One month removed from hyperventilating over the accidental killing of two fellow citizens in Minneapolis, it is time for Republicans to regroup and recognize their surprisingly strong position in the lead-up to the upcoming midterm elections. Blindly accepting predictions of a midterm whipping overlooks the events of another historical period framed by polarization and confrontations in the street.
In the year leading up to Minneapolis, the Democratic Party was in complete freefall. The party had lost sizable portions of long-standing constituencies and had fallen behind in registrations. Its leaders were feckless and its brand was toxic. If the party had hope, it was the historic pattern of the incumbent party losing ground during the midterms.
In the wake of Minneapolis, nothing has changed in the Democratic Party, but the discussion has inexplicably shifted from achieving an upset to anticipating the inevitable.
Yes, the president’s party generally loses House seats in midterm elections; since 1946, the president’s party has lost 18 out of 20 election cycles. This pattern, however, obscures a significant discontinuity.
First, between 1954 and 1994, the Democratic Party was the House. During this 40-year period, both Democratic and Republican presidents would lose House seats in the midterm. Yet, regardless of whether the president was a Democrat or not, the public continuously voted for Democratic control of the House.
Second, in 1994, Democratic control of the House finally came to an end, after which the two parties traded the majority several times.
The House has turned over five times since then. And by wide margins. In 1994, the Democrats lost 54 seats. In 2006, Republicans lost 31. In 2010, Democrats lost 64. In 2018, Republicans lost 40. Undoubtedly, public disapproval of the incumbent president can be determinative.
But the pattern has also been disrupted three times.
In 1998, the Democrats gained five seats and, in 2002, the Republicans won eight seats. In the former, voters were rejecting Republican overreach over the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal; in the latter, voters were rallying to the flag after 9/11. In 2022, the Democratic Party lost nine House seats. However, in this instance, the loss was the second-lowest since 1946 and the turnover reflected the near-even split in the House. If the Republicans were to lose nine seats in 2026, the House would revert to the Democrats.
The saving grace for Trump is that America First conservatism has transitioned from an insurgency to majority party status, whereas the Democratic Party is moving in the opposite direction, a shift reminiscent of the party’s transformation from 1968 to 1972, a turbulent period punctuated by a tragedy akin to Minneapolis.
In May 1970, members of the state National Guard confronted antiwar demonstrators on the campus of Kent State University and, amid the confusion, shot and killed four students and wounded nine. Nixon had derided the protesters as “bums” only a day earlier and Democrats hoped the incident would injure him permanently and ensure his defeat in 1972. (The Democrats misunderstood their fellow Americans; a subsequent Gallup poll revealed a majority of respondents blamed the protesters for the tragedy.)
The incident not only deepened antiwar militants’ and diehard liberals’ antipathy toward Nixon, but also increased their determination to take over the Democratic Party.
In 1971, the Democratic Party was the majority party, controlled both houses of Congress, and held the edge in party identification. A January poll showed Senator Edmund Muskie, the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 1968, had a narrow lead over Nixon, establishing him as the frontrunner. In July, the 26th Amendment extended the vote to millions of 18- to 21-year-olds, a constituency the Democrats claimed as their own.
Nevertheless, the divisions that had erupted at the 1968 convention had only worsened.
In Congress, the northern and southern wings of the Democratic majorities clashed repeatedly. Disputes over civil rights, Vietnam, military spending, and the draft led the two blocs to vote differently on 38 percent of all recorded votes, the highest level since 1960.
Most significantly, the party adopted nominating reforms that substantially moved decision-making from the party’s professional political establishment to its voters via the primary system. Moreover, the reforms mandated specific quotas for traditionally underrepresented groups.
The commission that devised the reforms had been led by Senator George McGovern, a stalwart liberal and leading opponent of the Vietnam War. McGovern declared for the presidency but polled far behind Muskie and other major candidates. Nevertheless, McGovern was obviously advantaged by his intimate knowledge of the revised nominating process as well as an ideological constituency primed to turn out for primaries and populate the new group quotas.
McGovern lost to Muskie in New Hampshire, but by summer’s end McGovern had assembled an insurmountable lead in the delegate count.
The convention awarded McGovern the nomination and introduced a new militantly progressive party to the country. However, the ultra-liberal platform repelled the party regulars, who either withdrew to the sidelines or defected to Nixon.
That fall, McGovern led the party to its greatest defeat in a generation; Nixon won in a historic landslide and nearly won the youth vote.
McGovernite liberalism has animated the party ever since. Arch-liberals, leftists, and progressives soon constituted the preponderance of the party’s congressional representatives and its most activist wing.
More consequentially, McGovernite liberalism constituted a “punitive liberalism” that sought to punish America for a seemingly inexhaustible list of sins—greed, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, slavery, genocide, environmental destruction, militarism, and imperialism. Possessing the levers of government, liberals set about enacting affirmative action, environmental restrictions, and welfare entitlements; and seeking accommodation with the Soviet Union.
Voters reacted by overwhelmingly electing Republican conservatives to the White House in three of the next four elections.
McGovern’s coalition eventually triumphed 32 years later in the form of Barack Obama. Democrats enacted national health care and diversity initiatives, but voters rightly detected the threat to the economy and the value of merit. Unfortunately, it took eight years under Obama (and four under a senile figurehead) to demonstrate the absurdity and destructiveness of the progressive agenda.
Upon Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the left underwent a collective psychological disintegration unprecedented in American history. Lurching even further to the left, the Democratic Party has embraced democratic socialism and a Marxist multiculturalism eager to regiment the economy and institute a DEI gleichschaltung. The next generation of Democrats encompasses committed socialists or charlatans enacting a bait and switch.
On immigration, Democrats would grant rights and privileges no self-respecting community would ever grant to those who violate its integrity.
The American public wants a secure border and the deportation of those who violated it. Over the course of three elections, the number of voters supporting a stronger border policy only increased. In 2024, the voters awarded Trump and America First conservatives unified control of the government and the mandate to do so.
Republicans should in no way cede ground in undoing illegal immigration and upholding election integrity.
Like Nixon in Vietnam, Trump has already recalibrated the DHS presence in Minneapolis. Calling for changes in tactics is reasonable; agreeing to partial deportation and abandoning the SAVE Act is capitulation.
If the Democratic Party supports an open border, then let them explain why. Have Democrats explain to the public what ends unlimited immigration serves. Have them face victims of crimes and explain why their perpetrators’ illegal crossings were condoned. Have them explain why policy should be dictated by mob action in the street. Have them explain the hypocrisy of requiring identification to shovel snow but not to vote.
Ultimately, what are congressional majorities for if not to enact long-standing objectives? When the Democrats lost Kennedy’s Senate seat, they did not retreat from passing nationalized health care; they may have lost the majority in the next midterm, but Obamacare is going nowhere. Funding DHS in full and passing the SAVE Act are worth a majority.
Just as McGovern and the New Left offended the silent majority in 1972, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, and the neo-socialists taking over the Democratic Party will only horrify and repel the common-sense majority in 2026 and 2028.
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