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National elections take place every two years in this country, and whether it’s a presidential cycle or a midterm election, overwrought commentators, partisan activists, and the candidates themselves repeat without self-awareness, let alone irony, a variant of the exhortation that “this election is the most important of our lifetimes.” 

It’s an age-old talking point. The motivations of those peddling it range from trying to rally the faithful to justifying their own side’s mudslinging. Along the way candidates and their surrogates become Method actors: They truly believe that this election, any election, is the most consequential in history. Thus, nearly anything they say or do can be rationalized.

Welcome to the 2026 midterms, a cycle striking not only for its high stakes but also for the sheer venom of the campaigns. Few candidates or their surrogates this year come close to passing the Adlai Stevenson test. The famously cerebral Democrat, twice nominated for president (and twice a loser to Dwight Eisenhower) said in 1956 that the greatest hurdle in any campaign is “how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.”

In today’s Manichean environment, such philosophical reflections are for chumps. Democrats all over the country are running ads linking Republicans to deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein – as Republicans did two years ago to Democrats. When Texas Republicans under President Trump’s direction brazenly tried to carve out five new GOP congressional districts with a mid-decade gerrymander, the Democrats didn’t merely denounce them. They copied the strategy, most notably in California, while convincing themselves they were the good guys. The California gambit only escalated the arms race, which spread to Florida and elsewhere.

Today, those three mega-states – California, Texas, and Florida – are ranked by the New York Times as the three most gerrymandered states in the country. Illinois, where Adlai Stevenson came from, registers in sixth place, but with the dubious distinction of boasting the single-most egregiously drawn district for partisan advantage.

Barack Obama also hails from Illinois, but from a different mold than Stevenson. Americans in a three-state area surrounding Washington, D.C., watching news or sports programming the weekend before Election Day were subjected to ads in which the former president exhorted Marylanders to support a referendum allowing Annapolis lawmakers to fashion a gerrymander that would vault Maryland into the top tier of undemocratic states.

The Maryland scheme would reduce Republican representation in the state’s eight-person congressional delegation from one to zero. This in a state of 6.3 million souls that elected a Republican governor while Obama served in the White House. Yet Obama claimed with a straight face that the measure would constitute “fair representation.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries was more forthright when asked about the gerrymandering wars earlier in the year. “We’re going to win in November,” he said, “and then we’re going to crush their souls …”

That’s the spirit of a campaign season in which each side’s congressional candidates have routinely accused the other of protecting child molesters, harboring dual national loyalties, promoting transgenderism in children, war profiteering – or being alternatively racist, Islamophobic, or antisemitic. The last item on the list has an unfortunate ring of truth to it: The 2026 midterms feature several candidates and surrogates – most, but not all, on the left – who have used thinly disguised anti-Jewish tropes. Like a certain disease once thought to have been eradicated, these slurs have returned to public discourse in America.

If the 2026 campaign seems Orwellian, we can remind ourselves of the old adage that “politics ain’t beanbag” – taking comfort, if that is the right word, in the knowledge that campaign smears are hardly new. Yet we would also be wise to consult the man himself. “Political language,” George Orwell wrote after the end of World War II, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

We the People – and ‘The People’s House’

Among those who have proclaimed this cycle “the most important” in U.S. history, or something close to it, are California Democrats Gavin Newsom and Adam Schiff, liberal commentators Bill Press and Ana Navarro, The Washington Monthly, and Texas congressional candidate Collin Allred, along with a host of political wannabes and liberal worthies including Obama himself.

“If we don’t put a stake in the ground this year we will lose this Republic,” Gov. Newsom said while stumping for fellow Democrats in New Hampshire two weeks ago. “That’s how important this election is.”

Democrats and “NeverTrump” Republicans aren’t the only ones issuing apocalyptic warnings. So are many prominent conservatives, starting with President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“We have to win,” Trump told an Alabama audience recently. “It’s the most important midterm election we’ve ever had because we have a lot of Communists running and they’re going to be controlling the Dumocrat Party.”

The president frequently acknowledges that midterm elections are usually a tough slog for the party in control of the White House. And though Mike Johnson keeps insisting “the polls are wrong,” most Republicans are conceding privately that the House is gone and that their only realistic chance of weathering the expected Tuesday night “blue wave” will be to hang on to their majority in the Senate. It won’t be easy, as late-breaking polls in states across the country are moving in the Democrats’ direction.

Let’s start with the House of Representatives.

All 435 members of Congress are up for reelection, as is the case every two years. Due to historic gerrymandering, existing demographics, geographic “self-sorting,” and the advantages of incumbency, however, few congressional districts are actually in play.

Currently, Speaker Johnson enjoys the thinnest of majorities: 219 Republicans to 214 Democrats, with two vacancies. The Democratic Party needs only four or five pickups to control the chamber. They are poised to do much better than that. The “generic congressional ballot,” which just asks voters which party they are supporting – without mentioning names – is moving precipitously in Democrats’ favor, and is now at 9 in the RCP Poll Average.

The RealClearPolitics map of the House lists 156 “solid” Republican congressional districts and 192 where the Democratic Party nominee is virtually assured of victory. That leaves 87 House seats, most which aren’t realistically up for grabs either.

Fifteen are rated “likely Democratic,” with 12 “likely Republican.” The next category on the blue-red scale is “lean Democratic” (20) and “lean Republican” (12). This leaves 28 congressional races rated “tossups.”

This math illustrates the depth of the problem facing Mike Johnson and GOP. If the RCP map is right – and sources ranging from the Cook Political Report to Larry Sabato’s “Crystal Ball” have similar configurations – sweeping every one of the tossup races, which is highly improbable, would still not give Republicans a majority in the House.

If Johnson........

© RealClearPolitics