The 2024 election was close, as polls predicted. Trump swept the battleground states, but in most of them, only by a point or two.
The GOP picked up 3 Senate seats, all in red states, and may get a Senate seat in swing-state Pennsylvania (that race is undecided). It gained perhaps 1 seat in the House.
Despite the even partisan split among the electorate who voted in an election marked by voter angst and low turnout, the 2024 election will have momentous consequences.
With Trump firmly in control of national government, the U.S. is likely to turn inward and withdraw from the world stage, and early signs point to the Trump Administration 2.0 eviscerating the federal government and imposing a ne0-conservative agenda across the board.
Yet even drastic shifts in governing authority tend to be temporary. Wild swings from party to party are common in American politics. For example, from 1928 to 1932, America went from extremely conservative to extremely liberal (of course, a stock market crash and depression had intervened). The shift from Carter to Reagan also was remarkable, as was the shift back from the Bushes to Obama, and then from Obama to Trump, from Trump to Biden, then back to Trump again.
It’s true that Trump won the 2024 popular vote, unlike in 2020; but Alton Frye, a former GOP Senate aide writing for The Hill, thinks the 2024 Trump majority set aside their values and were “seeking an escape from the pain and disappointment and fears prompted by recent economic turmoil.” He also suspects “his voters may soon have second thoughts.” Trump’s agenda may inflict major hardships on them. (Read story here.)
While it’s becoming clearer by the day that Trump indeed plans to implement a radical agenda, he may have only two years to do so. The GOP went into the 2024 House elections with a slim majority, and failed to expand it; and after losing several members to administration jobs, they still could end up with a smaller majority than they had, or even lose the majority, after special elections to fill those vacated seats.
It was virtually a given the Democrats would lose Senate seats in West Virginia and Montana. They picked up only one more, in red-state Ohio, and possibly will get the one in swing-state Pennsylvania still up in the air. But that’s all. All other Democratic senators on 2024 ballots fended off challengers. Keep in mind the Democrats faced an unfavorable election map in 2024, and 2026 will be markedly more in their favor: Republicans will have to defend 23 of the 33 Senate seats on 2026 ballots, including some vulnerable ones. So there’s a good chance Democrats could retake one or both houses of Congress in 2026.
What about the 2028 election? Trump can’t run again, and a fair assumption is that his No.2, J. D. Vance, will be the GOP nominee. (He might even be the incumbent president by then, but I’m assuming Trump will finish his second term.) At minimum, Vance will be a top contender, with the advantage of being the vice president and Trump’s protégé. But that’s an advantage only within the GOP; and if by then Trump and the neo-conservatives have overreached, and the country is thoroughly tired of them, his close association with Trump will be major baggage for him in the general election.
What about the Democrats? Harris can run again, it’s not certain she will, but having lost to Trump it’s unlikely that Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers will nominate her again. There’s a bevy of Democratic aspirants in the background, but I think there’s an early frontrunner and likely nominee: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (photo above; bio here). He’s young, charismatic, and politically successful in a major Upper Midwest swing state, whose electoral votes are crucial to any nominee of either party. Like Vance, he’s an Ivy League lawyer, and he can handle the slick Vance in debate.
Shapiro was a serious contender for V.P. on the Harris ticket, and in some political quarters, she’s thought to have made an election-costing mistake by choosing Walz over Shapiro. Other sources suggest he turned it down. I won’t dig into those questions here, because they don’t matter anymore; what’s important now is that Shapiro is positioned to be a major Democratic voice in the early days of Trump Administration 2.0, and become his party’s standard bearer if/when (more likely when) Trump leaves office with smoldering wreckage behind him.
It’s clear that Trump has ambitions of tearing down decades of American foreign policy, leaving the world far more dangerous, and wrecking the federal government itself, that go far beyond any mandate the voters gave him by the slimmest of margins. It’s hard to see how this works out well for the Republicans when they have to face voters again in 2026 and 2028. I’m not saying there will be Democratic majorities then, or that Shapiro will be the 48th president. But I wouldn’t bet against it.