2026 is just around the corner … what to expect
At this moment, Republicans hold the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Conservatives have six of the 9 members of the Supreme Court. That is a lot of power.
At this moment, Democrats have only two areas in which to express power – the courts and the court-of-public opinion. Filing endless lawsuits creates a lot of media attention but does little to push back against the Trump juggernaut.
And public opinion is even less effective against an incumbent administration with real powers headed by a President who will not be running for reelection. And calling for civil disobedience and disruptive street action, with the very real potential of violence — as we saw against Tesla – can result in a backlash.
While Democrats and the left-wing establishment can make a lot of noise, they are still essentially out of power — at least for the next two years. All the caterwauling is not likely to impact the decision making of the Trump administration — or the Republicans in Congress.
In order to get back in the game, Democrats have to win in 2026 … period. At stake is control of the Senate and the House. As it looks from this early perspective, the chance of democrats taking control of the Senate is not good. I would handicap it at this time as between 20 to 30 percent. Even less if Trump’s favorability ratings go up by then.
The House is a different situation. There will be 435 congressional elections in 2026. The GOP currently holds 220 seats and Democrats hold 213. There are two vacancies from Democrat districts. Filling those would put the Democrats up to 215 – a five seat lead for the GOP. That is extremely small and very fragile. Flipping just 3 seats would give Democrats control of the House. That is a very low bar for Democrats.
Just as important as the current situation is the history of midterm elections. Historically, the party that controls the White House loses seats in the off years – and often control of the chamber. We saw what happened in 2018 when Republicans lost the House.
The unprecedented narrow margin of the GOP lead in the House — and the history of midterm elections – portends a win for Democrats. In fact, I believe it is close to inevitable.
If Democrats do win control of the House, they will scream from the rooftops that is a national repudiation of the entire Trump administration. That would be an understandable exaggeration. However, they would have a very real check on the power of the President and the Senate – if the latter remained in GOP hands.
Democrats would have real power in stopping Republican legislative efforts. But Democrats would not be able to enact any of their own. We would have legislative grid lock. That would not prevent Trump from using all the powers of the presidency to pursue his agenda – and that would still be a big advantage.
Another benefit for Democrats if they take the House is that it would put them in a good competitive position in 2028 to make further gains. That would obviously depend on who the candidates might be – and that is too unknown even for speculation.
While I see the odds of Democrats taking control of the House in the 80 percent range. If they fail, however, it would be yet another crushing, mind-boggling win for Team Trump. The donkey party will be more shattered … more confused … more irrelevant than they are today. Stay tuned.
So, there ‘tis.
I am taken aback the fact that in the author’s story, it seems that “bipartisan” is some ancient artifact of the DEI initiative that he has been vanquished by his party. He is the opposite of woke, he is asleep at the wheel. I am aghast at his lack of desire to partner on most any issue of the day. This win-lose devotee is still having issues with the reality of winning. He is still living in his us-them reality with his hand-picked winners and losers. The author, and his party seems to miss the very concept of: The UNITED States of America. United we stand. Or as the prophet said: “It could be made into a monster. If we all pull together as a team.” He seems to rather pull the team apart or have no All-American team at all. Why not say: Go Team America. MAGA for all of us, not just your kind, but kind to all.
Biden’s first Congress was very productive; the second not so much so. Trump’s Congress has operated for two terms at almost at a standstill. They cede budgetary control to the President, or to the President’s Musk man. They have pass few bills, nothing of note. And nothing even remotely approaching a bipartisan bill as they basically lock out, or even try to lock up, the other party.
In Biden’s first 100 days, he signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (major gun control law), the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act (bolstering semiconductor manufacturing in the USA) that actually brought manufacturing back to America, and the bipartisan Honoring Our PACT Act (expanding health care for veterans). These are long-lasting laws, not flash-in-the-pan EO’s that can be undone in a flash by the next administration. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill became law that fall. These are huge bipartisan bills unheard of in a Trump administration of win-lose one-man rule.
Very few laws have been signed so far by Trump and nothing even approaching having bipartisan elements exists under Trump from either tenure. There are no bipartisan efforts underway under Trump. Point is —- it’s all yours. Yours to keep, yours to lose. You have locked us out, it’s all on you. You can continue to blame us, but the facts are on TV. Quit talking about all issues as being ours and start to work on all of ours as well as yours.
STOP THE PRESSES: Trump just signed his first, and only, bipartisan bill for this term, the Take It Down Act. Only took pedophilia and his wife to make it happen. Rumor has it that Trump was gung ho to sign the Take It Off Act, got confused and signed this one hoping it meant Melanoma’s shirt. All joking aside, it’s a bipartisan bill, and like all Trump laws, very sketchy as to exactly what it means. But like chaining 500 lawyers to the bottom of the ocean; it’s a good start. Once, a team I was on, took massive amounts of cost out of our system. I mean massive. It helps that we had the highest costs around. Coming in proud to our VPs office, chests thrust forward, upright posture, proud, winners, we meant to impress. Our VP looked at the numbers, looked at us just beaming there, waiting for all that praise, maybe a bonus, when we heard: “pretty good, can you do it again?” That’s my message to you all on this first bipartisan bill of the second Trump term: pretty good, can you do it again?
The author states: “That would not prevent Trump from using all the powers of the presidency to pursue his agenda – and that would still be a big advantage. All the caterwauling is not likely to impact the decision making of the Trump administration — or the Republicans in Congress.” Except the Republicans in Congress don’t make decisions under Trump, and that’s not an advantage. And we wouldn’t caterwaul if you would try listening.
“In order to get back in the game, Democrats have to win in 2026 … period,” unless the concept of we are stronger together, weaker apart, actually takes root again. This is not a game, this is America and a divided America falls. A win-lose game is a loser.
“Democrats would have real power in stopping Republican legislative efforts” except the real power is a diversity of ideas culminating in a consensus of opinion producing a bipartisan solution. You’ve got one party locked out, little bipartisanship, and a fractured society on many facets.
“That would not prevent Trump from using all the powers of the presidency to pursue his agenda – and that would still be a big advantage.” Monarchy is your advantage? Maybe if you quit whining about us as your problem, you would figure out that if it’s to be, it’s up to thee. Like I said, you own it, now what are you going to do with it.
Two years. You won it all, you own it all, you lock us out, you lock us up. You do things but WIFM? Nada. Nothing. Can’t even get table scraps from you all. Who wins the 2026 is on you. What they do after is on all of us. We can have half the country getting their way, or work together through bipartisan compromise so all the country wins. Win-lose is a weak competitive strategy, always has been. Win-win may be harder to accomplish, takes more effort, more work, but the results are splendidly better.
Deport all democrats. Start with Dunger. And the bills that joe signed into law wasn’t designed to protect our liberties. Just more intrusive action by the government. I’m truly sorry for joe’s health issues but God help us if he had been elected. He would have stepped down and his token would have destroyed the country by now. So keep cheerleading Mr. Dunger. They might toss you a reward for commie of the year.
Howeird Blankasshit: I spell my name: danger. No one can spell your name.
You whine like a baby to: “deport all democrats” as if that will make your life better. It won’t. Since we are citizens, you are really screaming to deport citizens with the same rights as yours and as innocent as you. Except you want to take our rights away, arrest us, incarcerate us, and then send us to our death. You currently deport humans to third-world death camp gulags that you actually fund to murder deportees. Have you heard their screams? Trump’s own State Department says living conditions are threatening in these death camps where less than 10% emerge alive. Others you sent to South Sudan where Trump’s own State Department advises citizens against any travel to South Sudan due to the violence. Do you hear their screams?
I think you calling for the death of others just because you don’t like the cut of their jib is hateful rhetoric that PBP should be in it’s rights to condemn and remove. Unless PBP wants to “86” half the nation’s citizens too. Sure seems inciteful to me.
And Howweird, I too, am truly sorry for your health issues. Unfortunately, you can’t cure stupid.
As we Maga-tize our government, there are many unintended outcomes of our own making, some easily foreseeable if one looks. It’s not that downsizing, draining the swamp, are necessarily bad. But doing the right thing, the wrong way, is never good either. I am all for lowering the deficit and reducing debt. While I prefer Congress do their job and use a scalpel to cut away waste and inefficiency, Congress has been derelict for decades and I can accept an across the board fixed % cut, a multi-year balanced budget with early escape clause IF you reach goals, and other harsher methods since Congress has failed to do their job to manage our finances.
The Maga crowd has chosen a chain saw, forgot any nod to meritocracy, and instead are basically cutting whatever they think they can get away with. All probational workers gone, even those with merit. Many Democrats gone just because in their personal life, they lean left. It’s a process that will not end well, will set us back generations. You can’t see it yet, you can’t fix it, but you will notice it as we lose our competitive edge in the future. We are sacrificing the nation’s brain power for headlines. In the future, those who create will be the world’s economic leaders, the rest will make what they create. Business does not do the big things that government can do. Today, we don’t believe as strongly as we did in science, engineering, statistics, mathematics, medicine, and technology. Vaccines are bad. There is no global warming. Statistics are made-up lies. Smart is out. Macho is in. We’re even blasting Bruce Springsteen. Bruce Springsteen? We’re inciting violence against Bruce Springsteen.
Private industry does not pick up long-range research and development, our capitalism is literally structured to financially push them to work shorter goals. Delay is a firing offense. Missing yearly plans too. Less so for international players, but American business management and financial scorecards keep our planning horizons very short. Yearly. Government does not have as strict of time windows. Matter of fact, delay is accepted. Government can work long-range discoveries, long-range solutions, and new solutions for problems that business does not tackle. Government does big well too. They have lots of money, time, and people to tackle the big things.
In the Maga government, we are firing researchers, scientists, medical experts, and destroying the organizations that they worked in, saying they are part of the swamp that needs draining. Many times, they are working on future developments for things unimagined. That work has stopped. No one will pick it up in the US. Where do they go? Many to private business, a few to education, a number to international countries where big things are still underway. We have a self-inflicted, forced brain drain with unintended negative outcomes.
I have lived this story before. In working telecom for a Fortune 100 all American company, I arrived just after deregulation and thrived in an environment where downsizing was a way of life for over a decade or more. We dealt in business products, all built in the US of A. In the end, we made much product overseas and the company ultimately virtually disappeared through many name changes, mergers, and reorganizations. Our largest strength, Bell Labs, was killed in the transition. Private business could not support what monopoly and a guaranteed profit could. Government has a guaranteed revenue stream too. Some unintended outcomes along the way:
• First and foremost, the brain drain. Our best and brightest often were the first to go because they had plenty of growth opportunities in good companies. They found themselves a desired commodity.
• Morale got worse and worse. Gallows humor was a tool to help “cheer” us up. In the beginning, the packages were good, a month or more notice, money, help with finding jobs. White gloves treatment.
Over time, the folks what operationalize the firings evolved towards people who thrive in that type of work, they made their “bones” by being more efficient, effective and economic in their task. The packages slimmed, the notice times shortened, and the firings harsher. In the end, I took it on the chin for refusing to fire and walk a 22-year veteran out within minutes after notice. I gave them two weeks and management was not pleased. The claim was she might steal secrets, my response was after 22 years of employ, 10 years of downsizing, if she was to steal, it was already stolen. And I knew she would not.
When I arrived, I was new so the thought of leaving was remote. We lost some great folks and, worse yet, met them as competitors. We never rebuilt and slowly faded into merger, acquisition, and obscurity. We had 11,000 in Naperville, it closed. Holmdel Lab was one of my stomping grounds, it was a 1,900,000-square-foot on 473 acres. It closed in 2007. I wonder if the water tower in the shape of a transistor is still there. Chester labs had the telephone pole farm for testing poles, acres of them. A national treasure to our covering the land in wires to communicate coast to coast in real time. Was donated for a park, poles cut down. Also gone, research for cable laying mechanism like for the first undersea voice cable, and research for loop transmission. Crawford’s Corner gone; it’s where the horn antenna proved the”Big Bang” theory. Red Hill went to Sloan Kettering, it’s where our “cloud walkers,” dreamed about the unimaginable. Whippany Labs was huge and, in my time, was partly shuttered, the rest did top secret military stuff; I was there once, very spooky. All gone.
So on and so on. When I was there, we had 22 labs in 22 locations. Today, 10 labs in 10 locations, only one, Murray Hill remains in the US. Murry Hill was already mostly headquarters management types in my time. Get the picture? We tore it all down and much of it went overseas giving the results to overseas companies to profit from.
Bell Labs had about 25,000 workers and 1,300 researchers at the end of the 1970s. By 2002, about 500 Bell Labs researchers left. Research efforts slowed. Nobel Prize-winning research continued through the 90’s almost entirely done by those hired before divestiture. Only one of Bell Labs’ 10 Nobel Prizes in this time was done by an employee hired following divestiture. The number of Nobels fell to zero.
Bell Labs was made possible through Government edict allowing AT&T to be a monopoly. Essentially, we made 15 – 16% margin via regulations. A government mandated profit. Therefore, almost every dollar of cost brought back 15 cents in profit so why not pay a bunch of smart folks to think about the future and future things. Not that deregulation was bad, IMO, it was good. But the loss of pure research activities was foreseeable and the unintendea loss to our culture and economy as well as competitive and defensive standings in the world will never be known. But it is there.
The process of what’s happening in the government now is similar. A lot of in science, engineering, statistics, mathematics, medicine, and technology researchers are being fired. Projects are being dumped. And a lot of smart people are leaving. Even those brought back spend their return putting out resumes knowing they are at extreme risk. Others leaving have left the country as competitor nations are hiring big time. A lot. The loss will be multi-generational even if we reverse course in 2 to 4 years.
If we want to remain the world’s leading economy, our top priority is creation and invention, not factories, not minimum wage jobs. We are destroying a lot of research and development that private industry will never undertake. We are ceding our brain trust to competitors. This seems just outright stupid. And, unfortunately, you can’t fix stupid, it must be replaced.
Dunger if you can prove that America is worse off with Trump I will apologize for everything I have said about democrats. And I mean everything. But in your words, prove it. If you people have two brain cells you would support MAGA and be proud. Your kind does nothing but spread hatred and propaganda
Hamoneggs: I will answer in due time, but let me pose a reply question.
How is your life better under Trump?
1. do things cost less or more?
2. is your pay higher or lower?
3. do you have a new, better paying job?
4. have you noticed less people with accents talking to you?
5. are you safer under Trump so far? why? ukraine war on, gaza war on. bombed the houthi’s, bombed somalia,
6. did you even know we were bombing people?
7. do you know who and how many been cut and what the funding cuts even are?
8. did you know there are no more transcripts for trump public speeches and statements? he erased them all.
As of 5/15, with no one knowing and no much being done; we have 1,024 cases in 32 places and 14 outbreaks. Only three dead, but 13% are hospitalized, 96% are not vaccinated, and Trump will set a outbreak record in weeks. FYI: it would be over in two weeks if Trump just suggested that being vaccinated would accomplish that. It did before, it can again.
So tell me, has your life changed under Trump, and how. Especially since transparency is promised, like meritocracy, but reality is quite opaque, unskilled, and unprofessional. My life is about the same. I made more money than ever under Biden, but not suffering under Trump —- yet. It’s about the same except for the white noise on what he’s doing to others.
I will elaborate later, gotta make hay while the sun shines :>)
sorry, the outbreak numbers are for measles. my bad.
Biden and his crowd caused the problems. Trump is fixing them. I’m doing great with Trump in the White House. We don’t need to listen to liars like Dunger. The stupidity is staggering but he doesn’t have a clue.
Hardon: I smell my name: danger.
I see you can only answer the specific questions with a non specific generalization. There were 8 questions, is it really that difficult to think whether your pay is higher, lower, or the same under Trump for example?
You asked: “prove that American is worse off with Trump.”
I will start with America via the Reuters/Ipsos poll that said at inauguration, 47% approve, and 41% disapprove of his performance. Today, 52% disapprove of his performance and only 42% approve as of 5/18/2025. He is sinking with immigration and tariffs being his boat anchors.
1. Selling America: million-dollar dinners goes right into his pockets and foreigners pay for access most Americans cannot have.
2. Selling White House dinner and tours for 25 of the top people lining his pockets at $4M plus a piece.
3. Making business deals with Muslims for hotels, golf courses, and resorts. They pay; he plays.
4. If you want to see Trump, to tell Trump stuff, just pay millions into his crypto and you get access. He gets money in his pocket.
5. Running up a deficit that might exceed his last record set. Bills for all the legal cases for all the EO’s. Think he’s over 350 tax payer funded lawsuits by now. Each one will cost $25M to over $300M meaning $9B – $100B for lawyers….
6. Deportation flights can cost $1M for PR purposes; commercial air would be a third of that. He’s got billions in deportation fees. Plus millions to pay for the murder-house in El Salvador. God knows what he paid South Sudan.
7. Not ending the war in Ukraine as promised. “It’s easy.”
8. Deporting humans to third-world death camp gulags where they will die. We are funding murder.
9. Deporting humans to war zones where Trump’s own State Department warns everyone not to go, or to immediately leave if there
10. Negative GDP.
11. Cutting resources for the hungry and sick; letting USAid packages rot on the docks.
12. Brought TikTok back to life
13. Has doubled his personal wealth by selling access to foreign nations, by accepting a “free’ plane worth close to a billion, by selling White House accommodations, by getting billions from the Muslims for crypto, hotels, golf courses, and more.
14. Freed over 400 convicted felon cop beaters
15. Freed a handful of convicted felon seditious conspirators.
16. Freed pedophiles and drug dealers
17. Soon he will cut Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP,
18. Planes are dropping from the skies and we can’t even get a timely weather report; they don’t work at night anymore.
19. Tucker Carlson says Trump is corruption.
20. Bannon predicts Constitutional crisis by Summer.
You voted for the Felon King and you got one. He is trampling the rule of law, due process, habeas corpus, black bagging people to third world death camp gulags to their death, now the same to a South Sudan war zone that his own State Department days — all Americans leave. Next he will sign giant tax cuts for the rich, pennies for you, and cuts to medicaid, medicare, snap, to murder us.
I am all for smaller budgets, taming the deficit and reducing the debt. But we should do it wisely, not heartlessly stupid as you enjoy. As I have said since 2024; you have two years and if you do it without us, against us, we will vote you out big time. And since you can’t write laws that govern, we will turn over your EO edicts in a day.