Election Season

by Mark Van Proyen

September 5, 2026

George Caleb Bingham, “Stump Speaking,” 1853/54, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 58”. Courtesy of the Saint Louis Art Museum.

If you think that you are being bombarded by election messaging now, just wait until after the Labor Day weekend. That is the official start of the campaign season, meaning that there will be political noise aplenty from then to November 3. The month of August has already given us a noisy pre-season full of the usual hyperbole about the upcoming midterm contests being “the most consequential election of our lifetimes.” Indeed, we must remind the victims of this onslaught that we are talking about an election where most members of Congress and 36 state Governors will be on the ballot, a different kettle of fish from the Presidential election that will take place in 2028.

Conventional wisdom has the Democrats picking up anywhere from 15 to 30 seats in the House of Representatives, depending on the shifting winds of late-breaking polling data. According to Nate Silver’s recent crunching of polling numbers, they have a 57% chance of gaining a majority in the Senate, although it would probably be razor thin if achieved. We should remember that two years ago, 77 million voters voted for Donald Trump and 75 million voters backed Kamala Harris. 80 million potential voters didn’t vote, meaning that you can say pretty much anything you want about why the election turned out the way that it did. That same statistic also tells us that a great many voters don’t vote because neither political party motivates them. When one or the other party loses, they blame it on a failure of “messaging” rather than failures of policy.

Jacob Lawrence, “Street Orator’s Audience,” 1936, tempera on paper, 24 x 19 1/8”. Courtesy of the Tacoma Art Museum.

Mid-term elections do not attract the same turn-out numbers as general elections, so we have to measure that historical observation against the fact that the 2026 version will be a referendum on a President with an approval rating in the low 30th percentile who has started and is doubling down on an unpopular, poorly planned war that is having disastrous consequences on the global economy. This, after he campaigned on a no-new-wars platform in 2016, 2020 and 2024. 

Obviously, a lot hinges on voter turnout. Texas is closing a third of its polling places, ensuring that long lines will dissuade some voters from participating. Other red states are following suit. Multiple voter suppression tactics are in play, starting with the failed attempt to curtail mail-in voting, temporarily stopped in its tracks by a Federal District Court ruling on August 28. There are signs that the Trump administration is going to ignore the ruling with the intent of kicking it up to the Supreme Court, but there is not enough time for SCOTUS to overturn the decision before the election, nor are there any constitutional grounds for them to do so. The Constitution explicitly states that elections are to be supervised by state governments. There is no role designated for the executive branch, and not even Trump’s Supreme Court will be able to get around that blunt fact.

John Sloan, “Election Night,” 1907, oil on canvas, 26 3/8 x 32 1/4”. Courtesy of the Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester.

That much said, the Democratic leadership is not giving serious consideration to the looming likelihood of the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the election. Their obvious fallback position, as stated by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) in an appearance on August 30 broadcast of MS Now, is that Democrats need a huge voter turnout to overwhelm the Trump administration’s plans for electoral skullduggery. He is not wrong, but the party leadership needs to dial up the urgency if it is going to achieve such a turnout. So far, it is not doing that, although keeping its powder dry until after Labor Day might explain the current lack of coherent messaging.

Meanwhile, rightwing cable news broadcasters and their social media confederates are all abuzz with shrill accusations that the Democrats are all rabid Communists hell bent on destroying all things that are holy about the American way of life (as if the Trump administration wasn’t already working overtime toward that goal). Meanwhile, minority leader Hakim Jeffries (D-New York) took what he thought to be a secret meeting with Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, which was made public a day later. The upshot was that Jeffries promptly appointed three pro-Israel Democrats to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. How does this make political sense when polling data indicates that 58% of Democratic voters have an unfavorable view of the current Israeli government, with all of 9% registering a positive view of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

Nicole Eisenman, “The Abolitionists in the Park,” 2020/22, oil on canvas, 10’ 8 1/4” x 8’ 9 1/8”. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

At the very least, the meeting was a spectacular incidence of bad timing and tone-deaf decision making. Treating Kushner as a legitimate player in government policy made it even worse, given Kushner’s lining his own pockets to the tune of over two billion dollars in shady business ventures. Jeffries has proven himself unfit to lead the supposed opposition party and needs to resign. If the Democrats are to succeed in the mid-term elections, they need give their voters something to vote for, meaning that they should quit playing patty-cake with enemies of the Constitution, the more so while those enemies are on the electoral ropes.

That message also applies to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) and National Democratic Chair Ken Martin. The fact that South Carolina Representative James Clyburn recently stated that impeachment was “a low priority” on the August 30 broadcast of Meet the Press was another tone-deaf blunder, a sad instance of surrendering prior to the battle being joined when the electoral tail winds are at the Democrats back. And Democratic Party leaders wonder why a third of the electorate doesn’t bother to vote. If the current House version of the SAVE Act is passed by the Senate during the upcoming legislative session, many of those non-participatory voters might wish they paid more attention. The Brennan Center for Justice estimates that if it does pass, 21 million eligible voters may lose their right to vote.

Beverly McIver, “VOTE Black Beauty,” 2024. Courtesy of People for the American Way.

The political noise machine is also reaching into the state elections in California. Every day, my mailbox fills with slickly printed handbills warning of the evils of Proposition 40, the so-called “billionaires’ tax” telling us that its passage will bring doom to the Golden State. The hyperbole inscribed on these handbills is over-the-top, obviously intended to frighten low-information voters with claims that the proposed legislation will give the Franchise Tax Board “sweeping subpoena powers to investigate taxpayers,” as if the FTB doesn’t already have that very reasonable power. Another claim is that it will give the state legislature power to “redefine assets” in contravention of Proposition 13, as if that could ever stand up in court.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton’s campaign is equally ridiculous. He is a consistent presence on the internet and right-wing broadcast media, caterwauling what a disaster California has become in the past two decades, never mind a bevy of economic indicators proving otherwise. He is making every effort to claim the affordibility crisis as his own issue by pointing to the state’s high taxes as its primary cause, doubling down on the state’s 54-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax as his chief example. Yes, California does have a higher-than-average tax rate and is a very expensive state to live in. But let’s be honest. The 25 percent spike in the price of gas that we have seen since February is primarily connected to the supply constraints caused by Trump’s discretionary war in the Persian Gulf. And that leads to the real problem with Hilton’s campaign: he highlights obvious grievances without articulating what he expects to do about them.

Anna Rotty, from “Poll Work,” 2022, photograph. Courtesy of the artist.

The State legislature is as overwhelmingly Democratic as the state’s electorate, which is 41% Latinx-Hispanic. This means that, in the unlikely event Hilton should be elected, he will have no real power to realize any portion of his agenda. Indeed, the natural advantages all accrue to Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who holds a polling advantage that has slowly dipped just below 20% during the past several weeks. Given that Hilton will continue to run on a tax cut platform, Becerra needs to make sure that the voters know about the likely consequences of those would-be tax cuts, and how unlikely that the state legislature would implement them in any case. Sadly, the Becerra campaign has been alarmingly silent on those points, suggesting complacency. It would be a mistake not to vigorously push back on Hilton’s campaign rhetoric simply because of the comfort provided by California’s liberal voter base.

Mark Van Proyen has written commentaries emphasize the tragic consequences of blind faith placed in economies of narcissistic reward. In 2020, he retired from the faculty of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught Painting and Art History. From 2003 to 2018, he was a corresponding editor for Art in America. In 2025 he relaunched SquareCylinder with co-publishers Bill Lasarow and DeWitt Cheng.