Charles Lane is a nonresident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
Election results don’t usually lend themselves to monocausal explanations. There are too many moving parts, from turnout to the occasional “October surprise.” The 2026 midterms might be an exception, however. The Republican Party is at risk of utter defeat, essentially for a single reason: President Donald Trump’s dysfunctional one-man rule over both the government and his party.
The GOP began 2026 favored to hold or slightly expand its 53-47 Senate majority. Twenty-three of 35 races this cycle are in states Trump won in 2024; the one Republican incumbent running in a state he lost is Maine’s formidable Susan Collins. Aided by hardball midterm gerrymandering, Republicans had an outside chance to keep their slim House majority, even though the president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
Trump’s approval rating in January was about 44 percent in the RealClearPolitics average: not great, but survivable. Indeed, the GOP had a decent story to tell. Economic growth was solid, unemployment and gas prices low, the Southern border sealed, crime falling.
Then Trump started doing his thing. He launched a war on Iran, in tandem with Israel, with no congressional input and despite the misgivings of advisers. The goal — eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat — was a worthy one, though Trump did little to persuade the public of that. He was flummoxed when Iran didn’t collapse; instead, it began disrupting global energy markets. As he zigzagged between negotiation and threats, prices for gas, diesel and pretty much everything else went up. The pain is especially acute in rural red states, such as Alaska, Iowa and Kansas, where Democrats might take Senate seats and governorships they haven’t won in years.
Putting more upward pressure on costs, Trump intensified an impulsive trade war, including import surcharges of up to 12.5 percent on dozens of countries. He targeted Canada with verbal abuse and a 50 percent levy on $20 billion worth of imports — which Canada matched (minus the verbal abuse). Maine and Michigan, both pivotal to control of the Senate, got hurt. Trump walked back some tariffs to help Collins, but it might have been too little, too late.
So much for ending “Bidenflation.” Then there was Trump’s ego-driven meddling in GOP candidate selection. Not since Caligula tried to make his horse a consul has a leader chosen so unwisely. Incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina could have won reelection. But the president threatened to punish his occasional deviations from the Trump line by backing a primary challenger, and Tillis opted not to run. Now, Democrat Roy Cooper is well ahead of the nonentity Trump supported, Michael Whatley.
In Texas, Sen. John Cornyn could have coasted to a fifth term; Trump backed the scandal-plagued but “loyal” Ken Paxton, who won the GOP primary. Paxton is struggling, predictably, against Democrat James Talarico.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp backed newcomer Derek Dooley, a well-known former football coach and lawyer, to take on Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff. But Trump opposed Dooley for the same reason he doesn’t like Kemp: his unwillingnessto say Trump won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s pick, lackluster House member Mike Collins, got the GOP nomination; he is losing badly.
After South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham died, Trump backed Graham’s sister, Darline — a political amateur — endangering what should have been a safe Republican seat. Trump’s favored candidate for governor in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, is dragging down the entire GOP ticket in the state.
On July 14, after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers shot and killed suspected illegal immigrants in Maine and Texas, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin — at Susan Collins’s urging — ordered the agency to suspend most vehicle stops. Trump overturned that order the next day. On Sept. 20, an ICE agent shot and wounded a suspected illegal immigrant after a vehicle stop in Austin, supplying Democrats with another powerful talking point in Texas, where Latino voters were already souring on Trump.
The list goes on. As the president and his family seemed to profit from being in power, he pursued construction of a pharaonic arch in Washington. A groundswell against data center construction grew, but Trump dismissed it. With his approval rating plunging well below 40 percent, he urged people to vote as if he were on the ballot, then made a series of bizarre comments at his campaign rallies.
Now, the only question about the House is how big the Democratic majority will be. The Cook Political Report says it could reach 240 out of 435 seats. And Democrats have a good chance to take control of the Senate. Yes, Republicans got a last-minute gift in the form of a scandal over alleged Democratic ballot-stacking in Alaska. Still, it will take a significant polling error in their direction for the GOP to keep 50 seats, plus Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote.
Trump owns this potential debacle. But it’s also on the ever-subservient Republicans in Congress themselves. They had the power to counter his most misguided policies, or at least to try — just not the guts. Seldom has a political leader shown more reckless disregard for the interests of his followers. Seldom have the followers deserved it more.
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