India, Nov. 1 -- With rare exceptions, the political party of the president of the US has always lost seats in the Congressional mid-term elections. The Republicans, though, are going into the 2026 mid-terms with certain advantages, and they have done everything they could in the states they control to magnify those advantages. The Democratic opposition also suffers from important liabilities. Yet as election day approaches, some pundits predict a Blue wave that will catapult the Democrats back into control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republicans have made things much worse for themselves than it would have been in a business-as-usual scenario.

Retaining control of the House was always going to pose a tough challe...