The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Trump, Beware—These ‘Unforced Errors’ Could Hand Democrats a Midterm Win

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

With only nine months until the midterm elections, Democrats will scrutinize every move President Donald Trump takes as they fight to reclaim control of the House and the Senate. Victor Davis Hanson lays out the narrow road ahead to victory for Trump and the GOP during the 2026 midterm elections. History is not on the incumbent’s side. Messaging mistakes and unforced errors could shift key voters and hand Congress back to Democrats. Hanson explains what it will take to hold a Republican majority—and why the stakes for these midterm elections could not be higher—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words." “There's another advantage that Trump has. They've raised, I think, $90 to $100 million. They've out-raised the Left by three or four times. And the billionaire class of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, not to mention Marc Andreessen or Elon Musk, they have defected and it's really hurting the Democrats. “What they're looking at in California with this billionaire's tax, you can be a billionaire and have property and investments, homes, but you might only have, I don't know, $100 million. They're gonna take $50 million from you on your aggregate worth. That's not gonna go over well with the billionaire class. And there, that's just a foretaste of what Kamala Harris will do if she has a Democratic Congress.” (0:00) Midterms Ahead (2:04) Unforced Errors (4:34) Incumbents Usually Lose Seats (5:35) What’s Working (9:11) Outraging Democrats (10:08) Known Unknowns (10:55) Final Playbook 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's about nine months left into the midterm elections in November. How should we envision this with the current administration that's chances? I think the best simile is that there's a pathway over the mountains, but on one side there's a sheer drop. On the right side, there is ample room if you travel close to the mountains and not get near the precipice. What are the perils that you'll follow where the cliff as you go on the path to the midterm? term.

Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hanson. There's about nine months left into the midterm elections in November, and how should we envision this with the current administration that's chances of retaining control of the House or Senate? Well, I think the best simile is that there's a pathway over. the mountains, like a pass. But on one side there's a sheer drop. And the other, there's, on the right side, there is ample room if you travel close to the mountains and not get near the precipice. Now, what is the precipice? There is a pathway to save the Republican Congress

and thereby to save the Trump counter-revolution. We saw what the alternative was under Joe Biden, but it'll be much worse if, well, it'll be worse in 2008 if Kamala Harris wins and has a Democratic Congress waiting for her, which she could have, at least at the beginning of it, in November. So what do we have to look at, what are the peril, that you'll follow or the cliff as you go on the past to the midterm. The first is these unenforced errors.

I don't want to get into who did it or whose fault it is. I'm just suggesting that when you say Rob Reiner after his death, you say something on toward. I'm talking in a strict political sense now. It's not good. Why? Because to repeat the Trump success in 2024, you must do three things.

You must win black males at 26%. You must win Hispanic males, about 55%, get them out to vote. And you must win or come break even with independence. That's in addition to getting your base out. But if you make fun of Rob Reiner after he's dead and not say, you know, not honor the old Latin warning, Dikere, Nihil, Nisi, Bonum de Mertuis, don't say anything bad. Don't say anything unless it's good about the dead.

Then you're going to offend whom? The independence. And so this week we had this strange little mim or video that Donald Trump was sort of the Lion King, and all of his enemies were various animals that inhabit the jungle. And I think Joe Biden was an ape and all that. But there was the Obama's portrayed as primates. Now, you could argue two things. Well, Joe Biden was too, so it wasn't racial.

Or he didn't care what you thought of it. He didn't think it was racial. And the Obama's, remember, Barack Obama engineered, tried to engineer his destruction in August, September, October of 2015 before the election, when they called in Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and said, ignore the intelligence estimate to go after Trump. But that doesn't matter. The matter is there's a whole history of the United States of racism that equates people who are black with primates.

So whoever did it in the White House or whether it was an ad for an upcoming TikTok video, and it doesn't matter, people don't matter, the independents don't like that. And you will either lose independent vote, or you will lose a week of precious time trying to explain what I just did. And then finally, as you're going toward the midterms, there's a sheer drop in that sure, another sheer drop, and that's called history. Only three times in the last hundred years has an incumbent president in his midterm,

first or second, this is Trump's second midterm, picked up seats. They usually lose seats. The problem is in the house, he can't afford more than four or fives. seats depending on these special elections. He could even lose the Senate. I don't think that's possible, but it could happen. We saw what happened in 2020 in Georgia when he lost two conservative seats in one of the most conservative states, Georgia, to two not Democrats, but hard leftists. It's possible. So you have to break history's pattern. George W. Bush did it. He picked up seats and you can do it. FDR did in his first, I think, 1934 election. You can do it, but you have to do everything right.

Keep away from the precipice. So what's in his favor? The his favor is he has already enacted the architecture of a radical economic revolution that's going to pay dividends in March, April, May, and just get better. And that's based on, not speculation on my part, but fact. The biggest deregulation movement since the Reagan revolution, tax cuts, and not just tax cuts for affluent people, for waitresses, for people on Social Security, et cetera. And then there's energy development. We're going to get up to 14, 15 million barrels of oil. So whatever is going to happen in the Middle East, we have a buffer that we've never enjoyed before. And then in addition to that, Trump says, $18 trillion in foreign investment, just cut it in half and say nine. That's nine times larger than Joe Biden's trillion dollars over four years.

So we're going to see massive foreign capital coming in here, creating jobs. The GDP is going to take off with tax cuts and deregulation. I know Kevin Warr, she's a wonderful professional economist, colleague of my who, who Hoover Institution. He's absolutely independent, but he will look at this empirically in a way that his predecessor did not, and he will see that there is a lot of growth, and there has been a lot of GDPs up to 5.5, but the inflation rate has gone down, and he will cut interest rates, not radically, but insidiously and continually. You put all that together, and it's going to really make a big difference if the president and his team talk about it daily.

and compare it to the Biden disaster. The other thing is Trump's biggest asset was immigration. He stopped it. He didn't curtail it. He stopped illegal immigration. They said that was impossible comprehensive immigration. No, he didn't need any of that. He just followed the law.

But now he's getting these bad optics in these blue enclaves where it's organized. The opposition is organized by left-wing money. Antifa, et cetera. And they want ICE to be portrayed as Nazis. They want to dox them, so ice wears mask, and you know the whole story. They're looking, they want to encourage people. They being elected officials, Keith Ellison, Tim Walts, Mayor Fry, they want people to go out and confront them, and they actually want people to be hurt or worse, to be martyrs. Why not just stay in places like we saw last week in West Virginia? Four or five hundred, Criminals rounded up. People who were happy, law enforcement, both state, county, and local, complied. Not in the news except the dividends. That it's a safer place and the law was enforced. Doesn't mean you're going to neglect the blue states. You're just going to, until the midterms, look at places like Arkansas or Wyoming or Montana. Just look at places where you have a receptive population and a compliant.

and cooperative law enforcement entity. And that will give you great publicity that there's no violence, there's no protest, but you're deporting thousands of criminals. And if you go into a criminal enclave and there happens to be somebody there and you say, by law, I have to ask you, what's your status? And he is here illegal, then deport them. Doesn't mean you have to neglect the law. There's another advantage that Trump has.

they've raised, I think, $90 to $100 million. They've outraise the left by three or four times. And the billionaire class of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, not to mention Mark Andreessen or Elon Musk, they have defected. And it's really hurting the Democrats what they're looking at in California with this billionaire's tax. You can be a billionaire and have property and investments, homes,

but you might only have. I don't know, $100 million. They're going to take $50 million from you on your aggregate worth. That's not going to go over well with the billionaire class. And that's just a foretaste of what Kamala Harris will do if she has a Democratic Congress. So they're going to be able to raise more money, not just from the rank and file MAGA people, but from the donor class, which has been historically democratic. And finally, there's known unknowns.

We're at the precipice of radical things that are going on in Ukraine and the Middle East. They could be very bad, but they could also be very good. Mostly foreign policy does not change a midterm election unless it is dramatic, fundamental, and a peace in Ukraine where you're not getting 10 or 20,000 people killed and wounded a week, total casualties, not just fatalities. Or you see that Iran's government is overthrown, and there's a popular uprising where the United States is not seen as it was in Iraq as an invading foreign occupier, but as a helper of popular dissent, that could be enormous. Just to review, there's a lot of pros that could disrupt the historical cycle and see the Republicans hang on to the Congress. But there's a lot of dangers, and you can go over the cliff.

if you continue to go into places like Minnesota where they don't want you, and you don't really want to be there, but you feel obligated. I can understand that, but do that after the midterms. And the same thing is true. Ignore what history says. This is a whole new ballgame. We've never seen politics like this, and you can win the midterms, even though you're an incumbent president,

and don't make errors that don't need to be made. Just put a czar on social media and say anything that comes through to the public from social media from the cabinet has to be looked at first. Put Don Jr. in it. Put Eric. Just tell him somebody has to be responsible so that doesn't get out and lose constituencies that won you the election in 2024. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Secret. Thank you for tuning in to the day.

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