Trump Prepares for America’s “Epic Fury” at the Polls
They’re going to get wrecked, and they know it.
The last time Donald Trump faced a midterm election, it was 2018. Covid hadn’t hit yet, and Jeffrey Epstein was still alive. It was before Trump’s nonsensical threat to nuke hurricanes, but after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and after Trump was dog-walked by Putin at the disastrous Helsinki summit. Long story short, Trump’s ineptitude was on full display, but he had not yet blossomed into the wannabe dictator we’re so familiar with today. He was already a laughingstock around the globe, but here at home, he still enjoyed quite a bit of support, and that support did not waver much, even when he saluted a North Korean general, an act that slapped every American service member right in the face.
Most expected the 2018 midterm election to be a “blue wave,” but the actual result was far bigger than anyone had predicted. Apologies for dragging out a tired metaphor, but the wave became a blue tsunami, flipping a massive number of seats in the House and Senate and changing the power dynamic in DC from that point forward. Democratic majorities gained the power to hold hearings and start impeachment proceedings, which they promptly did, and we spent the next two years trying to hold Trump and his staggeringly unqualified goons accountable for the damage they had done to the American way of life.
Now here we are, facing another Trump presidency with another midterm election looming, but this time Trump’s authoritarian desires are entirely unchecked, and the damage he is doing to our futures is magnified by a power of ten over what was happening the last time he held office. Again a blue wave has been predicted, but this time the predictions have Trump taking an even bigger hit at the polls than he did in 2018.
In the run-up to the 2018 midterms, the GOP experienced the largest wave of retirements and resignations in its history, with 41 members choosing to quit rather than face the voters. So far in 2026, that number stands at 36, but we are still several months away from Election Day, and Republicans are on pace to break their previous record by a significant amount, indicating that this cycle could be an even bigger wave election than what we saw in 2018.
Most believe the House will change hands for certain, and many are beginning to think the Senate could flip as well. Time will tell, of course, but the early data suggests that this is a possible and even likely result. But that optimism needs to be tempered with caution for one simple reason: If we know this will happen, then so do the Republicans, and those guys don’t play by the rules.
A power shift in DC means many things. It means hearings. Endless hearings. It means Epstein files on display ceaselessly until the truth comes out. It means testimony about everything from the rape of children to the alleged selling of American military secrets, and a never-ending stream of public corruption stories, most of which will turn into trials and eventual prison sentences.
That said, we don’t know who or how many, or if any of it will reach the very top of the billionaire food chain, but there will be no shortage of targets, and certainly no shortage of political theater. The GOP knows this. Trump knows this. And this is why I believe we need to prepare ourselves for a what I believe will be a much more aggressive approach to voter suppression in the coming months. The outcome that is becoming more certain by the day is one that those in power simply cannot allow, so we can and should expect them to lash out and to do so in ways we have not seen before.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already suggested “delaying” the upcoming elections in Israel, which are currently scheduled for late October, just ahead of our own. Trump will do the same thing here, and likely soon. He’s attacking voting in every way he can, even using our illegitimate and highly ironic “Supreme” Court to help him do so. But the momentum building against Trump and his entire movement is not going to stop, and I fear a much more dangerous conflict could be the result. Things I never thought could happen here are now things I expect to happen here.
GOP voter suppression is a known and measurable thing. In every cycle, they challenge votes, move polling places at the last minute, force long lines in Democratic precincts and then punish the voters who wait in those lines, distribute incorrect voting data to the populations they want to confuse, and so on.
And that’s just the beginning. These tactics are as un-American as MAGA and as predictable as the setting sun. But this time around, they are not likely to be enough, and while that is good news for Americans as a whole, it’s terrible news for Trump, and Trump has already demonstrated just how far he is willing to go to avoid accountability.
If he’ll go to war there, there’s no reason to believe he won’t go to war here as well.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.