn’t pass the DSA’s wishlist? Do you think that the DSA types are going to accept that President Trump will veto whatever they send him as a reason not to send him their kooky legislation? This election cycle, one of the things that has helped the Democrats is the fact that they haven’t actually done anything. Oh, they’ve said lots of stuff about transing kids, opening the borders, and so on, but once they get a majority, their own party is going to force them to take actual votes. All those people pulling the Spanberger Moderate Campaign Game™ are going to get stuck voting for this wacky nonsense. And next election cycle, their Republican opponents will use it as an electoral suppository.
This is not to say that losing won’t have negative consequences. It’s just that those consequences aren’t apocalyptic, at least not in the short term. And there’s lemonade to be made from lost election lemons. If the Republicans lose the House, Trump has something that he’s uniquely suited to using to his advantage — a nemesis he can play against.
Losing the Senate is a bigger deal because the Senate ratifies nominations. A Democrat Senate will refuse to allow Trump to hire subordinates as a way to refuse to allow Trump to govern. The Democrats are of the opinion that the American people had no right to elect Donald Trump, and that anything he does is illegitimate, and therefore they have no obligation to even consider his appointees. Their only purpose will be to destroy him and disenfranchise his voters. Don’t expect any nominee to be confirmed to any office, not one judge, ambassador, or secretary. And that would be a problem for the administration, though not insurmountable.
But it would also be a problem for the Democrats. The American people have limited patience for that kind of shenanigans. Remember, Donald Trump is going to be looking to 2028, not for himself but for his legacy. If he has one or two houses of Congress in opposition, he’s going to highlight their knee-jerk rejection of his most common-sense and popular proposals. And when the economy inevitably improves and the Iran War resolves, then things are going to start getting better. It’ll be the Democrats’ turn to demand that voters not believe their lying eyes. Remember 1982? Reagan got creamed in the midterms. But what happened in 1984? Two years later, the economy was cranking, and it was morning in America. Ronald Reagan won 49 states.
Moreover, in opposition, the congressional and Senate Republicans are going to look better and better. Their big problem this year is that when the Republicans had the majority in both houses, they did not do much after the first year. In opposition, at least they’ll have an excuse for not doing anything. Throwing the GOP into the trunk will, ironically, probably do them a world of good. In politics, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and no one excels like the Republicans in meeting the expectations of people who have low expectations.
But the Democrats will exploit any power they have. For example, there’s the threat of impeachment and investigations. Please bring on the impeachments. They just spent a whole cycle talking about how Trump is refusing to focus on affordability. Well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to then spend the next two years focusing on the exercise in windmill jousting that is another impeachment — or impeachments. It’s all a show, and a stupid one. If we hold the Senate, the House will have its festival of judicial onanism and then walk over with the impeachment documents; John Thune — if he knows what’s good for him politically — will take them and throw them in the trash just like the Democrats did with the Mayorkas impeachment. And if the Democrats take the Senate, they can have their Senate trial, and they will still lose. Even the weakest Republican is going to look at what happened to Bill Cassidy after he supported impeachment and vote no.
Impeachment is a loser’s game. Ask the Republicans whether it’s a good plan to try to lose your way to victory.
There will be lots of investigations and lots of kangaroo committees trying to frame Trump and those who work for him for imaginary crimes. If the Democrats are smart, which is a big if — they are the Chauncey Gardiners of American politics — they will focus on a few select targets. But what do you think the chances are that they’re going to be disciplined and focused? And what do you think the chances are that Donald Trump’s DOJ is going to bring charges against someone who refuses to testify or respond to a Dem subpoena? The only thing these investigations are going to result in is adding names to Trump’s preemptive pardon list.
But here’s the real danger and the reason why this election could be hugely important. It sets up the map for the 2028 election. If they do well now, they’re in a better position to win in 2028. We know what the Democrats are going to do if they get a trifecta. They’re going to end the filibuster and attempt to change the government once and for all such that they can never lose power again. Now, that’s a fool’s errand, and it won’t work, but the danger is that in their attempts to crush democracy in favor of perpetual democratocracy, they will permanently damage the constitutional order of this country. There’s approximately a 0 percent chance that normal Americans will look at a Democrat administration backed up by a Democrat Congress that has packed the Supreme Court with ventriloquist dummies who tell them that they don’t have free speech, freedom of religion, or the right to keep and bear arms, and just sort of give in. You’re looking at chaos. If you want to preview the chaos, pre-order my new novel, American Warlord (it comes out on Tuesday, Election Day) to see how the worst-case scenario plays out.
So, the real importance of 2026 is how it affects 2028. This election will tee up that one. And if we end up in a hole that we can’t dig out of next cycle, then this will truly be the most important midterm election ever.
Next Tuesday, Kurt’s next action-packed conservative novel, “American Warlord,” is unleashed! Get it for presale now, and follow Kurt on X @KurtSchlichter!