There are few cities in America that could be said to dislike President Trump more than the one he resides in. Walking through Washington DC on any weekday will inevitably confront you with chanted slogans, slurs shouted at national guardsmen, and cars honking their horns to a man wearing a “F--- ICE!” placard. For once, the city actually seems to represent the views of the nation at large.

Predicting elections is a fool’s game (just ask the major pollsters, who’ve limped through the Trump era with their reputations damaged), but there is no doubt that Tuesday will be an immensely painful day for the Republican Party. I spoke to admin staffers who had already accepted that Tuesday will be a “bloodbath”. Losing control of the House is one thing, but to lose the Senate too – leaving the president a lame duck in the face of the twin challenges of the war in Iran and the rise of AI – would mark the end of the Trump era as we know it.

So much attention has been paid to the GOP’s mismanagement of the past year that the soon-to-be victorious party has received little to none. It’s a strange oversight. If the midterms turn out to be a blue tsunami, with Dem candidates riding a wave into office even in states that went 12 points for Trump in 2024, the party will have almost total control over the federal government.

We can guess what their immediate priorities will be. Donald’s domestic agenda dies. Military action in Iran can and will be disrupted; there are already rumours swirling about plans to impeach Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. Committees that will soon be headed by Democrats will have plenty of questions to ask about the flagrant abuses of offices of state by moonlighting crypto grifters.

Can moderates breathe a sigh of relief at the thought that the “grown-ups” are back in the room? What do the Democrats really believe in now? Well, look at who won primaries up and down the country. Out-and-proud socialists are now candidates, and candidates with a good shot at winning. Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan is the highest profile progressive running, but there are many others: William Lawrence, Sam Forstag, Manny Rutinel, Randy Villegas, to name a few.

They’re capitalising on the fact that the midterms will be an affordability referendum, a gift to socialist radicals who can present themselves as the only people able to bring costs back down. Economic populism is popular. Moderates are jumping on board: Barack Obama gave his blessing for this strategic direction when he spoke at an El-Sayed rally last week in Detroit.

Those hoping that the Democrats will be a voice of reason are sorely mistaken. Indeed, this is the worst time for the party to be rewarded by voters with control over the legislature. On many issues of substance – the national debt, politicisation of the bureaucracy, insistence on the primacy of identity politics – they will keep the worst excesses of the Trump administration alive.

And they have plenty of bad ideas of their own to add to the pile. Take immigration reform. A decade ago, a progressive politico by the name of Sean McElwee began promoting the slogan “Abolish Ice”. Ice is a relatively new agency founded by George W Bush to in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, to better monitor and remove foreign threats attempting to enter the US.

It was not a partisan agency. Indeed, the president who leaned most on its capabilities was Barack Obama, who carried out a campaign of mass deportation during his eight years in office. But progressive elements of the party have no love for strict border management. The long-shot campaign of Bernie Sanders galvanised figures like McElwee who began to believe that the route to power lay not in tacking to the centre, but doubling down on the Left.

Borders are racist. Why not just get rid of them? Why not just abolish Ice? This logic was excruciating for old hands in the party. Abolishing Ice would be a crazy thing to attempt, deeply unpopular everywhere outside Portland, Oregon. They would stick with the same sensible centrists and disavow the socialist upstarts who presumed to tell them how to govern.

When Hillary lost in 2016 progressive Democrats believed they had been vindicated. That Bernie’s 2020 campaign crashed and burned, that Kamala lost in no small part due to her embarrassing history of spouting far-Left word salad, mattered not. A decade of failure hardened progressives and forced them to be tactical.

Look at how deftly identity politics is handled by the Left today. El-Sayed has previously supported gender transitions for minors. He wants to abolish Ice. But in s created by his backers, voters are served up a different picture of his priorities.

One featured a couple complaining about the cost of groceries in the store, where the woman tells her partner they need to return a carton of eggs to the shelf because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians”. It ends with a tongue-in-cheek call-back to a 2024 Trump advert: “Mike Rogers is for they/them. Abdul El-Sayed is for you.”American military aid for Israel’s war in Gaza is explicitly blamed for the high cost of groceries, linking a Left-wing cause célèbre directly to the affordability issue.

El-Sayed’s Senate race has been a masterclass in translating the campaigning strategy of New York City mayor Mamdani for a purple state like Michigan. Others are copying. Several candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America – now hovering around 130,000 members nationally, but with an outsized influence – are running on the same tactics, talking up wealth taxes and rent control and refraining from culture war issues beyond Israel.

If El-Sayed and his fellow travellers win next week, what remains of the centrist Democratic party establishment will loosen its grip. The selection of a presidential candidate for 2028 will tip towards the socialist faction, who at long last will be able to define which positions are “winnable”. And if economic populism works, why not revive the whole progressive platform?

There is an inexorable logic to this strategy. Unfortunately for the Democrats, it’s doomed. Confusing a dislike of the Iran war and frustration over prices for a commitment on the part of American voters to the DSA’s policy slate is a serious error. Success in the midterms could be a curse for the Democrats – and a blessing in disguise for the GOP.