Democrats might be doomed to a 2026 disappointment

Ever since President Trump placed his hand on a Bible for the second time, Democrats have clung to one hope: The midterms will save us. 

It made sense as an attainable goal. Historically, midterms punish the party in power. And surely, the tariffs, the ICE raids, and the grocery prices would deliver a righteous backlash. The voters would come to their senses, and the laws of political gravity would reassert themselves. Right?

Well, here we are again, just about a year out, and that anticipated “blue wave” is starting to look more like a drizzle — or maybe even a drought. 

Recapture of the Senate was always going to be a steep path for Democrats. Their path certainly runs through Maine, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) being the best chance Democrats have to oust a sitting Republican senator. 

Her most exciting Democratic opponent is a 41-year-old oysterman and blue collar veteran named Graham Platner (D). Unfortunately, CNN just reported that he once called himself a “communist” and made insulting and disparaging remarks about police and rural white folks on social media — which he subsequently deleted.

This pretty much sums up how things are going electorally for the Democrats. But the Senate was always a bit of a stretch. The real action for 2026 is in the House. And even as anti-Trump rallies under the “No Kings” banner are set to take place around the nation this weekend, Democrats’ dream of retaking the House is starting to look dicey as well.

Consider CNN’s Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten, who now says the “Democrats' chance of taking the House in 2026 have plummeted, while GOP chances have skyrocketed over the last six months.”

The numbers back him up. Democrats lead Republicans on the generic ballot by just 3 points. At this point in the 2018 cycle, they had established an eight point lead. It is a larger debate over whether their ideas no longer land or they just haven’t found a way to sell them. But either way, too few people are buying what Democrats are selling. For the first time since FDR, more Americans now call themselves Republicans than Democrats. 

Even so, history suggests this could still be a good Democratic year — that is, until Trump decided to flip the script.

He ordered Texas to create five new Republican House seats through a mid-decade gerrymander of the congressional map. California has responded by attempting to do its own blue state gerrymandering, but there are too many red getting into the action. This is a game Democrats cannot win, since they are maxed out in many of the states they control. 

For years now, Democratic voters have been packing themselves into blue zip codes — which wouldn’t be a problem, except that they would have a lot more congressional seats if they were more evenly distributed throughout the country. 

There is a sliver of hope, of course — there always is. Texas redistricting is premised at least partly on the dubious notion that Hispanics will vote the same way in 2026 that they did in 2024.

What's more, map-makers can get greedy and accidentally make a “safe” Republican seat a into a swing seat. In a wave election, such "dummy-manders" can have unintended consequences, backfiring on the gerrymanderers.

But every time Democrats start sketching a new comeback story, another headline drops. The latest gut punch is that the Supreme Court might take a machete to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which sought to curtail racially discriminatory voting maps and effectively required the creation of majority-minority districts. 

If that happens, Republicans might gain an opportunity to erase a dozen Democratic seats in the South, says chief political analyst for The New York Times, Nate Cohn. (It is not entirely clear whether the ruling would apply to the House map for the 2026 midterm or whether it would take effect afterward.) 

Even under the rosiest scenario, Cohn writes, Democrats would need to win the national vote by five points just to have a 50-50 shot at taking the House. And that’s the good news for Democrats.

So the question becomes: would taking back the House even matter? Trump doesn’t really need Congress for much. He governs by executive orders, spectacle, and vengeance — not legislation. 

Sure, a House majority would empower Democrats to hold hearings, wag fingers — maybe even impeach him again for old time’s sake. But it wouldn’t really move the needle that much to have one House of Congress.

The bigger stakes are psychological. If Democrats can’t flip the House after all the chaos, corruption and unhinged behavior of Trump 2.0, the the psychic blow would be devastating. It would confirm the gnawing suspicion among their own voters that the cause is hopeless — that moral outrage is just postponed surrender.

Meanwhile, Trump would interpret the results as mandate of Heaven — a license to rule, not govern. The power centers that once stood up to him — big business, the media, academia — would fall in line more than ever. Fear has a way of making such things happen.

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the devastating impact this would have on the so-called guardrails of liberal democracy, much less the morale of Democratic voters. Democrats, God help them, are tired — existentially exhausted, like a runner who keeps watching the finish line get farther and farther away.

They need a win to restore their confidence and give them some momentum. And they need it badly.

Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books “Too Dumb to Fail” and “Filthy Rich Politicians.”