Visions of 2026: US fateful midterm election

Since Donald Trump assumed the U.S. presidency on Jan. 20, his new administration has faced little resistance from the Democratic Party. Trump’s seizure of U.S. politics — both constitutionally and unconstitutionally — has been hindered mostly by federal judges. Democratic Party leadership seems stunned, lost, scared and demoralized. Stunned by the fact that Trump — a twice impeached, failed insurrectionist — managed to capture the White House again and aggressively implement his baleful agenda. Lost as to how to counter Trump administration policy initiatives and political attacks. Scared of the prospect of illegitimate criminal prosecution by Trump’s “Justice” Department, tax auditing by Trump’s IRS and Republican-led efforts at civil lawfare to undermine Democratic Party cohesion and institutional —both financial and organizational — structures. Demoralized by the thought of long-term banishment to political irrelevance and the Sisyphean labor necessary to overcome the present shambolic reality.

This disastrous state of affairs has generated a “virtue-of-necessity” strategic logic in which Democrats envision returning to power by hunkering down protectively, allowing the Trump administration to fail (notably through unpopular, recession-inducing economic and trade policies), capitalizing to win the 2026 midterm elections (especially the House of Representatives), and then blocking the Trump administration legislatively while impeaching the president and select cabinet officials for gross constitutional violation of the separation of powers. Trump and the MAGA agenda would thus be discredited, paving the way for the return of a Democrat to the White House after the 2028 presidential election. So goes the — until now, mostly unstated — plan.

Let’s put aside the advice of authoritarianism scholars, who argue that aspiring autocrats must be countered quickly to ensure their failure. Let’s also put aside the question of whether Trump’s policies will be perceived as failures by enough U.S. voters to ensure Democratic victory in the 2026 midterms. What is at stake in the Democrats’ approach to their political future is nothing less than the future existence of U.S. democracy itself. That is, the Democrats are in a race with Trump and the MAGA-fied Republican Party to use the 2026 midterm elections to chart a path to either the restoration of U.S. rule of law or the solidification of U.S. politics as a competitive autocracy.

Trump is not a totalitarian. He is an aspiring authoritarian in the mold of Viktor Orban of Hungary or Recep Erdogan of Turkey. Under a Trump autocracy, elections are likely to be held but would be neither free nor fair. Media manipulation will promote Trump and MAGA Republicans while undermining opposition candidates. Lawfare — both civil and criminal — will be employed to distract and slander opposition candidates, hinder fundraising and coherent opposition party organization and force Democrats to play constant defense rather than propose a positive agenda or attack Trump’s record. Both federal and state voting rules will be tailored to repress the Democratic Party vote share. Ultimately, this type of competitive autocracy aims at keeping the incumbent in power through deeply illegitimate and illiberal means, but he or she does have to do more than simply go through the barest of rubber-stamp electoral motions.

The Democratic Party's strategy of waiting out Trump’s fury and winning at the Congressional ballot box in 2026 thus rests on the hope that Trumpworld fails to implement quickly enough the political machinery necessary for repressing and manipulating the vote next year. This is quite a gamble, and if the Democrats lose, they will find it increasingly hard to oppose the Trump administration between 2026 and 2028. By that point, there would be even less hope for a free and fair presidential election. The MAGA movement would be positioned to lock in presidential victories for the foreseeable future, starting perhaps with a third Trump term — a prospect that he recently refused to rule out.

If the Democratic gamble succeeds and the party wins at least the House of Representatives in the midterms, it will almost certainly turn quickly to articles of impeachment. The list of the Trump administration’s unconstitutional actions and executive orders rising to the level of abuse of power is too long to present in this column, but a few include overturning birthright citizenship, impounding Congressionally appropriated funds, closing Congressionally mandated government agencies, establishing the para-governmental Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk and noncompliance with rightful court orders. In short, the Trump administration is willfully violating the constitutional letter and spirit of the separation of powers and checks and balances that undergird the U.S. constitutional republic.

If given a Congressional majority in the 2026 midterms, the Democrats will argue that the Trump administration has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” sufficient to warrant impeachment. They will use the tools of Congress — from budget authority to Congressional investigation — to stop and roll back the MAGA agenda. The further step would be to do so in a strategically coordinated way so that a Democratic candidate would have a fighting chance to win the presidency in 2028.

However, even in this scenario, the world should not expect the U.S. to return to the status quo ante. The country is now hopelessly split along MAGA lines. The Democrats are utterly traumatized by the Trump 2.0 blitzkrieg and will be tempted to use executive tools for their own constitutional overreach to undo what Republicans have wrought by wielding those tools for right-wing causes. As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people. Disrespect for the Constitution would be near total. The iron cage will have shut on the U.S. republic.

Mason Richey is a professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, president of the Korea International Studies Association and editor-in-chief of the Journal of East Asian Affairs.