America is at a point in its political cycle where phrases like “groundswell” and “wheels coming off” engulf us in historic waves. Who among us does not relish an electoral sea change? Noticeable by its absence, however, is any consensus on what the looming Republican defeat will mean. The answer is less than implied. Today’s circumstances are very different from those around typical midterm elections, including Donald Trump’s first term. Our vocabulary has not kept pace.
Loss of control of Congress — the switch to divided government — used to mean that the president’s room for manoeuvre would be roughly halved. Bill Clinton after 1994, George W Bush after 2006 and Barack Obama after 2010 all tried to meet the other party somewhere in the middle. The exception was Trump in 2018 who said “my name wasn’t on the ballot”. He made no effort to accommodate Democrats. It took two not to tango. The age of “lawfare” against Trump started then.
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that since Republican lawmakers do not have control of Congress, they cannot really lose it. Though Trump treats Congress like a Duma, sufficient handfuls of Republicans have joined Democrats to block some of his wishes. Foremost of these is a bill to impose draconian ID requirements on voters.
For the most part, however, Congress has been irrelevant in the last 20 months. King Charles’s address to it earlier this year was a reflection in mutual augustness — the dignified bit of Britain’s constitution talking to the dignified bit of America’s.
Even if one accepts the extreme hypothesis that Democrats can speak with one voice, it is unclear what they can do to stop Trump from carrying on, still less make his wheels fly off. But that is what many are vowing. Democrats will be stymied by the fact that Trump’s most dramatic actions — his economic and military wars of choice — tend to bypass Capitol Hill. Any law that tries to block him can also be vetoed by him. Imagining that two-thirds of the Senate would convict Trump following impeachment would be as quixotic as the last two times.
That leaves politics. Democrats are wise not to have promised a wish list of things that are unlikely to become law. But they will get a fresh hearing from the American public.
Public opinion has turned strongly and perhaps decisively against Trump. His negative approval rating — the gap between those who approve of his record and those who don’t — is twice as bad today as it was on the eve of his party’s 2018 drubbing. It is also worse than for any other president barring Richard Nixon when he was drowning in Watergate. Trump’s base is also shrinking. Barely one in five Americans “strongly approve” of him (in some polls as little as one in seven).
Does Trump care? The clearest sign that he does not comes from his biggest election promise — a $5,000 dividend to every adult American. This cash payout would only be triggered by a Republican midterm victory. Elections are supposedly about voters judging their representatives. Trump’s way is to offer voters a performance bonus.
His approach to Operation Epic Fury is also counterintuitive. Trump insists that Iran will only come to the table after November 3rd. Most other presidents would be scrambling to end the war before the nation goes to the polls. To be fair to Trump, he will probably not be in a much stronger position to negotiate an armistice after the election than he is today.
A better hunch is that he does not wish to reveal the type of concessions he would need to make to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Strategic defeats do not rally the base.
What, then, does Trump care about? Apart from his ensemble of monuments, he wants to protect himself, his family and his money from the law, and doubtless make even more of the latter. Absolute loyalty is key to both. Peter Thiel, his longest-running Silicon Valley backer, last week said that Trump was served by “not very smart but very loyal people”. Most will survive congressional scrutiny. Others can bid for a pardon.
That Trump’s much-vaunted 2024 realignment is already unscrambling is an alarm bell for elected Republicans. Young and non-white voters are leaving in droves. This suggests that the most intriguing politics will come from inside Trump’s administration, not the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump and those in his orbit will want to carry on as if nothing has changed. Those wanting to succeed him, such as JD Vance and Marco Rubio, will face an impossible choice: Trump or their own ambitions?
- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
