Who Cares about November?

I don’t know which political faction will come out ahead in the 2026 elections, the MAGA Republicans or the socialist Democrats. But it is pretty clear who will be the biggest losers – the American people. Both factions believe in powerful, central governments, which come at the cost of individual freedom.

The next two years will be critical for the future of America. But I am not trying to motivate you to go to the polls this November or to influence how you vote. It is not that the 2026 elections are unimportant. All elections are important. But I think most of us realize that, although there may be many surprises, the general outcome is already preordained. The Democrats are likely to retake the House. The Senate could also fall to the Democrats although this outcome is less likely. But the end result is the same. In 2027 and 2028 we will have divided government. Given some of the outlandish proposals the extreme wings of the Republicans and Democrats are promoting, this is probably a good thing.

With divided government, the Democrats will spend a lot of time (along with almost non-stop press coverage) investigating President Trump’s nefarious activities along with those of his family and his dubious associates, all of whom are making oodles of money. It matters little if all this accumulation of wealth is legal or illegal, it just doesn’t seem right. And most Americans know that. So guilt or innocence is of little consequence. The bottom line is that there will be no resolution to this conundrum. Endless investigations, repeated impeachments but no consequences. Just repeated nonsense ad nauseum.

Of greater consequence will be the continued deterioration of President Trump’s mental state. In the first two years of his second term his pronouncements and – even worse – his actions have become ever more erratic, worrisome and dangerous. He relishes his ability to say anything that pops into his head, not caring a whit about the impact on the American people who he supposedly leads. His condition is unlikely to reverse and is more likely to continue to deteriorate.

But we live in a dangerous world. Regional conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf have great potential for escalation. China may consider such a scenario a convenient time to resolve its problem with Taiwan. It will take more than a strong will to resolve these problems. President Trump sees the world as a series of transactions and believes that every problem can be solved by some sort of deal. He “misunderestimates” Putin’s zeal for a Euro-Asian empire to counter-balance the West, the vehemence of Iran’s desire defeat Western civilization and its religions and Xi’s desire to avenge the Western world’s treatment of China that resulted in its “century of shame.” Financial transactions and Trumpian deals will not resolve these conflicts and the West needs a leader that can truly understand these important issues.

It is going to take a lot of skill and luck to make it through the next two years. I am banking on luck because I don’t see a lot of skill in the current administration and Congress, which hasn’t done much of anything for the last two years, is unlikely to help very much in the next two. Neither of the leading factions have been able to prove that they are capable of dealing with the challenges that confront us. We need to find new leadership – and fast.

Only a few of the senior Republican officials in the Trump administration would qualify for a reform agenda. And President Trump will be working hard to shape the agenda for the 2028 election even if he isn’t a candidate. Vice President JD Vance has adopted an un-American political ideology, National Conservatism, that denounces the founding principles of the United States. This is even more dangerous than MAGA nonsense. There may be a few Republicans that have gone along with Trump’s agenda, such as Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis, that may be able to gain enough separation to lead a reform agenda. However, at the end of the day, we may have to rely on a dark horse to drive reform.

The Democrats need reform just as much as the Republicans but after making gains in the 2026 mid-term elections they will be more resistant to change – more likely to double down on the left-wing socialism that wasn’t actually the reason behind their success. Still, there are some more mainstream Democratic governors, such as Andy Bashear in Kentucky and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, that may be motivated to move the party more toward the center. Probably not enough to sway the MAGA base but possibly persuasive for undecided independents.

But why is there such determination by these radical factions of Republicans and Democrats alike to change the basic fabric that made our nation great? It is true that our liberal democracy and free market economics have not been perfect. How could they be? They are composed of millions of American citizens with all their differing opinions and human frailties that so frustrate our better natures and good intentions. But there is a reason that the Enlightenment based free market economics and democratic political system supplanted the mercantilist era of the Great powers, it was a better promoter of prosperity, peacefulness and human flourishing than its predecessor. And socialism has never been proven to benefit anybody, only impoverish and enslave hapless citizens. And neither mercantilism nor socialism are amenable to democracy. They are both systems based on powerful governments that are intended to overwhelm the rights of ordinary citizens like you and me.

The 2026 election is shaping up to be a repudiation of the Trump-led MAGA right and the elevation of the socialist left – two alien philosophies antithetical to the founding principles of the United States. It is up to us to find the path back to the spirit that motivated our ancestors to create a “New Order for the Age.”