Both parties face record disapproval ratings. Billionaire money is 80% Republican. The progressive wing is fighting the establishment in the primaries. Trump is preparing to challenge any loss.
The 2026 midterm elections are shaping up as a referendum on the entire two-party system, not just Donald Trump. Both parties face historic disapproval, and the outcome may hinge on the lowest voter turnout in decades.
Trump's approval ratings have been declining since March 2025, according to New York Times polling data updated through July 28. His disapproval rating now exceeds his approval rating by a widening margin. But the Democratic Party is not faring much better. As of June 8, the Democratic Party's unfavorable rating stood at 56.6 percent against a 40.5 percent favorable rating, a trajectory that mirrors Trump's decline.
"What we're likely to see in this election is one of the smallest voter turnouts ever," said Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former advisor to Jill Stein's Green Party campaign. "The public's disapproval of the Democrats is just about as strong as it is of Trump."
Hudson and Radhika Desai, a geopolitical economist and co-host of the Geopolitical Economy Hour, argue that the midterms represent a crisis of legitimacy for the entire party system. Both major parties, they said, have abandoned their working-class bases in favor of corporate donors.
Trump's economic record is the central vulnerability. He won the 2024 election on promises of prosperity for ordinary Americans but has instead delivered inflation, declining real wages, and rising debt, Desai said. His policies have deepened the divide between the rich and the poor, enriching the largest, most financialized corporations while impoverishing the majority of voters.
"Trump knows he's in trouble," Desai said. "He is trying his best to avoid what appears to be the inevitable Republican loss of the House and the Senate."
A Democratic sweep of Congress would expose Trump to a wave of investigations into what Desai described as "the sheer amount of personal corruption he is involved in," including potential impeachment proceedings.
The money split
Billionaire donors are overwhelmingly backing Republicans. According to a Fortune report cited by Desai, billionaires have already poured $433 million into the 2026 midterms, with 80 percent flowing to Republican candidates and PACs. The remaining 20 percent going to Democrats largely supports establishment-aligned candidates, not the party's left wing.
"The Democratic National Committee gets its funding from Wall Street and Silicon Valley," Hudson said. "The socialists don't have that; all they have are small individual contributions, while the establishment has billionaire money to kill them with."
The Democratic establishment, Hudson said, is actively working to crush the party's progressive wing. Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has been writing weekly columns calling for the party to "crush the socialists." The Democratic National Committee scheduled the first 2026 primaries in right-leaning states like South Carolina, a move Hudson said mirrors the 2016 strategy that killed Bernie Sanders's campaign.
"The class war is going to be fought out in the primaries," Hudson said. "We're not yet at the point where it can be fought out in the general election."
Trump's playbook
Trump is preparing to challenge any unfavorable outcome, Desai and Hudson said. He has already laid the groundwork to claim fraud in mail-in ballots and voting machines, and he remains in office throughout the process – unlike in 2020, when he was a lame duck.
"He'll claim the voting machines can easily be interfered with, and that mail-in ballots can't be trusted," Hudson said. "He's making it very hard to vote."
Trump has also staffed the executive branch with personally loyal enforcers, unlike the first term when he relied on appointees from the Republican establishment. He has slashed the IRS workforce through DOGE – the Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk – reducing the government's capacity to audit wealthy taxpayers. The National Weather Service has been cut back. Research and development funding through universities has been reduced.
"There's a huge inability of government to regulate, even where regulations remain on the books, because there's no one left to enforce them," Hudson said.
Trump's personal corruption is a separate but related factor. The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump's net worth has surged from roughly $500 million to about $200 billion since his first term, almost entirely through cryptocurrency. He created his own coins and sold them to followers, in what critics describe as a pump-and-dump scheme. The United Arab Emirates reportedly invested half a billion dollars in Trump's cryptocurrency, which Hudson called "a payoff" for favorable treatment on the Iran war.
"Nearly all the Arab OPEC states have handed out huge contracts to Trump's family," Hudson said. "That's basically how you buy favors."
The war factor
The Iran conflict, which has been on-again, off-again, will likely continue in that pattern at least until the midterms, Desai said. Trump cannot win the war outright – Gulf countries have pressed him to stop, and the U.S. is running low on ammunition stocks. But he cannot admit defeat before the election, since that would be another political liability.
"The only way to keep the war going is through periodic bouts of bombing that make it look ongoing," Desai said.
Hudson added that those close to Trump appear to be profiting from the swings in oil prices, which move on announcements about the conflict.
The progressive wild card
The wild card in the midterms is the rise of democratic socialist candidates who have won primaries by declining AIPAC money and running on anti-war platforms. Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York is one example. These candidates, Desai said, represent a genuine challenge to the establishment that neither party wants to acknowledge.
"The only real hope is a situation where grassroots politicians – funded by small contributions from ordinary people rather than by a handful of billionaires – emerge in critical mass," Desai said. "I think they're beginning to."
The Democratic establishment, however, is treating them as a greater threat than Trump. Hudson recalled the 2016 campaign manager's memoir, reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, which detailed the party's efforts to undermine Sanders: "cheating, slander, every trick available, all to stop the left."
Trump, for his part, has revived Cold War rhetoric. In a July 4 speech at Mount Rushmore, he said: "America will never be a communist country. It won't happen. Communism is a loser, and it always will be." Hudson said this creates "the discursive space for an all-out attack on anyone who even mildly represents the real interests of ordinary Americans."
What to watch
The primaries begin in January 2026. The first contests are in South Carolina and other right-leaning states, which favors establishment candidates. The general election is in November 2026, with the new Congress taking office in January 2027. That leaves a two-month window for Trump to declare an emergency and invoke special powers if he loses.
"Between now and November, as the primaries get underway, I think we're going to see something like a civil war within the Democratic Party," Desai said. "The clash of interests between the American elite and the American people is coming to a head."
Drafted by a large language model from the source reporting linked above, then screened by automated publishing checks. It is not read by a journalist before publication. Some articles cite our Alpha Score. Verify prices and figures against the original source. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.