Visitors at the base of the Washington Monument on Dec. 18 with the U.S. Capitol in the background. The U.S. midterm congressional elections are due to take place in November.Rahmat Gul/The Associated Press
The United States approaches the new year as a Lego Technic set, full of moving parts.
Many of those parts are familiar: The gears, motors and functions of American political life remain the same. Their movements, however, are changing, subtly but significantly, as the pins and pneumatics shift under the influence – if not always the control – of Donald Trump, who is wheeling turbocharged into the second year of his second term, and the MAGA movement, whose ultimate direction is uncertain.
That movement, along with the two major political parties, face internal struggles that will determine their form and influence in the months ahead, an unusually tense political period that is shaping up to be one of the most important, most combustible, non-presidential years in modern times.
The midterm congressional elections coming in November will have their customary role as a gyroscope – the tool that tells whether a moving object is changing direction. For both the Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, and the Democrats, who must determine the tone and direction of their party, these contests will be deeply consequential.
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The early money shows the Democrats retaking control of the House and the Republicans holding on to a slim majority in the Senate. But early money is not always smart money.
The United States has had vital midterms before in, among other years, 1858 (as sectional tensions threatened civil war); 1910 (as President William Howard Taft veered from the legacy of mentor Theodore Roosevelt); 1930 (as the Great Depression deepened), 1994 (backlash against the indiscipline of the early Bill Clinton years led to the end of 40 years of Democratic control of the House of Representatives); and 2010 (reaction to the approval of Obamacare and impatience with the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis).
This year’s elections will test many things, including the popularity of Mr. Trump’s tariff, tax, immigration and inflation policies; the endurance of the MAGA movement as it struggles with internal tensions and unresolved questions about race and religion; the ability of the Democratic Party to craft a message that goes beyond opposing the President; and the resilience of moderation in both parties as they career to the extremes, Democrats lunging to the left and Republicans bolting to the right.
At the same time, the contests may give hints about the changing definitions of conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, patriotism, socialism and capitalism.
That is a lot of isms for one country to conjure. But this is a disquieting time with many open questions and high stakes. A country that only a decade ago was confident in its institutions, stable in its mission and direction, firm in its adherence to political norms, loyal to its long-time allies, and welcoming to immigrants and outside ideas is now none of those things.
Since the end of the Second World War, Japan, Germany, China, Russia and post-colonial Africa have experienced dramatic changes of political culture with vast global implications. But no such shifts have occurred in a nuclear-armed superpower that created alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, engaged in interventions across several continents – all in enlightened self-interest – and now is fully committed to none of that.
That is the environment in which November’s midterms will take place.
In the meantime, the country’s Republican Party has gone off in a different direction than the one it steered only a half-generation ago, challenging and then purging its past. The Democrats have done the same, also questioning and forgoing its heritage.
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It has been a dramatic break for the Republicans, who abandoned the soft conservatism of Dwight Eisenhower in the Ronald Reagan years and now has adopted an even harder conservatism under Mr. Trump – so much so that the 47th president has defied some of the elements of American conservatism.
Now the Democrats – with their traditional adherence to the precepts of the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal and the Lyndon Johnson Great Society, and whose principles were set to the lyrical political tone poems of John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama – seem to want to match the Republicans in choosing a fresh path.
Both parties have done this before. Republicans once were reformist, so much so in their efforts to break up big corporations and regulate business that they bore the characteristics of today’s liberals. Democrats once were the party of racism and small government. In modern memory, the Republicans were the defenders of the status quo, Democrats the disrupters of it. Now it is the reverse.
The Democrats prevailed in 1932 because they became more than the party that damned Herbert Hoover, the incumbent president who was regarded then (but not so much now) as the villain who caused (or failed to ameliorate) the Depression. In recent years they have tried to position themselves as the party that reviles Mr. Trump, but that project has generally stalled, even failed. Might they repeat 1932 by offering something new – something innovative and disruptive that goes beyond declaring Mr. Trump a barbarian?
Roosevelt wasn’t all that well known in 1930, the equivalent of the period we enter this week, and yet by 1932 he was a prophet. Who is the FDR of 2026, on the verge of a breakout for 2028?
This question rears its head as the GOP prepares for the post-Trump era.
One of the subthemes of the midterms is how long the MAGA precepts will rule the Republican Party. There are many suggestions that the fissures within the movement may tear it apart after Mr. Trump departs.
The first tests arrive this fall. They may shape not only the next Congress but also the next decade of American politics. And they may be the drama of the year.