Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will in Scottsdale, Arizona on December 1, 2022 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
With President Donald Trump having weak approval ratings in poll after poll, Democratic strategists are feeling cautiously optimistic about their chances of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. For Democrats, efforts to recapture the U.S. Senate are an uphill climb — they would need a net gain of four seats — yet Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) Chair Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) believes the political environment is so "toxic" for Republicans that flipping the Senate isn't out of question for her party.
In a Washington Post column published on January 14, Never Trump conservative George Will hopes that Democrats will flip at least one branch of Congress in November and emphasizes that "divided government" would offset the extremes of the Trump Administration in 2027.
"In the 2006, 2010, 2018 and 2022 off-year elections," Will argues, "voters ended an arrangement that they frequently forget is usually unfortunate: the president's party controlling both houses of Congress. Now, after 12 months with a president unconstrained by his party's supine congressional majorities, chastened voters might, come November, restore a semblance of checks and balances: divided government."
Will adds, "Party loyalty now eclipses legislators' institutional pride. So, only divided government can make its Madisonian architecture — the separation of powers; what writer Yuval Levin calls 'the deliberate recalcitrance of our system of government' — work."
U.S. politics, the conservative columnist laments, have become so tribalist that "divided government" is the only way to "restore a semblance of checks and balances."
"Judging by recent decades of presidential politics," Will writes, "divided government would be representative government: It would represent the nation's disposition. There has not been a presidential landslide since 1984, when Ronald Reagan defeated former Vice President Walter Monday by 18 points. This was just 12 years after Richard M. Nixon defeated Sen. George McGovern by 23.2 points, which occurred just eight years after President Lyndon B. Johnson defeated Sen. Barry Goldwater by 22.6 points."
Will continues, "Since 1984, the largest margin of victory was President Bill Clinton's 8.5 points over Sen. Bob Dole in 1996, and the average victory margin has been just 4.6 points. Since 1988, no presidential candidate has won more than Barack Obama's 53 percent of the 2008 vote."
GOP lawmakers, according to Will, are so subservient to Trump that they "do not seem to mind that they do not matter."
"This year," Will argues, "voters can produce the constraint of divided government. And can seed Congress with members of both parties disgusted by what it has become."
George Will's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).