A Defeat Creates Opportunities

No matter how one looks at it, the 2026 midterm election was a rout for Democrats. But for Republicans and President Donald Trump, whose own rout of the Democrats in 2024 was short-lived, the defeat creates opportunities for electoral recovery.

While emotions are still understandably running high, history shows that Trump is hardly the only president whose party has suffered a major defeat in the midterms during his second term.

In 1986, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, Republicans lost eight Senate seats, more than Republicans just lost on Tuesday. During Barack Obama’s second term in 2014, Democrats lost 13 House seats and nine Senate seats (and of course, there was also the famous “shellacking” in 2010, when Democrats lost a staggering 63 House seats and six Senate seats). Yet both Presidents Reagan and Obama saw their popularity increase before the end of their terms.

Republicans also lost big in the 2018 midterms under President Trump, yet he still orchestrated a political comeback in 2024, becoming just the second person in U.S. history to serve non-consecutive terms.

All of these midterm routs saw large losses in U.S. House and/or Senate seats, and post-election commentary universally declared the losing party indefinitely smashed. That these routs were greater than most expected made the post-election autopsies more dire than the situation in fact was.

I have frequently argued that the 2020 defeat of President Trump can be viewed as a political blessing in disguise because it showed the nation in the following four years how inept Democrats and their policies were, thus enabling President Trump and the conservatives to quickly recover voter support.

Having learned several bitter lessons in his first term, President Trump was able to begin his second term with major successes in sealing the border, deporting illegal aliens, reducing taxes and unnecessary regulations, repairing the U.S. economy, and restoring the military.

But new and previously unsettled challenges remained and could only be resolved with short-term sacrifices and costs. Greatest of these was likely the war in Iran. Most wars take time to resolve. When President George H.W. Bush won the Gulf War of 1991 in only three days, he became immensely popular, but only a year later he was defeated for re-election.

The war in Iran and the Middle East has been waged with much success, especially in its current economic sanctions stage, and with relatively few U.S. casualties. But it has had a high economic cost, and the Iranian regime has stubbornly resisted surrender (at the expense of its own people). The war, as might be expected, became increasingly unpopular with U.S. voters who endured higher prices and some shortages due to the war.

Despite Vice President J.D. Vance’s immediate criticism of the war and distancing himself from Israel, a major U.S. ally, President Trump’s leadership in containing the dangerous aggression from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the U.S. military’s performance have restored U.S. standing as the principal force protecting democratic sovereign nations and human rights and freedom in the world.

This leadership came at a domestic political cost, along with some resentment from the nations it benefitted but that were too weak or lacked the courage to do something themselves.

Now with the midterm elections behind him, President Trump can finish the job for which history will hold him in very high regard.

Even with narrow majorities in Congress in the first two years of his second term, the Trump administration had some limits in its success. With Democrats now in the majority of the House and Senate, there will be inevitable stalemate. Democrats will also seek political revenge.

Yet President Clinton, facing a similar situation, worked successfully and cooperatively with GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich. Trump, the master of the deal, could work with the Democratic leaders similarly, especially if the radical neo-socialist wing obsesses on programs and policies that become unpopular and unworkable.

The Republican Party, like the Democrat Party, has its divisions. The presidential race in 2028 will be a political test of those differences. Candidates for both parties will soon emerge.

Vice President Vance has seemingly staked out his side, but he might have unintentionally enhanced the prospects of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Florida was the only state where Republicans stemmed the “blue wave” in the midterms, and its governor, Ron DeSantis, could also have a strong case to make.

Democrats do not have a clear frontrunner. Radical and moderate figures will soon become very visible, and Democrats will likely have a large pool of candidates vying for the nomination.

Two years, history tells us, is a very long time in presidential politics. Recent presidents of both parties have demonstrated remarkable recoveries from big midterm defeats.

For Republicans, 2026 was very painful, as 2024 was for Democrats. Soon enough, however, the sting of defeat will be replaced by the opportunities of the next cycle. For now, pundits will write and speak ad nauseam about who and what was responsible for the 2026 midterms. Some of that will be useful. Some of it will only be hindsight.

But what is ahead is what now counts the most.