America’s midterms: History rhymes half a century later

Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico celebrates with supporters in Austin after defeating his Republican opponent, State Attorney General Ken Paxton, in the midterm election on Wednesday. | Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times

Nov 5, 2026

People might call this feeling “deja vu.” In the U.S. midterm elections Tuesday, James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and former middle school teacher, was elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas.

As I listened to his acceptance speech, full of love and hope, broadcast live on Fox News, I was instantly reminded of the 1976 presidential election. At the time, I was studying political science at the University of Minnesota and had experience volunteering in presidential and House of Representatives election campaigns in the state.

The Democratic presidential candidate back then was Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist peanut farmer — a devout man, untouched by scandal or dirty money — who appeared like a comet and won the presidential election. Having experienced that political process firsthand, I sensed that the 2026 midterm elections would, as in 1976, mark a major political turning point in the United States, the kind that occurs only once every few decades. Perhaps it is because I still believe in the transformative power of American democracy, something many Americans, it seemed to many outsiders, had all but given up on in recent years.

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