Are the 2026 Midterms a Mirage?

Depends on whether we are a democracy or a dictatorship or somewhere in between

March 30-31 2025

By Marc Cooper

This edition is neither one of exaggerated doom nor inflated optimism. It’s a quick and dirty attempt to understand exactly where we are 10 weeks into Trump’s new regime. Are we going up or going down?

I will, however, start with a somewhat ambiguous conclusion before I lay down the predicate: the midterm elections of 2026 are possibly a guarantee of nothing. They could easily be a mirage. They may not take place, or they may be so hollowed out that they will make no difference, and they could be the gateway to open dictatorship. More in a few minutes…

THE GLIMMER OF SUNSHINE AND THE DEEP GLOOM

Fortunately, we are seeing a real upsurge in opposition activities and attitudes. Not as much as we need, but a lot more than a month ago. There were some 253 cities where there were anti-Musk, anti-Trump demonstrations this past weekend.

This opposition will escalate in the days to come, especially after April 2 when Trump is expected to announce a series of unhinged and severe tariffs that will negatively roil global markets and immediately raise domestic prices on key consumer goods. When Trump was queried on Sunday about his reaction to car prices jumping as much as $6,000 next week, he blithely answered, “I don’t care.” So much for his economic populism. Planned national demos with a big rally/march in DC will be another test of opposition strength. Make it happen.

Meanwhile, Signalgate has broken through the mainstream media and is still potent in the national bloodstream. It’s not going away despite the best efforts of Trump and his puppet Attorney General. Even some elected Republicans are upset, and 60% of their base disapproves. The 800-pound gorilla in this story is how much the Trump clique has been using Signal for other high-level discussions and then letting the app disappear the content, in direct violation of the government records act, which requires ALL government documents to be preserved, even if classified. There will be hearings, even if Trump doesn’t want them, and there is more dirt to be exposed.

On Friday, Trump was walloped by a barrage of Federal Court-ordered restraining orders that at least temporarily suspend some of his most pernicious executive orders, barring his persecution of law firms, giving some minor protection to social security data, and rescuing some federal agencies from destruction.

VANCE SURROUNDED BY SUPPORTERS IN GREENLAND.

The intended “soft power play” of sending Mr. and Mrs. Vance to Greenland, as part of Trump’s announced desire to “get” the Danish-owned island, devolved into a tragi-comic farce and an international joke. Not a single person or store on the island agreed to do a photo-op visit with the Second Lady. Demonstrations against her sociopathic husband were in the making, so the trip was scaled down to Vance making a short visit to a frozen U.S.-run space base 1,000 miles from any civilization, where he stood in front of the cameras, with a backdrop of six U.S. soldiers ordered to be his props. He made a ridiculous argument as to why Greenland should integrate into the U.S., in part because “it’s the desire of the president.” Good little lapdog who made a fool of himself and all the rest of us by shitting directly on our former ally, Denmark! (Note: hang in there, I’m working my way to the midterm issue.)

That tawdry piece of political theater was eclipsed by the one-day, $200K trip to El Salvador by the former Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, now head of DHS and better known as ICE Barbie. She staged a photo-op in front of the notoriously abusive ultra-max prison in San Salvador, where some 200-300 deportees from America have been disappeared into, in defiance of a Federal Court order, with zero due process, no release of their names, no outside communication, and no legal representation.

The Salvadoran guards apparently forced a few dozen head-shaved, bare-chested, buffed, and tattooed prisoners (there are 40,000 of them there) to press themselves behind the iron bars in stacks of three rows while Noem stood 10-15 feet in front of them. This was clearly intended to suggest that all the American deportees were as dangerous-looking as the human props behind her.

Dressed in a casual but hip outfit, Frau Barbie sternly warned any wannabe immigrants to come to the U.S. that this concrete concentration camp was “a new tool in our toolkit.” A photo-op staged to create fear. Instead, it created a universal rebuke and head-shaking disgust when it was learned that during the filming she was wearing a $60,000 Rolex. In short, another flop. It might have been more effective if she had warned future migrants that if caught, they would be remanded to her gawdawful plastic surgeon. And no dogs were offered up for her to shoot to toughen her image.

Nevertheless, when Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, a veritable brute who looks, thinks, and talks like a Mafia captain, was asked about jailing and deporting people without judicial review or any due process, he grunted out, scowling, “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care what the left thinks. We’re coming.”

This Gestapo-like language is not likely to win over many independent or on-the-fence suburban voters needed for a MAGA majority. Nor was the highly publicized, in-broad-daylight snatch of the 30-year-old female Tufts grad student, a Fulbright fellow, conducted in the Boston suburbs by a half-dozen crazed ICE agents, initially with no badges and wearing face coverings. As far as we know, her crime was to have written a critical op-ed about Israel in the student newspaper. The detention itself was total overkill. Marco Rubio canceled her student visa five days earlier, and she could have been sent a registered letter ordering her to leave the country, or better, to surrender to an ICE office.

But no, ICE felt the need to make this like a scene from a B-grade action movie, as if the supremely brave ICE agents were taking down a heavily armed El Chapo. The lack of process and the militarized detention were bad enough. But the whole mask thing and using six agents to pull her off the street instead of simply knocking on her door give some insight into the twisted, thuggish authoritarian mindset that has filtered down to the individual agents. They are not just grabbing people, they are also getting their rocks off.

Her detention detonated a massive protest demo of faculty and students, made national and international negative headlines, and caused a Federal Judge to bar her from being removed from the U.S., as she sits in a Louisiana ICE detention camp until some legal process is initiated. Hardly a propaganda win for Trump.

So, perhaps the sunnier summation of where we are today is that, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, the U.S. remains an imperfect democracy. Trump will create more damage for sure, but the Democrats will win 30-40 seats in the House in 2026, and the last two years of the Trump juggernaut will peter out and be just an ugly chapter in our broader history.

The 2026 Elections?

Our present state, then, and our future are clouded in ambiguity. Personally, I don’t think so. I lean toward darkness. But the very best summation of the state of play, in my humble opinion, comes from Sunday’s Bulwark essay by JVL – Jonathan V. Last:

“America is ruled by a regime which is attempting to create a dictatorship. Part of its strategy is to maintain strategic ambiguity about the state of our democracy. They want to send strong signals to various institutions that democracy no longer exists and that the rule of law is now rule by law. The point of these signals is to demand submission to their autocratic rule and consolidate non-electoral power.

At the same time, this regime wants to maintain the plausibility that it might be overthrown via normal democratic processes. The point of this second signal is to keep the institutions (and people) which have not yet been subdued docile and deactivated. The strategic ambiguity about whether or not we live in an autocracy is designed to preserve maximum maneuverability for the regime until such time as they have full control and no longer need to maneuver.”

You can’t get more perceptive than that! In short, Trump is pulling us into dictatorship, and any ambiguity about it is strategic and intentional to keep a possible broad opposition pacified… until he is confident it’s time to drop the sledgehammer and rip up the Constitution.

And the greatest pacifier out there is hope that 2026 will turn things around. I give that about a 15% chance at best.

Trump is an imbecile, but he knows how to count. His junta is clearly worried about his coming Tuesday’s elections in two open seats in two very red Florida districts (to replace Gaetz and Waltz). These should be slam dunks for the MAGA candidates, as Trump won both districts by huge margins, but both right now are very, very tight (with MAGA still having a slight edge). The national MAGA team is pouring tons of resources into these races out of fear of losing them.

Last week, I report with a big dose of schadenfreude, that Trump demoted the super-opportunist Elise Stefanik from nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the UN back to her position as a lowly GOP House rep. Why? He’s afraid that in an election to replace her, a Democrat could win and break the razor-thin MAGA majority in the House… before he is ready to drop the hammer.

Early control of the House by Democrats – still more unlikely than not – would significantly upset Trump’s strategic plan, as he has not yet finished laying the groundwork he has in mind for the House.

He and his team know very well that Jesus himself could not block a Democratic takeover of the House in November 2026 if the if the elections were free and fair. If the elections were held today, MAGA would lose.

So he has three options: suspend the 2026 midterms, impose enough voter restrictions to fix the outcomes, or sit back and give up a big chunk of power passively.

You’ll excuse my cynicism in disregarding the third option as absurd.

Let’s look at the other two. On Sunday, the top pro-Democratic election lawyer in the U.S. and the most successful, Marc Elias, said he doesn’t think Trump will suspend the elections, but borrowing the president’s oft-used cliché, said we will see voter suppression “like we have never seen before.” Many millions of mostly Democratic voters would be disenfranchised if Congress acts on Trump’s executive order last week demanding proof of citizenship to register for any federal election.

There’s also the possibility that the Muskrats will be turned loose on voter rolls to cull all fraud and abuse – which will, of course, be 99% Democrats.

The states, half of them controlled by MAGA, can also impose further draconian suppression measures as state candidates will be on most of the same federal ballots in 2026… and some of these states are on Planet Three.

But could the elections be cancelled, suspended, or unrecognized by the White House? I certainly think so. Presently, the number one enemy the White House has targeted is the rule of law and the judicial branch of government. Various White House officials have already said they don’t care what any judge thinks, as no judge can single-handedly overrule the desires of our King. What rule of law? The religious fanatic who is House Speaker has already made the howling moondog call for abolishing all federal judges.

Trump himself is expediting his various contested causes to the Supreme Court. At the risk of sounding paranoid, I think his taking as much of his agenda to SCOTUS as possible is a win-win for him. If they greenlight his extended reach for power and he can do no wrong, that’s great for him.

In that case, some random act of violence or somebody keying a Tesla can be declared a national emergency. Trump will then have his Insurrection Act imposed and, folks, I’m sorry, but we just can’t have these disruptive elections while we are under siege from “lunatic” students, an invading army of killer thugs, and an infestation of Canadian and Danish spies empowered by “traitor” Democrats as Musk called Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, an astronaut and veteran, after he called for more support for Ukraine.

If, however, SCOTUS blocks any serious voter suppression or reels in Trump’s lawless immigration outrages, this would also be a win for Trump. SCOTUS would instantly become the boogeyman/scapegoat that Trump desires so he can flatly ignore them and every other court. If millions believed that the 2020 election victory for Trump was defeated by UFOs, Italian satellites, bamboo paper ballots, and crooked clerks in Louisiana, what’s so hard in brainwashing the hoi polloi into believing the Deep State Judges and the Supreme Court have conspired illegally to interfere with Trump’s quest to make us all great again?

If the elections do go ahead, and if the Democrats win in spite of all chicanery, which legal army is going to stop him from just saying the courts didn’t let him do what he had to do, and who cares about the election results, as there is nobody who has an army to force him to recognize the outcome?

Be advised that on this same last Sunday morning, Trump affirmed he is quite “serious” about running for a third term in 2028 – which there’s no way to legally accomplish.

Trump’s single greatest desire is simply to acquire as much power as possible and hold it as long as possible. That’s obvious, as he doesn’t give a damn about the Republican Party, he has declared Democrats to be radical lunatics, he has been increasingly slandering the courts and testing the boundaries of legality, and it’s why he doesn’t care about public opinion, bad polling, an unpopular sinking economy, or, ultimately, elections.

Technically, he’s already a lame duck. Technically, but not necessarily.

In no way am I suggesting you totally write off the 2026 elections. You should support honest and principled candidates in your district and others. You should work in meaningful campaigns that go beyond idolizing the candidate and organizing people around bigger issues. But by no means should you look upon them as a lifeboat, as Trump is going to do everything possible to sink them.+++

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