By Tanya Metaksa
2026 Midterms—Not a Pretty Picture
We all recognize that Trump believes he knows best. That is a personality trait that many people think is OK, but more people find to be atrocious.
On Nov. 3, he discovered how far and wide that latter opinion had ballooned. It reminded me of a former President who, in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention, emphatically stated, “And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say, ‘No.’ And they’ll push, and I’ll say, ‘No.’ And they’ll push again, and I’ll say to them, ‘Read my lips: No new taxes!'”
That was President George H.W. Bush, who was beaten by Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton four years later, campaigning on the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid!” Yes, the same Bill Clinton who pushed through an “assault weapons” ban in 1994, which caused his monumental loss of the House and Senate that year, when the Republicans took over the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.
In 1994, one of the primary issues was gun control, and conservative Democrats who had been pressured by Clinton and the Democrat Party to support the crime bill, which included the “assault weapons” ban, lost their “safe” seats to unknown Republicans. That election helped to realign the makeup of the House for the next thirty years, thus changing the trajectory of the gun control issue at the federal level as well.
Clinton’s Memoir
In his 2004 memoir, My Life, Bill Clinton linked the 1994 crime bill’s assault-weapons ban to Democrats’ election losses, including the defeat of House Speaker Tom Foley. He wrote:
“The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century.”
The Warning Clinton Said He Disregarded
Earlier in the memoir, Clinton recalled that Foley, House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks urged him to remove the assault-weapons ban from the crime bill. They warned that vulnerable Democrats had already defied the NRA by supporting the Brady bill, and that another gun-control vote could cost them their seats. Clinton acknowledged:
“Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong.”
Clinton emphasized that Brooks had opposed the assault-weapons ban itself but ultimately voted for the overall crime bill containing it. That distinction did not spare Brooks from the NRA’s opposition. Clinton wrote:
“The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you’re out.”
He also reported the gun lobby’s claim that it had defeated 19 of the 24 members it targeted, adding, “They did at least that much damage.”
2026 Election Analysis
One of the best of many 2026 election analyses I read is by Texas Senator John Cornyn, who was not only abandoned by Trump but actively undermined by him, leading to Attorney General Ken Paxton becoming the nominee. Paxton then lost to James Talarico in one of the biggest Senate switches. Senate Majority Leader John Thune had pressed Trump to support Cornyn as the stronger bet to hold the seat. Trump backed Paxton anyway.
Senator John Cornyn’s Analysis
In this case, guns were also part of the backdrop. After the Uvalde school shooting, Cornyn helped negotiate the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which alienated gun owners and Trump, who attacked the law as a step toward taking away Americans’ guns. The gun issue clearly mattered politically, but the record doesn’t show it was Trump’s only reason for his choice, and it shouldn’t be treated that way.
Although one can read this article as a defense of his own political style, Cornyn outlines four rules to maintain the 2024 coalition:
- Add, don’t subtract—this year the party went after RINOs. Cornyn is writing about himself, but it happened in other places.
- Be likeable—he says primaries now run on a “reverse personality test”: being reasonable gets you called a sellout.
- Deliver what you promise—Trump, like Biden, misread his mandate.
- Character matters—he maintains that candidate scandals hurt the Republicans in Texas.
I agree with all four, but “deliver what you promise” also has a corollary: “Don’t promise something and then do the opposite.” Like President George H.W. Bush on taxes, Trump promised no new wars and lower taxes. Then, a year into his four-year term, he began a war with Iran that is still ongoing eight months later, causing prices to skyrocket. Americans held Republicans responsible for the war and the economy.
AP Polling Analysis
The AP ran a poll-based analysis of why Trump lost. It analyzes the loss as a verdict on Trump’s broken promise to bring prices down. Voters blamed his tariffs and the Iran war for higher costs. About two-thirds said his policies had made the economy worse, and roughly 8 in 10 of those who believed the economy was worse voted Democratic. Voters also saw Trump as more focused on his own fortune than on their needs. In this analysis, one can see the Democrats’ message working extremely well.
The Wall Street Journal’s Accurate Summary
The Wall Street Journal wrote:
After campaigning on ending foreign wars, Trump wagered on one of his own, triggering an open-ended conflict that has seen the deaths of more than 20 U.S. servicemembers, cost U.S. taxpayers more than $47 billion, and pushed up the cost of everything from freight to fertilizer.
On Tuesday, Republicans suffered losses that amounted to one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history. It was likely a direct result of Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran, sending gas prices up 40%, leaving many of his most loyal supporters disillusioned and effectively drawing a curtain on the Trump age…
In the spring, when advisers told Trump that the Iran war could hurt Republicans in the midterm elections, Trump told them there was plenty of time to figure it out, according to people familiar with the remarks… Even former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter and confidant, was quoted as saying the Republicans had lost the affordability fight.
Trump, like so many politicians before him, overestimated what his 2024 election really meant. I remember the sobering experience of reading a poll I took less than two years after the 1976 win in the Massachusetts referendum on banning guns, where we won with 70% of the vote. The referendum was initiated by a group headed by John J. Buckley III, the Republican sheriff of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, at that time. Buckley decided to run for Congress in 1978. I took a poll to see how his defeat in the referendum would influence the vote in the Republican primary. I learned quickly that no one cared or remembered about the 1976 referendum. Although he won the Republican nomination handily, he then lost to his Democrat opponent. Elections are only a snapshot in time, and the next election is influenced by what happens after the last election.
Trump’s hubris was too much for the electorate. He failed to stick to what he promised in 2024. He promised “no new wars”; he started one in February that most people now regard as having no off-ramp. Additionally, he never really explained the why of what he was doing. He might have known why he was doing it, but he failed to explain the why to the American people. Explaining after the fact rarely works. He overestimated our military “might,” while underestimating our “resolve.,” and underestimating the enemy’s resolve.
So What Does It Mean for Second Amendment Rights?
It means that the standoff in the Congress is over. We will be facing congressional gun bills again with an energized anti-gun lobby working at warp speed. In an Oct. 30 article in The Reload, Julie Miller writes, “Everytown has been the biggest spender by far in the gun-policy space this year, far outpacing the NRA and other pro-gun groups. It has already pledged to spend $10 million on congressional ads, as well as $3 million on a digital media campaign targeting gubernatorial races across several battleground states and $9 million for digital ads aimed at state legislative contests.”
(Editor’s Note: TGM reported on this big spending back on Oct. 29.)
We will know the real numbers when the actual campaign-finance figures filed with the FEC—not announced spending pledges—are published after the December 3, 2026, deadline. After that, we will be able to assess how much the anti-gun groups spent and who they spent it on. It will be sobering information.
This is 1994 in reverse, and the results could be brutal. Yet the gun-buying community has already been putting their money where their fears were. The Reload‘s November 3 article, “Gun Sales Surged in Weeks Before Election Night,” quotes NSSF spokesman Mark Oliva saying, “It is evident that gun owners are already voting with their wallets when it comes to their Second Amendment rights, even as Americans are heading to their polling places to vote in federal and state elections.”
Finally, a question that everyone following the Second Amendment issue is asking: What about the two oldest Justices, Clarence Thomas, 78, and Samuel Alito, 76? What are their plans?
The New York Times reported on Nov. 6 that Justice Alito does not intend to retire immediately, according to two people close to him who spoke with the newspaper. The decision tracks what he has said publicly for months. In a September 30 interview with Bloomberg News, Alito said, “I intend to stick around through this term,” and answered “Yeah” when asked whether that was a firm no to a post-election retirement.
The stakes are significant. Democrats are poised to hold at least 54 seats beginning Jan. 3, 2027, giving them the power to block any Trump nominee for the next two years, Bloomberg Law reports. Republicans had hoped Alito or Justice Clarence Thomas, 78, would step aside so Trump could name a like-minded successor. Thomas has reportedly said he will leave the Court “feet first.”
A lame-duck confirmation appears unlikely. The Boston Globe notes that the session lasts about five weeks and that Republicans defending 19 seats in 2028 may balk at risking their futures on a nomination that would leave the Court’s composition unchanged. Departing Republican senators, including Susan Collins, John Cornyn, and Bill Cassidy, may have little appetite to “ram through” a nominee, the Times adds.
The longer-term question remains open. As MS NOW observes, if a Democrat wins the White House in 2028, both Justices would be in their 80s before a Republican president and Senate could replace them. Some conservatives fear a repeat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision not to retire.
We may still have a bright spot at the Supreme Court because of Viramontes v. Cook County, but any new Supreme Court appointees from Trump will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get confirmed. The current 6-3 majority on Second Amendment rights could vanish overnight.
