Brian Beutler, a senior editor at The New Republic, has outlined a scenario — one he describes as real but remote — in which the 2026 midterm elections could "bleed MAGA to death" and leave Republicans with little choice but to curb President Donald Trump.

Writing in a column on his "Off Message" Substack, Beutler argued that Trump is banking on the assumption that Democrats will "wimp out" if they gain power. The stakes he is describing are structural: the midterms will decide all 435 U.S. House seats and more than 30 Senate seats, and with them the balance of power over legislation, investigations, and any future impeachment proceedings.

He framed the moment against the start of Joe Biden's presidency. When Biden entered the White House, he spoke of "moving forward" and "not looking back." That did not mean the Justice Department declined to investigate crimes, Beutler noted, but accountability was not the administration's focus.

"Let me inject you with a dash of hopium before we spend the next month huffing into a paper bag," Beutler wrote on Monday. "There is a scenario, real but remote, in which the midterm election really does bleed MAGA to death."

The decisive blow, he explained, would come only from removing Trump from office. That is technically possible, but because removal requires a 67-vote majority, it would take something cataclysmic — something larger than Trump leading a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. That hurdle is historically imposing: no U.S. president has ever been removed by Senate conviction, and Trump himself was impeached twice during his first term, with the Senate falling well short of that both times.

"Erratic people create unpredictable circumstances," Beutler wrote. "But a world where Congress removes Trump from office is probably one where something catastrophic has already happened. It isn't one where Republicans get routed in an election, and then ~half of the remaining GOP senators are chastened enough to find Trump guilty of high crimes."

He acknowledged that the scenario is unlikely and would require Democrats to outperform their standing in current polls. It would also depend on a subset of Republicans responding "to a drubbing like normal politicians, rather than right-wing tribalists. The point isn't that I think this will happen, just that I think it could."

The path begins with Democrats winning 53 to 54 U.S. Senate seats — a net gain of roughly six or seven seats from the chamber's current 53–47 split. A defeat of that scale, Beutler suggested, could deliver enough "psychic shock" that the "fever" breaks and "House and Senate Republicans would begin behaving more like a faithful opposition."

Even with that many seats, Democrats would still need at least seven Republicans to reach the 60-vote supermajority required to break a filibuster.

Whether or not Democrats pull off a result that significant, Beutler argued, the coming two years will bring a desperate Trump. Republicans, meanwhile, will quickly realize that mid-decade redistricting — the redrawing of congressional maps between the once-a-decade census counts — has made them more vulnerable in 2028, not less.

"So there will be many, many Republicans who recognize: if we don't relent, if we use our power to sustain Trump's current level of impunity, we will be wiped out again in 2028," he wrote. If the party does not shift course, it risks another round of losses in 2028.

In that circumstance, Beutler argued, Republicans could put Trump on "as short a leash as possible." They would behave "a bit like the Boll-Weevil Democrats of the 1980s, who defected to vote with Republicans a lot. Except instead of doing so to help a popular president of the other party, they'd be doing so to constrain an unpopular president of their own." The Boll Weevils were conservative Southern Democrats who routinely crossed party lines to back Ronald Reagan's legislative agenda, and their label has endured as shorthand for lawmakers who defect from their own party's president.

He closed by conceding, "A formation like that wouldn't fix everything, but it would end many of Trump's monarchical abuses."

This article is based on reporting by Alternet.