There’s little question the House of Representatives is in play, but up until now, experts weren’t as optimistic about Democratic control of the Senate. That’s changing — with the possibility of Democrats taking the Senate now a “real possibility.”

“In today’s polarized era, Democrats would need everything to break their way” to take control of the upper chamber, The New York Times reports. “So far, everything is breaking the Democrats’ way.”

A multitude of variables are lining up in Democrats’ favor for a congressional “Democratic tsunami,” the Times says.

President Donald Trump’s popularity is at his second-term all-time low. Inflation is up, some experts are warning about unemployment, and consumer sentiment just hit a historic low. Trump’s coalition, some critics say, is in danger, his war in Iran, despite his protestations, does not appear to be going well, and some voters are worried a protracted military incursion may be a possibility.

Democrats appear to have done the groundwork necessary to retake control of the Senate.

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Citing “strong candidate recruitment” as a top reason Democrats could retake the Senate, the Times reports that “Democrats are tied or ahead in four Republican-held seats, polls show.” Democrats only need to hold on to their current number of seats and flip four more to win the majority.

The Times points to several candidates who could help create a blue Senate: James Talarico in Texas, Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Mary Peltola in Alaska, and Graham Platner in Maine.

“A blue wave is not guaranteed, of course, and Democrats would not be assured to flip two reliably Republican states even if it were. But a feasible path for the party to win the Senate is coming into focus.”

The Times notes that in four GOP-controlled Senate races, Democrats are tied or ahead in the polls. In Maine and North Carolina, the likely Democratic nominees are ahead. In Ohio and Alaska, Democrats have recruited strong candidates, and there are “signs” Republicans could be in danger in both Iowa and Texas.

“Even if Mr. Trump successfully negotiates a quick end to the war in Iran, it will be hard for his standing to improve much by November,” the Times acknowledges. “His ratings have been in steady decline for about a year, and the war has only added to the weight of persistent inflation. If the conflict isn’t resolved quickly, the risks are enormous: Historically, quagmire abroad and rising prices at home are the ingredients of a failed presidency.”

Democrats have an “enormous advantage” among voters who turn out in the midterm elections. In short, if “a blue wave materializes, Democrats have a chance to ride it to Senate control.”

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President Donald Trump is now in “discussions” with his own government to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, a federal agency he exercises limited influence over, after a contractor released 15 years of his tax returns in 2019, which were published by The New York Times two months before the 2020 election.

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MAGA has made a deal with Donald Trump, and the deal is that “the humiliation is the point,” argues Republican former U.S. Congressman Adam Kinzinger. In short, he says, “humiliating the MAGA faithful only binds them more tightly to Trump.”

Kinzinger, a never-Trump Republican who acknowledged last year that his politics are now probably closer to the Democrats, says that to “understand what Trump is doing, you have to stop thinking about each outrage as a separate event and start seeing them as a sequence.”

He walks through a timeline of humiliations.

Trump asked MAGA to believe the 2020 election was stolen, so they did, “including many who knew better.”

Trump asked MAGA to excuse the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a mere tourist visit, and they did.

“He asked them to accept that his 91 criminal indictments were a political witch hunt — and they did, turning his mugshot into a fundraising image,” he writes. “Each ask was larger than the last. Each capitulation required more of them — more willingness to contradict their own eyes, their own values, their own stated beliefs.”

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Kinzinger reveals the psychology of what he believes is actually happening here.

“Every time MAGA accepts something they previously would have considered unacceptable, Trump’s hold on them gets stronger, not weaker. Because now they’ve paid a price. They’ve told their neighbors, their families, their coworkers, that they believe this. Walking it back would mean admitting they were wrong. And the movement doesn’t allow that.”

What does this mean for the future?

“Don’t expect a wholesale collapse in Trump’s support,” he predicts. “Some will leave, others have tied their conscience to his success. Those will double down, again and again.”

Kinzinger expects that MAGA is not breaking apart. “I don’t think there’s some dramatic rupture coming where the movement looks in the mirror and decides enough is enough. That’s not how this works,” he writes. Because Trump has trained his movement to accept humiliation as “proof of loyalty.”

“The more outrageous the thing he asks them to believe, the more committed they become,” he explains, “because disbelief now would mean admitting everything they’ve already accepted was wrong. It’s a trap that gets harder to escape the longer you’re in it.”

But, he says, “the humiliation ritual works until the day it doesn’t.”

“Until the day enough people decide that the price of belonging is higher than the price of leaving. We’re not there yet,” he explains. “But we’re closer than Trump wants you to think.”

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