Election Day Special: How Midterm Success Often Becomes a Mirage

As midterms reach their pinnacle on this Election Day, we will soon turn to the question of whether the party that wins tonight will receive an automatic boost, a leg up, in the presidential contest in 2028. After all, holding or seizing the bully pulpit in one or both chambers of Congress allows a party to shape its brand, legislate on its top priorities, and position itself for the upcoming presidential race. But recent history has demonstrated that midterm success can often turn into fool’s gold.

Indeed, if Democrats, now big favorites to win the House and slight favorites to win the Senate, feel flushed with excitement when all the midterm ballots are counted, they will quickly realize the self-imposed trap into which they could easily fall. No matter the outcome, they remain a party in crisis, with issues such as Iran, Israel, and Medicare for All driving a big fat wedge between party leaders and the insurgent socialists and progressives. They will bleed in public as the majority party in Congress, or even in one chamber. They will be held accountable for the actions of a growing number of extremists who have dragged the party far to the left and made it crystal clear they have no intention of supporting the existing establishment leadership. Utter chaos is in fact possible if the freshly empowered far left is not reined in and put in their place. 

Midterm and Presidential Success

A look at recent history reveals a notable lack of correlation between midterm success and victory in the subsequent presidential race. In 1994, voters upset with the failed attempt by Bill and Hillary Clinton to pass a national health care bill stormed the polls in the so-called Gingrich Revolution, with Republicans winning 54 seats in the House and eight in the Senate to control both chambers. But two years later, with the tailwind of a strong economy built largely on the tech boom that later turned to a bubble, Clinton was easily re-elected.

In 2010, voters angry again about health care, this time the passage of Obamacare, flooded the polls, with Republicans gaining 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate. But the GOP wrongly interpreted its success as a victory for their brand, when in reality it was mostly the result of voters angry about the new health care bill. Somehow, an overconfident GOP saw fit to nominate the very man who passed a health care bill in Massachusetts that became the model for Obamacare, Mitt Romney, who was crushed by Barack Obama.

And in the last midterms in 2022, when an expected red wave turned into more of a trickle after voters angry about the overturning of Roe v. Wade flooded the polls, Joe Biden and Democrats took it as a sign that people were content with his administration and increasingly progressive agenda. Two years later, he learned that they were not at all content as Democrats were crushed across the land.

History Is Not the Democrats’ Only Impediment

With Donald Trump still in the White House, Democrats won’t be able to pass a single significant bill on a partisan basis that will survive a presidential veto. This means that in the House, they will effectively legislate for show, passing bills that make them look virtuous and the president look bad, knowing they have no chance of becoming law. In the Senate, they will obstruct most if not all of Trump’s judicial appointments. They will execute the three I’s – inquire, investigate, and impeach – voraciously, but beyond that, what has been their message during the campaign? It’s all about affordability, but that’s the problem. What is their solution? 

They have not offered anything resembling a coherent plan for lowering costs, other than raising taxes on the rich and attempting to upend Trump’s tariff and trade deals. But these are the kind of moves that could easily backfire if made by the wrong people for the wrong reason, i.e., hatred for Trump and consequent opposition to his every decision, no matter its merit. 

If the economy rebounds, which is likely once the Iran War comes to a head after the elections, Democrats would have two choices: Spin the good news into bad news in hopes of damaging Trump, or try to somehow take credit. But neither will work since the economy will sink or swim based on the One Big Beautiful Bill and Trump’s executive actions. And rest assured that Trump will take to his favorite spot, his own bully pulpit, to position the Dems as pure obstructionists out to blindly tear down everything he has built.

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Democrats could easily fall into a common trap in politics by misinterpreting midterm success as a growth in popularity for their beleaguered brand. That would be a big mistake, for they remain even more unpopular as a party than Republicans. Evidence of how Democrats are surging this year simply because of Trump and the economy, as opposed to the essential contrasting worldviews of the two parties, is found in a recent poll by New York Times/Siena in five red states where Democrats are overperforming this year – Alaska, Ohio, Texas, Kansas, and Iowa. In each case, the Democratic candidates running neck and neck with their GOP opponents remain far more popular than the party itself. While 35% of those polled said they believe the Democratic Senate candidate in their state was too far to the left, that number spikes to 52% when it comes to the Democratic Party as a whole. Indeed, the surging popularity of Democratic candidates, or perhaps more precisely anti-Trump candidates, this year in red bastions does not translate to a similar view of their party.

The fact is, Trump was sent back to the White House after promising to fix a broken economy, not because a lot of those who voted for the man care for him personally. Since inflation persists and prices remain stubbornly high, many feel he has failed to deliver on his promise and will send a message of anger to the White House. But if Democrats take no concrete actions to lower prices, those same voters, 40% of whom identify as independents not bound to either party, will blame and abandon them just as easily as they are abandoning Trump this year.

So if you are voting for the Republicans, you may want to cancel your despair scheduled for Tuesday night. Indeed, if Democrats take over all of Congress, they will be held fully accountable for their statements, actions, and principles. And since the party has given no indication of changing its ways since the blowout of 2024, you might well expect a midterm sweep or even control of one chamber to portend big trouble for the party of government and its presidential nominee come 2028.