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.

Clinton successfully went to war in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic without congressional authority, and worked domestically with the Republican majority to ensure two years of balanced budgets.

Obama was more confrontational: Even before his midterm losses in 2010 and 2014, he had boasted that he had a pen and a phone and would govern domestically by executive orders and vetoes.

And so he did — to an even greater degree after losing both houses of Congress in 2014.

Abroad, Obama entered the most contentious and radical two years of his administration.

He continued his targeted assassination campaign in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, restored relations with communist Cuba without congressional assent, and signed on to the disastrous Paris Climate Accord and the equally damaging Iran deal.

At home, Obama helped weaponize the FBI and CIA, ordering them to seek (nonexistent) evidence of Trump/Putin “collusion.”

Trump could very well follow some of these lame-duck precedents.

Even now, he could stop radical Democratic legislation, quickly finish the Iran war, and continue to reset regions in the manner of Latin America, which now bears little resemblance to its anti-American socialist character before 2025.

Twenty-seven months of his remaining tenure is a long time.

If there were an end to the Ukraine war, if the Iranian theocracy becomes denuclearized or even implodes, or if the strong economy goes into hyperdrive in 2027, then Trump could enjoy popularity on the level achieved by Clinton and Obama as they left office.

Historically, there’s a problem with opposition-party midterm waves: The bomb-throwers, drunk on success, go overboard.

The Tea Party, enthusiastic about its spectacular surge, nominated poor Senate candidates who had little chance of winning.

And during the Clinton administration, Republicans failed to build upon their control of Congress: They went wild with endless cul-de-sac investigations and a foolish impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton’s sexual imbroglios — in the midst of a booming economy.

Will a weak speaker like Hakeem Jeffries and a fossilized Senate majority leader like Chuck Schumer be able to rein in some 25 new avowed progressives and six new avowed socialists in Congress?

Probably not.

The hard left today is younger, more energetic and more charismatic than the ossified Democratic status quo.

Democrats learned in 2024 that their agendas — whether on the trans issue, DEI, the border, immigration, energy or crime — poll at under 40% favorability.

Yet it’s likely the zealots will keep trying to ram through radical legislation that the public has long been on record opposing.

Historically, waves as huge as this one can sometimes take two or three election cycles to correct themselves — and that gives the socialist Democrats an advantage in the 2028 presidential elections.

But Republicans should not panic or despair: Trump could still accomplish quite a bit, both domestically and internationally, even without a congressional majority.

And they should ignore hubristic leftist claims that the election results prove widespread American support for the boutique neo-socialist agenda.

If Democrats fail to rein in their radicals, Republican success in 2028 is practically guaranteed.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.