Few people realize how screwed the Democrats are in their chances of taking the Senate over the rest of the decade.

Note that Republicans are going to have a 53-47 edge. Now look at 2026 to see how they can make up for it. There is only one Republican incumbent from a state Trump lost: Susan Collins in Maine. In her last election, she won by 8.5 points. Even if Collins loses, any other pickup is tough. North Carolina is the only swing state where a Republican incumbent is defending a seat. Democrats also have to defend two swing states: Michigan and Georgia. Democrats run the table on all these races, they're still down 51-49.

Let's go to 2028, and assume things went perfectly in 2026. Republicans are now defending two swing states: North Carolina and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Democrats are defending four swing states: Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Democrats would need to win all 6 races to get a 51-49 advantage. If they win 5 they can have the majority if a Democrat also wins the presidency.

Basically, everything has to go right the next two election cycles just for Democrats to get a bare majority.

This is important most obviously for the federal judiciary. Even if a Democrat wins in 2028, Republicans could in theory pull a Garland and never give any Supreme Court nominee put forward a vote. Even if Democrats recapture the White House and House that year, they would still need to work with a likely Republican Senate.

This isn't about the accidents of maps in one or two election cycles. It's a natural consequence of geographic polarization. Republicans have a slight edge in the electoral college, but an absolute massive advantage in the Senate.

Democrats could hope to hold on for a while because they had popular incumbents in deep red states, namely Tester, Brown, and Manchin. All of those are gone now, and they have try to win places like Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia as challengers. When Tester, etc first came into office, things weren't as partisan as they are now. With a large rural-urban divide and the decline of split ticket voting, Democrats are all but frozen out of the Senate under our current political alignment.