Donald Trump

Trump Enters His George W. Bush Era as Democrats Sweep House and Senate

It's 2006 all over again. The sooner the Republican Party jettisons an unpopular president and his failed policies, the sooner it will recover.

Eric Boehm | 11.3.2026 11:40 PM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Joe Sohm/Olga Bogatyrenko/Dreamstime/Fatima Ruiz)

Stop me if you've heard this one before: An unpopular second-term Republican president who launched an unnecessary and poorly executed war in the Middle East was on the receiving end of an electoral rout, as Democrats took both chambers of Congress.

It happened 20 years ago, when Democrats flipped the majority in the House and the Senate on a single night. That "blue wave" election effectively ended the presidency of George W. Bush, just two years after he'd scored a narrow but decisive reelection. It ushered in a new era of Democratic politics—Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House for the first time in January 2007—and laid the groundwork for Democrats' further gains in 2008, culminating in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. 

Now it has happened again. Democrats have won a majority in both the House and the Senate. President Donald Trump, fresh off his own defiant second election victory, joins Bush as the only two Republican presidents to lose both chambers of Congress in a single midterm election since 1954. 

Republicans never had much of a chance of........

© Reason.com