Thoughts on…Everything - The Fifth One.
“We’re all in the same boat.
Fishin’ in the same hole.
Wonderin’ where the same time goes,
And money too.
Tryin’ to fix the same broke hearts.
Wishin’ on the same stars.
We’re all hoping hope floats.
And we’re all in the same boat.
We all been kicked and knocked around.
But you ain’t gonna keep a good man down.
You can run like hell from your mistakes.
But you can’t hide from your truth.
We’re all in the same boat.”
The Fifth One nomenclature is an homage to the eight Sharknado movies.
OK, they were terrible movies. But so terrible, they were kind of funny good. Like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and similar 50s horror movies.
So, are our 2026 and 2028 elections going to be terrible horror shows? Here is my analysis with five weeks to go before election day. I thought about waiting until after November 3rd so that my predictions would be guaranteed to be correct. A bunch of you said that was cheating, like Dems in a blue state.
2026 Election - The House: I don’t expect this to be a “wave” election either way where one side wins a whole bunch of seats they have no business winning and will likely lose in the subsequent election. That said, there are macro factors at play here that benefit one side or the other.
Benefitting Republicans, for example, is the House redistricting done in various states. Since the Supreme Court in Virginia threw out their gerrymander, the next affect of all the redistricting is a Republican gain of about two seats. A lot of motion for not much change in the end. Unlike some prior elections, it appears that Republicans actually have more money this time. The economy is always a big factor in elections and the statistics on the economy are actually very strong. For example, the jobless claims number just released was a 57 year low! Anyone who wants a job can get one. (More on that in the next blog of this series) Finally, the Democrats embrace of the Socialists and Islamists is a plus for Republicans as the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is highly unpopular with the electorate as a whole.
Benefitting Democrats is history. Only twice since 1938 has the party holding the White House gained seats in a midterm election. Those two instances were 1998 (Clinton) and 2002 (G.W. Bush). Both Clinton and Bush had strong approval ratings at the time of those midterms. Not so with President Trump this time. The Democrats also benefit from stronger enthusiasm. I conclude this not from polling (which has been awful lately) but from the various special elections in the last year. Those are a much better gauge of who is excited to turn out. I have long said that hate is a greater motivator in politics than love. People are more likely to vote because they hate the other guy than they are because they love their guy. And Democrats hate Donald Trump. And in spite of the good headline economic numbers, people are unhappy with the war in Iran, with inflation rising again, with disfunction in Washington, and with gas prices. So, there is a general malaise about government that always hurts whichever party is in charge. Also, Democrats rig elections with lots of fraudulent votes and no voter ID in blue states. That makes it especially hard for Republicans to win in blue states. Red states have very tight controls on ID and so forth so if they Dems convince real voters that their side is better, they will win because neither side can cheat.
I have one thought about the “no party affiliation” voters. I think as a group that they will have a very low turnout. They do not like Trump but they also are frightened by the Dems lurch to the socialist and Islamist left. Many will find it hard to pull the lever for either party right now. By definition, these voters want the parties to get along and compromise. But compromise is not possible in this political environment. Elections often turn on who gets the middle. But if the middle doesn’t vote, it will turn on who gets their side out.
Taking all of these pros and cons into account, I think the Democrats have the advantage in the overall environment.
Republicans in the House enter this election with a four-seat majority. So, Dems need to pick up five seats to win back the majority. Because of the redistricting and the fact that people are increasingly choosing to live amongst others who think and vote like they do, there are far fewer seats that are competitive than there used to be. Ten years ago there were about 50 “swing districts” and now there are less than half that many.
Interestingly, to make so many “safe seats” both parties had to steal some voters from another safe district thereby making the “donor” district less safe. The result is fewer swing districts, but quite a lot more districts that could flip in a major wave election. Since I don’t see a wave this year, I think the number of seats likely to flip is in the single digits. Even the Cook Report only sees 15 seats that could flip at a maximum.
So, my prediction (which I would like to be wrong, but I call ‘em as I see ‘em) is that the Dems retake the House majority by maybe one to five seats. It is possible they gain only three seats and still remain in the minority. I just think it is highly unlikely that Republicans will gain seats in this environment.
If the Dems do take the majority back, there will be at least 13 members of the “squad” or the DSA amongst their numbers. Which means if they stick together, which they will, they can make then Speaker Jeffries do what they want, whether that is impeaching every member of the administration, supporting Hamas, or similar policies. In the old days, that Speaker would look to the other party to give him the votes to pass stuff. If Jeffries did that, he would be thrown out. He has sent signals that he will punish any member who does not vote the way leadership wants. The squad has so much grass roots support in the Dem base that they will not be intimidated by those threats.
Be careful what you wish for, minority leader Jeffries.
2026 Election - The Senate: Republicans hold a three-seat majority in the Senate. Therefore, because the tie-breaking VP Vance will still be in office next year, the Dems need to pick up four seats for a majority.
I know the leftist press increasingly is saying that the Dems have a better than 50% chance of getting those four seats. I don’t see it.
The Senate is much easier than the House to model because there are always only 33 or 34 seats up. My state-by-state analysis is as follows:
The Dems nominated terrible DSA candidates in Michigan and Maine which are both purple states. I think Mike Rogers (with whom I served in the House) picks up the Michigan seat and Susan Collins holds Maine.
Now, the Dems need five pick-ups. They have to hold Georgia, Minnesota and New Hampshire. All could go R (Dem hopes are dead if any one of those three go R) but they will likely hold all three and let’s assume they do.
They still need five.
That means they have to win North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, Ohio and Alaska. Not one or two of those. Five of the six. I just don’t see that happening.
I am writing you this from Kansas where the Dems nominated a pastor of a large church in the suburbs of Kansas City and the Republican incumbent is not terrifically popular. But Kansas has only sent two Democrats to full terms in the Senate since statehood in 1861 and I just don’t see voters here sending someone who will vote with Schumer.
2028 Election - The White House: The House and Senate are impossible to predict this far out. Predicting the president is almost as hard since we don’t even know who is running at this point. We also don’t know what the economy, war and political climate will be in two years time. With those substantial caveats, here are some thoughts.
On the Republican side, the obvious front-runners are JD Vance and Marco Rubio. If both ran, Rubio would likely need to resign as Secretary of State to run against the sitting Vice President. The success of both, though more so for Vance, will be dependent on how the administration is viewed at that point. If Trump 2.0 is not seen as a successful term, it is hard to run against a presidency in which you have served for four years. Just ask Kamala Harris. She famously said there was nothing she would have changed in a presidency that was widely seen as a failure. But had she said she would have changed a bunch of things, the next question is “well, your were Vice President why didn’t you do more and speak out more.” You really can’t win.
So, if the Trump presidency is seen as a success, it will be hard to beat those two and, at the moment, I would give Rubio the edge. However, if it is not seen as a success, remember Governor Ron DeSantis. He ran last time and I expect he will run again especially if there seems to be a longing for someone not directly connected to the Trump administration.
There are other governors and senators who would likely run, particularly if it the administration is disfavored. But I see those three as the frontrunners at this point.
On the Dem side, we constantly hear about the two Californians, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. About a week ago, Newsom said he would not run if Kamala runs. Newsom is an unprincipled liar and snake, but he is not dumb and everything he says has a purpose. I surmise that either he knows Kamala is not going to run or he knows she is and this is his way of bowing out early and saving himself for 2032. Newsom is 58 right now so he has time.
Either way, I don’t think being from California is an asset these days. In my current home state of Arizona and my adopted state of Kansas, ads are running against Democrats running for statewide office saying “don’t let her turn Kansas (or Arizona) into California!” They wouldn’t run those ads unless they knew that California was seen as a place people don’t like. I even heard a sermon last week by a pastor from Oklahoma City talking about how people in the 19th Century saw California as a golden land of opportunity. “Not anymore” he said offhandedly. Newsom originally ran on “the California Way” but figured out quickly that that was not going to work and pivoted to his current hard left positioning. Both Kamala and Gavin are phonies. That works in the non-democracy of California where acting is prized. But not so much in Iowa, Ohio or South Carolina.
My money right now is on AOC. She has not announced anything. But she is clearly the heir to the Bernie Sanders wave and is endorsed by him for that role. They have toured the country together, in a private jet by the way. Arguably, Sanders won the Dem nomination in 2016 and 2020 but was pushed out by the “superdelegates” and the Dem power brokers. That might not happen again.
Rahm Emanuel and Josh Shapiro are both smart and out there talking a lot of common sense. But there is no way this Democratic Party nominates an unapologetic Jew for president. They are lucky that the party doesn’t jail them for being Jewish. You can be a Jew in the Dem party today only if you confess that Jews are awful and you renounce the Jewish faith and ethnicity. Converting to Islam and becoming transgender will seal the deal.
On the face of it, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, or someone like him, would make a more electable candidate than AOC. But I just don’t think the base will go for anyone that is not hard, hard left. Watching Newsom, again a snake but a smart politician, go as hard left as he has tells me he sees the tea leaves that way as well.
So, who wins between AOC and Rubio/DeSantis?
Come on. I’ve stuck may neck way out there on these predictions already. Don’t make me go there.
People are always telling me that one election or another is the most important in their lifetime. I don’t know about that. But what I do know is that elections today are more consequential than in decades because the differences between the parties’ policies are so significant. It isn’t just about whether taxes go up or down. It is now about our culture and way of life. This stuff has always mattered. It matters even more now.
This is part of the Fourth Turning thesis which will be examined in a future blog.
But the next in this series will be to analyze this economy which seems to be all things great and terrible at once.
Until next time, I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free
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