Get Ready For The Freaky Friday Election

Every midterm cycle has at least two narratives: the one that drives conversation up to Election Day, and the postmortem blame game that follows.

This year’s pre-election narrative began to coalesce when it became clear the entanglement in Iran was not heading to a swift resolution, and solidified when Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democrat primary. The 2026 election would pit an unabashedly radical slate of Democrats against Republicans hemmed in by the White House’s botched messaging on the war and subsequent affordability crisis.

We won’t know the second narrative until the votes are counted, though it will likely revolve around blaming Trump and the DSA commensurate with how each side performs.

But while we wait, allow me to suggest a different way to look at the midterms.

Republicans have trained most of their attention on the most radical Democrats on the ballot — El-Sayed, James Talarico in Texas, and, in another life, Graham Platner in Maine. And it is notable that these unabashedly leftist candidates have found success without hiding their radicalism under so many bushels.

But by and large, Democrats are winning because they nominated more moderate candidates like Marcy Kaptur and Josh Turek, who are willing to side with Republicans on transgender issues and protecting women’s sports. Republicans, meanwhile, set themselves an unnecessarily difficult table by nominating less inspiring candidates.

That shortsightedness could cost them one, if not both, houses of Congress. But it also gives them an opportunity to spend Trump’s lame-duck biennium organizing for success. Democrats, meanwhile, are gleefully barreling down the same path that landed the GOP in the lurch. If they’re not careful, they’ll soon find themselves in a political crisis of their own making. If Republicans are smart, they’ll use this to their advantage.

Welcome to the Freaky Friday Election.

The Republican Party’s love of outsider candidates is nothing new. But when the ultimate political outsider was elected president in 2016, it changed the stakes forever. No longer could a George W. Bush or Mitt Romney claim outsider status. To do that, you needed to be new to the scene, separate from anything that smacked of the establishment, and boldly, unabashedly MAGA.

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The first crop of candidates who fit this bill was genuinely impressive: JD Vance, Josh Hawley, James Comer, Russ Vought. But Washington being what it is, these outsiders quickly became insiders. They have day jobs, as do the legions of like-minded individuals who staff their offices and work on their campaigns.

So, Republicans keep reaching further outside the mainstream. In 2022, this resulted in the nomination of ideological hardliners like Blake Masters and Kari Lake, who failed to build winning coalitions. The GOP got a break in 2024 thanks to the Trump wave, but this year they once again found themselves victims of their own purity tests.

When Republican voters — encouraged in no small part by the president — turned on incumbents like John Cornyn for the sin of being an incumbent, the party was left with candidates whose electability was not guaranteed. Ken Paxton has his merits, but the fact that his candidacy has left a trans-loving vegan within sniffing distance of giving Texas its first Democrat senator since 1993 speaks volumes.

I don’t think Republicans are going to face truly cataclysmic losses. But they’re going to lose more than they would have with a better slate of candidates and smarter electoral strategy. The good news for the party is that this election can serve as a wake-up call.

The MAGA movement is now the heart, not the fringe, of the Republican Party. Republicans need to accept this if they hope to win in 2028 and beyond. If JD Vance — former senator and sitting vice president — runs as an outsider, his rhetoric will ring false with Americans. The same will be true down the ballot. Conversely, Republicans can win big if they think strategically, cut deals with powerful incumbents rather than cut them down, and focus their energies on defeating Democrats rather than upending whatever is left of “the establishment.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are at an earlier stage of this process. They chose to propel themselves out of their post-Kamala funk by placating the leftmost wing of the party. Urged on by podcasters like Hasan Piker and bolstered by pollsters who weighted or fabricated results to boost radicals like El-Sayed and Francesca Hong, Democrats stacked perhaps the most liberal slate of candidates in their party’s history.

Make no mistake: this will pay off on Tuesday. There is a good chance that the 120th Congress will include 10 members of the DSA and a senator who refuses to denounce the Muslim Brotherhood.

But what does that look like after the dust settles and the committee assignments are doled out?

If Democrats take the House, it will be by a slim margin, and Hakeem Jeffries — who let radical members of his caucus hold him hostage as minority leader — will find himself struggling to lead effectively while placating the radicals. The second he has the temerity to lunch with a Republican, Democrats will go for his head. Suddenly, the gentleman from New York may regret smirking his way through the 15 rounds of votes it took to get Kevin McCarthy the speaker’s gavel.

The Senate is, of course, safe from the threat of such rebellions. But that doesn’t mean it won’t cause headaches for Democrats.

From within the upper chamber, El-Sayed and Talarico and ballot manipulator Mary Peltola will pontificate, driving their party ever leftward just in time for the 2028 primary to begin in earnest. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gavin Newsom and Jon Ossoff will fight for their presidential endorsements while Rahm Emanuel uses them as a foil for his moderate, practical liberalism. Establishment figures like Chuck Schumer and moderates like John Fetterman will have targets on their backs, and the Pikers of the world won’t rest until they’re ruined.

Sound familiar?

Reports of political realignments are generally exaggerated. But it is increasingly likely that we’ll emerge from the 2028 election to find the parties have switched positions. The Democrats’ descent into unmanageable, unelectable extremism seems inevitable. Whether or not Republicans use this to their advantage remains to be seen. If they’re smart, they’ll seize the opportunity. If not, 2030 is going to be a strange cycle indeed.

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