The Deep Midterms

American Greatness ^ | 20 Oct, 2026 | Victor Davis Hanson

[MtnClimber]

The midterms are a fundamental choice over America’s economic future, national identity, immigration, energy, and Western civilization.

There are two ways of looking at the midterms, now less than three weeks away.

One is as a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. The other involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism versus capitalism, intrusive versus limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions versus their preservation and renewal.

Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart or the choice between them so stark. In brief, Islamist-sympathizing socialism is on the ballot against free-market capitalism and American exceptionalism.

The new Islamist-allied socialist Democratic Party is confident, largely because the party holding the White House has increased its share of House seats in a midterm election only three times since 1900. Each of those exceptions arose under unusual circumstances.

In 1934, FDR was still riding the wave of his New Deal promises to end the Depression.

In 1998, Bill Clinton enjoyed backlash support after the Republicans’ unpopular impeachment inquiry, at a time when the economy was robust, and the budget was finally being balanced.

In 2002, George W. Bush had united the nation after 9/11 and had not yet begun what proved to be an unpopular Iraq War.

In other words, the party in the White House has gained House seats in only about 10 percent of the 31 midterms over the past 126 years. Pundits also point to Trump’s approval rating, now below 40 percent in most polls, and the persistently high price of regular gasoline ($4.33). Uncertainty over the 33-week Iran war, they argue, makes it difficult for Trump to preserve his majorities in either the House or the Senate.

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TOPICS: Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: elections

[MtnClimber]

VDH Ping

[ComputerGuy]

It is difficult to think of Democrats as anything other than traitors.

[stars & stripes forever]

IS THIS TRUE???

HOLY CR*P 🚨 American went to vote in Illinois, she says when selecting the conservative candidate the screen displays a message that says “people are not typically choosing this person, exclamation mark”

“I picked the Republican judges and once I selected one of the judges, I got a notification on the bar that said, people are not typically choosing this person, exclamation mark. — So why is my ballot telling me that who I’m picking isn’t the more popular choice? I have a problem with that”

I have verified this woman is in Cook County, Illinois and Cook County used Dominion Voting machines

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections’ Voting Systems Equipment Log, Dominion is listed as both the equipment vendor and support vendor for their voting machines and has their contract

It’s RIGGED

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2112499073525710907?s=20

[Jeff Chandler]

Nope. According to a large portion of the Freepersphere, it’s about Trump being an idiot so let’s turn the reins of power over to the people who hate us.

[pierrem15]

The whole point of having a written Constitution with a Bill of Rights is to make elections like this impossible: the majority is not supposed to be able to elect officials with the power to override the Constitution.

But a century after the "Progressive Era" which first realized the notion that the government could override the traditional guarantees of the 1789 Constitution, here we are.

We have simply recapitulated what ancient political theory predicted: a series of demagoguing moral panics driven by propaganda like The Jungle, two world wars and dealing with the Great Depression, the moral panic about race and gender discrimination, and the environment have pushed the notion that the Federal government has absolute power over everything.

Now one major party simply wants to finish the job by suppressing free speech and political opposition.

[Tell It Right]

From VDH: Before the election, voters should also ask themselves why more than two million Americans each year are fleeing the blue-state socialist model.

That is an easily repeatable statement that we should all loudly say between now and the midterms.

[Wallace T.]

Whatever you think about McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson, you must recognize that they were patriotic Americans who believed that economic intervention and active involvement in world affairs would be of benefit to America. The last three Democrat Presidents either had youthful associations with Communists (Clinton, Obama) or were financed by domestic subversives (Biden and his financial support from Armand Hammer, the George Soros of the mid to late 20th Century). Whether we will be dealing in 2029 with a President Gavin Newsome, a President Kamala Harris, or some other leftist in moderate clothing, we will be dealing with a chief executive tied to globalists, Chinese and Russian Communists, or Islamists.

[DownInFlames]

For gods sake, don’t vote Dem.

[pierrem15]

It's true that many of the early reformers had good intentions. But the problem is that granting extra powers to those with good intentions also enables those with bad ones, and the fact that those powers usually convey political and financial rewards inevitably creates incentives favoring the unscrupulous.

The Constitution acted, not to prevent bad people from being elected (an impossibility) but to limit their power when in office and, especially, to limit their power by balancing the interests of one against the other.

What the Founders did not anticipate is that the US would become a nearly homogenous classless society through industrialization and a common educational curriculum. And that in such a society, one's aesthetic and political opinions would become status indicators, so you wind up with a bunch of middle class people ridiculously extolling the virtues of aristocrats in terms of "charity" like helping the poor, but planning to do so with other people's money.

This homogeneity creates an elite who share common opinions about unlimited government power and who view each other's regard as far more important than fidelity to the law or Constitution, while at the same time all the claims of virtue conveniently mask their naked greed and self-interest.