Trump’s legacy hinges on the midterms – and he knows it

It's crunch time for the Dark Lord. Can he pull another rabbit out of the hat? The Tech Titans, ergo the modern-day Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Morgans, have a lot riding on him keeping the Dems at bay. Otherwise, their plans for AI and cheap energy are in peril.

Trump’s legacy hinges on the midterms – and he knows it

Charles Lipson, The Spectator

February 16 2026

“We gotta win the midterms,” President Donald Trump told the crowd in Iowa at the end of last month. “I’m here because we’re starting the campaign to win the midterms. That means Senate and it means House.”

Trump is, by all accounts, obsessed with the upcoming elections in November. Having been distracted by various foreign dramas, and seeing his approval ratings dip, the President aims to pivot back to a domestic mission in 2026.

If the Democrats capture the House, Trump will face noisy congressional battles and possibly impeachment

Trump understands the stakes, hence choosing Iowa, the traditional starting place for presidential primaries, to launch this campaign. The final two years of his presidency hinge on the outcome of these elections. He sees that, without a congressional majority in both houses, his political revolution will stall or even be reversed. If the Democrats capture the House, Trump would almost certainly face another round of noisy congressional battles and, quite likely, impeachment. That would drown out the revolutionary tempo of his second administration – a repeat of the relentless Democrat-led scuppering of his first term, only with added venom.

Trump’s plan is to focus on what voters care about most: the economy. At the Iowa rally, a large banner above the President read: “LOWER PRICES, BIGGER PAYCHECKS.” He brags relentlessly about having lowered the cost of gas and is busy hyping a series of policies designed to make Americans feel good about their finances. There’s the $1,000 “Trump Account” for every child born in the US between January 1, 2025 and December 2028 and, perhaps soon, a $2,000 “tariff dividend” for every American taxpayer. Moreover, if Trump’s new nominee Kevin Warsh is installed as chairman of the Federal Reserve in May, he may well get those feel-good interest rate cuts he so badly wants.

Donald Trump takes the stage in Clive, Iowa, January 27 2026 Getty Images

At the same time, the Democrats are increasingly confident that, for all Trump’s salesmanship skills, lingering cost-of-living pain and anxieties about the impacts of his erratic tariff system will ensure victory for their party. They believe a giant blue wave could soon drown out Trump’s legacy once and for all. The latest Fox poll supports such a view: only 20 percent of respondents felt Trump’s economic policies had “helped”; 43 percent said they had “hurt.”

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Unfazed by her failure in 2024, Kamala Harris has launched a shiny new youth mobilization organization, “Headquarters,” to build enthusiasm ahead of the midterms.

Democrats are also thrilled at growing concerns about the uglier side of Trump’s immigration policies. Immigration is supposed to be a winning issue for Trump. His success in stopping illegal migration across the southern border is popular. Mass deportations, however, are becoming trickier to sell to the electorate. This is why, in the wake of last month’s shooting of the anti-ICE protester Alex Pretti, Trump moved quickly to put Tom Homan in charge of operations in Minnesota, while defenestrating Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino.

As November draws closer, Team Trump will emphasize how his strong crackdown on migrants, and his broader assertion of law and order in many American cities, has led to dramatic decreases in homicides and violent crimes. Yet history and logic suggest that the odds must strongly favor the Democrats. No one is certain about the Senate, where the Republican majority is stronger but still vulnerable. In the House of Representatives, however, where Republicans hold a vanishingly thin majority, Trump’s mission looks almost impossible: since the 1930s, only three presidents have seen their party gain House seats at midterm: Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934, Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002.

Yet Trump is blessed – if not yet with a golden economy, then with a weakened and unpopular opposition. Today’s Democratic party is in hock to an increasingly strident leftist ideology. For the first time since its founding, Democrats now resemble a European socialist party, one that stresses centralized control, heavy regulation, identity politics, high taxes and income redistribution.

That orientation is a novel development for any major American party and does not command majority support among the public. The Democrats lack a positive agenda and the closest figure they have to a national leader is not Harris but the arguably more detested Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. His state was once a symbol of American growth and optimism; now it is suffering outward migration for the first time since the Gold Rush of 1849.

‘I don’t call it a comb-over, I prefer the phrase “hair system”.’

But the Democrats’ weakness is also their strength. Although the party is muddled on core issues, the real glue that binds them these days is their white-hot hatred of Donald Trump. Hatred is not too strong a word. It motivates party activists, donors and especially core voters, who are disproportionately important in midterm elections, when turnout is typically low. It is this hatred of Trump that keeps true believers marching through the bone-chilling cold of a Minneapolis winter. It inspires them to vote for a socialist (some say communist) mayor of New York who cannot pay for his airy promises and has never managed so much as a two-car funeral.

While Democrats fear a reign of right-wing populism, Republicans fear an irreversible slide into socialism, managed by a sclerotic Washington bureaucracy. Notions of a “loyal opposition” are long forgotten. For the party of Trump, the Democrats are accursed enemies. Truly evil. In such a climate, even midterm elections can take on a kind of end-times importance. Both sides are convinced that, if results don’t go their way, the country could be finished.

If Democrats manage to retake the House, you can say goodbye to any new legislation. It may pass the House but it won’t make it through the Senate, which effectively requires super-majorities for all motions except budget bills and nominations. If Democrat-led legislation does somehow slither past that barrier, President Trump will veto it unless he has signaled his approval before the votes. It’s a formula for legislative stasis unless Trump magically reinvents himself as a unifier in his last two years in office. Don’t bet on it.

This likely logjam will lead to a paradoxical result. The unilateral power of the President will actually increase. Why? Because the only power he has left is to act on his own, using executive orders and directives. He is certain to use them extensively, which in turn will lead to more resistance from a Democrat-led Congress. Few Americans realize just how novel the president’s overweening executive power is. None had it until the late 1930s. Now, all use it routinely.

The Democrats who created this powerful executive also concentrated power in Washington, suppressing the decentralized system of federalism. What they never figured on was a president like Trump. Now they are stuck with him and the vast powers they showered upon his office. He has used those powers for purposes they abhor. Unable to pass new legislation, Trump will issue more presidential directives and regulatory overhauls. He will also continue to deploy his unique authority over foreign policy. Those powers, not legislation, will be his governing tools.

Protesters outside Donald Trump’s rally in Iowa, January 27 2026 Getty Images

How do we know he’ll actually use them? Because he is already doing so. Although Republicans hold majorities in both houses of Congress, they are so slim he cannot pass major bills. But thanks to the reforms of the New Deal and the Great Society, modern presidents have escaped the traditional shackles of the old constitutional framework. Bills are no longer a necessary part of governing. Today’s presidents rule mainly by Executive Orders and their control of huge administrative agencies, with their vast budgets and regulatory powers.

Even with this vast power, what presidents still cannot do unilaterally is fund the government. That requires budget bills, or at least continuing resolutions, which can be passed by simple majorities in both houses of Congress. If Democrats win the House in November, their power over taxes and expenditures will be their strongest lever. They will wield it not only to scupper Trumponomics but to influence everything else they care about, as well as stake out positions for the 2028 presidential election.

The real trade-off will be between practical policy initiatives and smearing the administration with multiple investigations. They are almost certain to go full-bore for the latter, hunting down their enemies in the executive branch. Expect impeachments of cabinet officials, such as Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and the President himself. They know they cannot convict President Trump in the Senate without truly damning evidence, but that won’t stop them. They can still entangle him, highlight his failures, dominate the headlines and weaken his administration. The collateral damage could include Vice President J.D. Vance, who is currently the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

This drive to impeach senior officials is another historical novelty. Both parties have taken it up with zeal. Although the process was always available to Congress, it was rarely used except to prosecute corrupt judges. Now, however, it is routinely used by congressional partisans against presidents of the opposing party. They may not win convictions in the Senate, but the prolonged investigations and high-profile trials on Capitol Hill are bound to damage the President and satisfy the lust of activists across the aisle.

Marjorie Taylor Greene submitted articles of impeachment against Joe Biden on his first full day in office. Now, the tables have turned. The Democrats’ base wants President Trump skinned alive, and that base controls the party. If they win the House, their investigations will take center stage. Any time left over will go on a few symbolic bills to embarrass the President and build a platform for their candidate to be his successor.

If the Democrats win the Senate – and that is still a long shot – they can block any legislation Trump does attempt to pass and exert considerable leverage over spending bills, which only need a simple majority. Equally important, they can stymie all presidential appointments, from cabinet officials to federal judges. Since Trump understands the peril, he will try to restock his cabinet and sub-cabinet positions before the current Senate term ends. When positions open up later, as they inevitably will, he will fill them with temporary appointments.

The Democrats’ base wants President Trump skinned alive, and that base controls the party

Judicial appointments will pose another problem for Trump if Democrats win the Senate. He will be forced to choose between staunch conservatives, like those he currently favors, and moderates, who can win some Democratic votes. He is likely to let the openings lie fallow rather than make lifetime appointments that will undermine his agenda.

Like so many other American institutions, the courts have become partisan battlefields. The first question voters now ask about any judicial opinion is “which party appointed that judge?” The second question is whether a higher court with judges from the other party will overrule him. The result has been a steady erosion of confidence in the courts, matching the erosion of confidence in all governmental institutions. If the Democrats take control of the Senate, retaliation becomes the key motivation in appointment hearings. That’s a shaky foundation for any constitutional democracy. Serious observers know that – and, of course, blame the other side.

For all its controversies, the explosive boldness of the Trump 2.0 agenda – especially on immigration and the economy – threatened to blast past this systemic paralysis. But if Republicans cannot hold the House, they face a blizzard of Democratic trouble in 2027 and 2028. Or, as Trump put it in Iowa, “If we lose the midterms, you’ll lose so many of the things we are talking about, so many of the assets that we’re talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we’re talking about. And it would lead to very bad things.”

Republicans dread the prospect. Democrats relish it. And this fight will only become more vicious.