Here’s What Really Will Matter in Next Year’s Midterms

Tuesday night’s elections might have liberals popping the champagne, but the whole “Trump repudiation” narrative is way off the mark. Sure, Democrats swept big races in heavily blue states and cities — Virginia, New Jersey, New York City — and grabbed wins that the media is hyping as a Republican bloodbath. Abigail Spanberger snagged Virginia’s governorship, Mikie Sherrill took New Jersey’s, Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, won the New York City mayor’s office, and Jay Jones, who’s been openly wishing death on political foes, secured Virginia’s attorney general spot. The headlines scream doom for the GOP heading into the 2026 midterms, but that’s a shallow read.

Here’s the real scoop: these races were in deep blue territories, hardly bellwethers for the national mood or the midterms next year. Bill O’Reilly hit the nail on the head in his analysis on NewsNation, bluntly declaring that these election results have no bearing on next year’s midterms.

“This has nothing to do with the midterms. Zero,” O’Reilly said flatly when Chris Cuomo tried to connect current political controversies to next year’s races. The veteran broadcaster wasn’t being dismissive of politics; he was just pointing out that the landscape will look dramatically different by next fall. “So many things are going to happen between now and this time next year,” he continued. “It’s gonna be a completely different country than it is now.”

That tracks. Ever heard the expression “A week is an eternity in politics?” A couple of weeks ago, it looked like Jay Jones’s goose was cooked. All he needed was time. And time worked in his favor.

When Cuomo asked how he could be so sure, O’Reilly doubled down. “Because there are so many things that have to be decided. There are too many undecideds.” And at the top of that list, O’Reilly said, is a looming Supreme Court decision on President Trump’s tariff policy. According to O’Reilly, the Court’s eventual ruling will likely uphold Trump’s power to impose tariffs under a 1974 law signed by President Gerald Ford. “They’ll rule in Donald Trump’s favor,” he predicted.

That, O’Reilly argued, would open the door for Trump to test whether his tariff strategy can deliver tangible benefits before voters head to the polls. “They’ll rein Trump in a little bit,” he said, “but that will give Trump then a free feel to see if, in the next eight months, the tariffs can kick in to bring prices down and to help people.”

In O’Reilly’s view, that economic impact — not global politics, not partisan scandals — will determine how Americans vote in 2026. “That’s what the midterms are all about,” he concluded. “It’s about economics here. It’s not about China. It’s not even about Putin. It’s about that.”

Bill O’Reilly leaves Chris Cuomo looking completely stumped with an election analysis that went straight over his head.

O’REILLY: “[Tonight’s results] have nothing to do with the midterms.”

CUOMO: “You better hope.”

But Cuomo’s face turned confused when O’Reilly said: “Between… pic.twitter.com/sD1nEfI2gO
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) November 5, 2025

It all comes back to what James Carville once said: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

For all the Beltway chatter about Trump’s rhetoric or foreign entanglements, we all know people typically vote with their wallets. If the tariffs stabilize prices and revive key industries, Trump’s Republican Party could enter the midterms with momentum. If not, Democrats will seize on the pain to try to claw back relevance in a Trump-dominated economy.

Trump has exactly one year to make Americans feel that the economy is working for them. The next midterm results will hinge on that economic reality, not on the blue wave wins in strongly Democratic states this week. Washington insiders and pundits would do well to remember this simple rule before declaring the 2026 midterms a lost cause for the GOP.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is still ongoing, and polls are now showing Americans are increasingly blaming the Democrats for this mess, and Democrats are on the verge of caving.

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