Dont count Trump out despite the midterms rout hes got plenty of power to flex

In the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90% of midterm elections have seen the party in the Oval Office lose House seats, and two-thirds of them have resulted in the president’s party losing Senate seats.Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet.But what ensued last week went well beyond normal expectations.When all the votes are tabulated, the current blue wave may match the massive midterm losses that buried Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010.What does this massive 2026 slapdown now portend?A second-term president in his final two years, facing a euphoric and frenzied opposition Congress emboldened by a landslide, will have difficulty confirming federal judges or Cabinet members.Come next year, Trump will still not have to face a veto-proof Congress — unless renegade Republican senators and representatives join Democrats on key legislation to provide them with the necessary 67-Senate-vote/290-House-vote override.It is critical for Trump, then, to shore up potentially apostate congressional Republicans and keep them in line.Even though the Democrats cannot hope to override the veto, some, like Elizabeth Warren, have recklessly called for ending the filibuster.But that’s a huge mistake when they don’t yet have the White House: Why end this time-honored institution just to pass legislation that will be vetoed by an opposition president anyway?As for Trump’s own legislative initiatives — they are dead.Bipartisan initiatives with the new socialist Democratic Party could be explored, but they would likely be untenable in the eyes of Trump’s base.Otherwise, Democrats will vote against anything and everything Trump proposes — in the fashion of what Harry Truman once called his oppositional Republican legislators: “The Do-Nothing Congress.”Nevertheless, presidents in their last two years in office, even in the wake of bruising congressional losses, sometimes find ways to stay dynamic and gain popularity.Clinto...