Saturdays with the Stars: Sean Connery

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Errol Flynn, perhaps the quintessential Golden Age action star, something that really didn't exist in the 1940's & 1950's in the way we think of it now.  This month, we'll head into New Hollywood, and talk about the man who really invented the concept of the modern action movie star, so much so that he would not just dominate the 1960's, but would still be making action films regularly into the 1990's, when his decades of cool would still have him being name-checked as one of the "Sexiest Men Alive" well past the age that men typically got such accolades.  This month's star is Sean Connery.

Born in Edinburgh to a truck-driver and a cleaning woman in 1930, Thomas Sean Connery was hardly what you'd think of as a man who would someday become a household name at the cinema.  He had a stereotypically blue-collar, hyper-masculine childhood (he would claim that he lost his virginity to an older woman when he was 14), would join up in the navy at the age of 16, and briefly had a run as a Mr. Universe contestant in the early 1950's (sources vary on the exact date).  In his early twenties, fresh out of the Navy, Connery joined an acting troupe as a way to make money, spending much of his early years alternating between theatrical runs (including appearing with Michael Caine in a production of South Pacific) and a smattering of extra work, including Lilacs of the Spring with last month's star Errol Flynn.

Connery's early work as a leading man including turns opposite Lana Turner (during production he famously drew the ire of the mob by punching out Turner's abusive boyfriend Johnny Stomponato) and even playing the lead in a Disney film (Darby O'Gill and the Little People).  But it was in 1962 that Sean Connery became a legend.  That was the year that Dr. No came out, and James Bond was born as the textbook, greatest cinematic action hero.  In March, we're going to tackle one of the remaining Bond films that I have never seen of Connery's (he made 7 in total), as well as talk about Connery's struggles with getting out of the shadow of Bond (a legacy he would long struggle with), playing more serious roles in the 1970's and 1980's, and getting to see not just one of the only Oscar-winning performances I've never seen, but also talk about how Connery paved the way for future generations of action stars to stay relevant far after their explosive heydays.

The Sun Also Rises (1957)

Film: The Sun Also Rises (1957)

Stars: Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer, Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Juliette Greco

Director: Henry King

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn, one of the most consistently strong performers at the box office for Warner Brothers for nearly 18 years, ended his career with the studio in 1953.  At that point Flynn was in his mid-40's, and while his handsomeness was still there, years of drinking & health problems made it unlikely that he could achieve some of the stunt acrobatics that were a huge calling card in his early fame.  After going broke trying to self-finance The Story of William Tell (a film that never was actually released), he started to make bad decisions with his career, making B-movies, choosing poor projects like Istanbul & The Big Boodle, and only really had one important film left in him, where he would have to endure the indignity of being fourth-billed, here against a guy who for much of the 1930's & early 40's, one could argue Flynn was a more important action star than, Tyrone Power.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Sun Also Rises is a glossy Fox film that tackles Ernest Hemingway's famed novel.  This is where I'm going to confess something that doesn't often come up on this blog: I don't particularly care for Ernest Hemingway's writing, and in some ways that translates to the screen.  A lot of the novel's strength comes from discussions about Jake's (Power) impotence, both as a man who has moved on from a war (and a nation that has stolen his virility without much thanks), and that comes across in the movie...to a degree.  The Hays Code was getting hit a little bit at the time (if you look at posters for this film, they say very clearly "Not Suitable for Children" and that's because they use the actual word "impotence" in the film), but that lack of sexual stamina is lost in the movie because they can't really discuss it as the Code still drove a lot of scripting decisions.  It doesn't help that Power is at least ten years too old for this part (it's hard not to wonder how different this might've been in the hands of an actor like Marlon Brando, who was closer to the age Jake is in the novel), and that they aren't really able to point out how Ava Gardner's Lady Brett absolutely loves sex, and while she takes on some "lovers" in the film they aren't really hinted at in an oblique way.  It all feels dry and neutered (pun truly unintended...only caught the double entendre while editing this article).

Flynn's character is essentially a cad, one who can satisfy Brett (which Jake can't, even though they're in love with each other), but isn't honorable and is a giant walking fuck boy.  This isn't a new part for Flynn, but I will say that, even robbed of much of his charisma (and a decent script), Flynn is the best part of this movie because there's an unrest in his performance that I found really melancholy.  He plays his Mike as a man who knows he's a failure and likely to die unsatisfied...but also can't stop himself.  Flynn would die of a heart attack, exacerbated by cirrhosis & fatty degeneration of the liver, just over two years later at the age of only 50.

That is not where Flynn's story ends though, and in many ways it was only beginning.  In terms of Classical Hollywood stars, only Marilyn Monroe can rival Flynn for things we found out about him after his death.  For starters, there are allegations that Flynn had a sexual affair late in his life with 15-year-old actress Beverly Aadland, whom he would make his last movie Cuban Rebel Girls with (during which time Flynn spent much of production becoming pals with Fidel Castro).  There have also been a lot of debates about his politics, with some accusing Flynn of being a fascist, specifically the highly-publicized biography by Charles Higham which also alleged that Flynn was bisexual and was a Nazi spy.  There is no evidence of him being bisexual or a spy (he was investigated by the FBI, and they didn't find evidence of this), but it is a case where he was friends with Herrmann Erben, who was a Nazi intelligence officer during World War II, and whom Flynn was friends with until at least 1940 (after meeting on an expedition to Spain in the 1930's), and possibly throughout World War II.

This was not the only friendship that Flynn had that caused headlines after his death.  A correspondence with Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was uncovered in Penthouse magazine in 1982 by Hubbard's son Ronald, and the two would engage in sexual & drug-induced debauchery together.  It's worth noting we haven't heard from Flynn's son Sean, a photojournalist, about him because he would disappear in 1970, likely being killed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (we talk about this more in one of our Unsolved Hollywood mysteries articles here).  All-in-all, Flynn's life is remarkably complicated by the many things he was never asked about as they came to light after his death, making his star persona one of the most challenging to tackle beyond the big screen.

Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Lying in Honor

Rev. Jesse Jackson (D-IL)

This past week, Rev. Jesse Jackson passed away.  Jackson only held elected office once, winning a term as the shadow senator from Washington DC from 1991-97 (essentially an honorary lobbying position, given that, unlike the Delegate position currently-held by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the senator position does not serve on committees, cannot introduce legislation, and cannot speak on the floor of the US Congress, making it arguably the most powerless position in the federal government), still had a remarkable hold on national politics.  He was one of the key figures in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s civil rights organization (with his death, only former Rep. Andrew Young is a major player left of King's movement), and was by many definitions the heir apparent to his movement, serving as a significant civil rights leader for the decades that followed, particularly through his Operation PUSH and Rainbow Coalitions.  While Shirley Chisholm was the first Black person to run a serious campaign for president in 1972, Jackson was the first to win multiple states, first in 1984 and then again in 1988, where he placed second to Michael Dukakis.  Jackson, by many measures, was one of the most important figures in American politics in the 1980's, and arguably the most important living figure in the African-American Civil Rights movement before his death.

As a result, it was always likely that major politicians would move to pay tribute to Jackson's life.  I would not be surprised if Democratic Party luminaries like the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, and Kamala Harris were to attend some of the services in the coming days regarding his life.  They will not, however, be seeing him lying in honor in the US Capitol, despite a request from Jackson's family to do so.  This has levied a lot of criticisms from Jackson's supporters at House Speaker Mike Johnson, including calling him racist for ignoring Jackson's family's request, and I thought it would be interesting to look at this (as it's the sort of historical political minutia that I specialize in on this blog), and whether or not Jackson's family or Johnson has history on their side even as both sides inevitably play a bit of politics in this moment of grief.

First off, it's worth noting that the request from Jackson's family is that he lie in honor, which is not usually the term Americans hear when they hear about this at a state funeral-the most common term is "lying in state."  There is a difference, though, and it points a flashlight into Johnson's potential thinking on the matter.

Lying in state is something that is done exclusively for members of the federal government, as well as high-ranking military officials.  Traditionally this is something that is basically guaranteed for former presidents (Abraham Lincoln being the first), but can also be for members of Congress (Henry Clay was the first, but others that have done so include John McCain, Daniel Inouye, & Harry Reid), Supreme Court justices (Ruth Bader Ginsburg did this, though not in the Capitol rotunda), and even key members of the armed services (Generals Pershing & MacArthur both received this honor).  Though the rooms may change (Elijah Cummings & Don Young were National Statutory Hall, Robert Byrd & Frank Lautenberg in the Senate chambers), the distinction is clear-these are members of Congress, presidents, Supreme Court justices, and military officials.  Jackson, for all his accomplishments, was none of these things.

Which would mean that in order for Jackson to be in the Capitol rotunda, he'd need to lie in "honor," which is a distinction held for individuals who do not qualify under those definitions.  This is a very small list of individuals.  Essentially it is just Capitol police officers killed in the line of duty (specifically three separate events near the capitol in 1998 & 2021), the last living Medal of Honor recipients from World War II and the Korean War, and two distinguished individuals: Rosa Parks and Billy Graham.  Jackson, if you were to include him, would be the third civilian on this list who did not die in the course of duty.

Here's where things get tricky, because I don't know that I'd include Jackson on the same list as Parks and Graham.  It's not that Parks or Graham weren't political-Parks was heavily involved in the initial congressional campaign for John Conyers, and worked for him for years, and Billy Graham maintained a personal relationship with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (and actively campaigned against John F. Kennedy in 1960, and for Mitt Romney in 2012).  But neither of them ran for public office (like Jackson did), and Jackson's more scandalous personal life (most notably his affair with a staffer that resulted in an out-of-wedlock child despite Jackson being married to another woman) feels quite contrary to the squeaky clean public personas that Parks & Graham maintained.

As a result, I'm going to be honest-I kind of get where Johnson is coming from here.  Johnson is not without fault of course.  I take more umbrage at his refusal to allow Dick Cheney the opportunity to lie in state, which (given Cheney's history as a Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and member of the US House) probably should've been considered more fully, and feels more so about not wanting to anger President Trump given Cheney refused to endorse him in the 2024 presidential race.  But Jackson probably doesn't earn this honor, and while it might be something a Speaker Jeffries would've done, I don't disagree with Johnson on this.  I think it would make more sense for Jackson's funeral to be attended by political luminaries, or for him to have tributes placed in terms of speeches or a moment of silence on the floor of the House, than to receive lying in honor distinctions.

One thing before we close because a lot of people are making the comparison incorrectly-Charlie Kirk never lied in state in the Capitol Rotunda.  There was a movement at the time by members of Congress (like Nancy Mace) to have him receive that honor, but it didn't happen and Johnson (who would've had the power to do so) did not make it happen.  Kirk did have a funeral service in Arizona that was attended by major figures in the government (including President Trump and Vice President Vance) and was given a moment of silence on the floor of the House, but he was not afforded this honor, and given how often I've seen that stated as fact, I just wanted to point out that it out.

OVP: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Film: Objective, Burma! (1943)

Stars: Errol Flynn, James Brown, William Prince, George Tobias

Director: Raoul Walsh

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Film Editing, Score, Motion Picture Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

To talk about Errol Flynn, you cannot ignore the almost cartoonish difference between the flawed-but-noble heroes that he perfected on the big screen, and the debaucherous nature of his real-life persona, which was brought to the foreground in 1942 when Flynn was accused of statutory rape by two teenage girls.  To note, Flynn at the time was still a huge movie star, having just finished releasing Desperate Journey with Ronald Reagan to enormous box office days before the accusations-Warner Brothers was not in a position to just cut him given the box office receipts.  But the scandal was huge, as the shocking details of what happened were spread in papers across the country.  Attorney Jerry Giesler, at one point the most famous lawyer in Hollywood, was able to get Flynn acquitted, mostly by destroying the reputations of the women who accused Flynn of rape.  But something happened in the wake of this scandal that would not be the case for a number of other figures (like those of Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, & later Ingrid Bergman): Flynn emerged with a different reputation, but one that largely still had box office draw even in the immediate wake of the scandal, and was still allowed to work regularly in Hollywood

(Spoilers Ahead) That can be seen in the movie Objective, Burma!, which was released just over two years after the trial, and was by pretty much all accounts a hit, and it wasn't Flynn's only one of this period.  Gentleman Jim was released during the height of the coverage to success, and both of the (now largely forgotten) movies that Flynn released in 1943 were also hits.  In fact, Flynn would be successful for much of the mid-1940's...but he'd do so in very different pictures.  Objective, Burma! is a good example of that.  The film is a fictionalized telling of the Burma Campaign during World War II, with Flynn playing an army captain whose platoon is trudging through the jungle, in near constant danger from the Japanese.  The film is one of several movies that were released during the Golden Age of Hollywood that favored realism over a more fictionalized, personalized storytelling method, in many ways resembling more a documentary film (which was a familiar format to audiences during WWII due to newsreels), than a more traditional storytelling technique.

As a result, the film is technically really impressive.  The special effects, especially during some of the early attack scenes when we see an entire army camp decimated by timed explosions, are wonderful, and the sound work & cinematography are strong.  But the movie itself is a bore.  With the exception of George Tobias (the future Mr. Kravitz on Bewitched), none of the numerous side characters stand out, and frequently you're left watching their deaths be mourned onscreen with an internal monologue of "which guy was this again?" all of which makes the film's three Oscar nominations (for editing, writing, and music) feel a bit like a head-scratcher: why are we awarding these when the special effects or sound work are the actual calling card here?

Flynn, as well, feels muted to the point of being boring, something that never crossed my mind during his Captain Blood and Robin Hood era.  Whether intentionally or not, much of the work that Flynn stars in that I've seen after his trial feels a bit too noble, as if the studio was scared to put him into films where he could be seen as a rake or a cad...because it suddenly felt too close to home.  This would cause his career in the late 1940's to suffer, as audiences who had been more than willing to give in to a controversial celebrity in the wake of his trials because they still loved him so much, weren't willing to give in to the studio wanting to clean up his image onscreen to protect them from the public confusing real life and fiction too much.  It wasn't until the studios finally let him play another sex-pursuing hero in The Adventures of Don Juan in 1948, that audiences truly returned home, and allowed him to be a dependable box office draw into the early 1950's.

This is all to say that Flynn's reputation, and much of his modern association (if you ask lay moviegoers what they know about him today, it will be the statutory rape allegations) did not have the impact on his career that later major movie stars like Mel Gibson or Johnny Depp would receive when they had scandals threaten their careers.  Gibson & Depp would see their careers largely evaporate, but despite some setbacks in the years after the war, Flynn largely got away fine from this scandal-it is only history that really hurt him, but if you look at what his career was like, he paid a surprisingly small price for one of the biggest scandals of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Robert Duvall (1931-2026)

Robert Duvall is one of those actors whose career was longer than you think at first blush.  Watching The Twilight Zone marathon this past New Year's Eve, as I do every year, I was struck by this as I got to the episode "Miniature."  The episode is not famous in the way "To Serve Man" or "Eye of the Beholder" are, and likely only known to the most devoted of Twilight Zone aficionados because for parts of its syndication it wasn't even available (if you ever want to get into a strange Wikipedia wormhole, look up the history of The Twilight Zone in syndication), but it is notable because it starred future Oscar winner Robert Duvall, who passed away yesterday.

I bring this up because it's oftentimes forgotten just how long Robert Duvall's career has been.  Duvall, like many actors of his generation, got his start in stage (and before that, the military), but his screen work begins earlier.  Watch old reruns of not just The Twilight Zone, but Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, or even The Mod Squad, and Duvall will pop up in an episode or two.  That was the thing about Duvall-he's the kind of actor who switched seamlessly from lead roles, including Oscar-nominated turns in stuff like Tender Mercies, The Great Santini, & The Apostle, to being in supporting parts where he added depth like Apocalypse Now, A Civil Action, & Network.  And given he made his screen debut as the memorable Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, his costars numbered Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, & Burt Lancaster...but also Colin Farrell, Reese Witherspoon, Christian Bale, & Adam Sandler.  He served, like many actors of his New Hollywood ilk (he was once roommates with Gene Hackman & James Caan, who preceded him in death), as a bridge between Classical Hollywood and a generation of movie stars dwarfed by special effects, his sturdy, lasting presence a continual reminder that generational talent will always find a way of pushing itself forward.

For me, and for many, though, he will perpetually be Tom Hagen.  It seems glib to reduce a filmography as diverse as Duvall's down to one role, but if you do...it's gotta be the sturdy, steady-handed Tom at the center of the storm of The Godfather series.  Watch it again (because it's always a good time to watch The Godfather again), and notice it from Tom's perspective.  The quiet resolve in Tom's character, a man without a family, trying to prove to his surrogate brothers that he belongs (even if he knows on some level he never truly will).  Duvall got his first Oscar nomination for this performance, and man is it deserved-it's a testament to how much he adds to the series that even Francis Ford Coppola admitted that The Godfather, Part III was a lesser movie without Duvall present.  In recent years we've lost Duvall, Caan, and Diane Keaton from the storied cast of the defining film of New Hollywood, adding yet another melancholy air to a film upon which these actors already had richly bestowed so much gravitas already.

OVP: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Film: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)

Stars: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price, Harry Stephenson, Nanette Fabray

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Errol Flynn: click here to learn more about Mr. Flynn (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Errol Flynn lasted as a movie star for decades, but as one who was pretty much unimpeachable in terms of his box office, this period lasted roughly from 1935-1942, at which point he was oftentimes the biggest star on the Warner Brothers lot, give or take Bette Davis & James Cagney.  During this time, Flynn was married to the same woman, actress Lila Damita, but he had a history of womanizing.  Like Gary Cooper before him, he had an affair with Lupe Velez, and would get drunk off of William Randolph Hearst's vodka.  This reputation as a party boy was in stark juxtaposition to the men he'd play onscreen, frequently honorable scoundrels, or in the case of today's movie, a truly honorable man stuck in an impossible situation between two women.  This would also pair Flynn with both of the actresses that he'd be most associated with in his career: Olivia de Havilland, whom he would have a largely amicable relationship with, and Bette Davis...with whom he would not.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a glossy historical melodrama, one where facts should not get in the way of a good monologue.  Private Lives is about an aging Queen Elizabeth (Davis, in de facto kabuki makeup), who is clearly desperately in love with the handsome, popular Earl of Essex (Flynn), but cannot have him in the way that she wants because it would put at risk her power.  She instead constantly finds herself at odds with him, usually in open court, and has fights with him, using her lover as a pawn in a number of battles, oftentimes risking his life as punishment for not returning her love in the way that she wants, because he's also power-hungry.  This all happens while the beautiful Lady Penelope (de Havilland) is also pursuing the Earl, which in the film's final moments we're led to believe was nothing, and that Elizabeth was his own true love.  Of course, at that point Elizabeth has publicly demanded the Earl's head for trying to be her equal, and there is no way out for the Queen, doomed to forever remain unmarried & unloved (except by England).

This is territory we've been to cinematically-Elizabeth's inability to find love because she is not beautiful and demands power instead has been informed by everyone from Helen Mirren to Glenda Jackson to Cate Blanchett to Margot Robbie (even Bette would go to this well twice).  Davis, at the peak of her power and beauty, wears intense makeup that makes her look, well, hideous (and years older than she was), in some ways foreshadowing her later triumph in Baby Jane Hudson.  But the movie, despite looking divine (the costumes, art direction, & cinematography are all a triumph, though why it got a special effects nomination at the Oscars is beyond me...the Scoring nomination is a bit cheeky given there's a song sung by Olivia de Havilland's character written by the actual Walter Raleigh, here played by Vincent Price in an early role), is kind of a snore.  Davis overacts to the rafters (with diminishing returns), de Havilland is fun but too small of a part, and Flynn's performance is a bit underwhelming.  Flynn is so grand in swashbuckling roles, but (as we'll see in the coming weeks), he was a somewhat limited actor when it came to going beyond that ken.  He is breathtakingly beautiful in this-it takes an actress as confident as Davis to appear in this kind of makeup against Flynn, who looks like a Raphael painting in some scenes, and risk being thought ugly, but I don't think he can land some of the scenes, save for the last 15 minutes, when he's betrayed by Davis & they both seem to be in a much better movie.

Offscreen, Davis and Flynn were not close in the same way that he was with de Havilland, and it's hard to pinpoint the exact nature of their relationship given that Davis would outlive him by decades, and therefore be able to go on talk shows (and discuss in memoirs) what she thought of him, and regularly change her mind.  She seemed to not like his ethics as an actor (finding he preferred celebrity more than the serious craft that Davis believed screen-acting), and also thought it beneath her to share billing with him in the film (you'll note, watching it now, that Davis, not Flynn, gets top billing, which makes sense in retrospect given her legend, but at the time would've been a genuine debate as both were equally valuable to Warner Brothers).  Davis wanted Laurence Olivier, who wasn't famous enough to get a role like this in 1939 (Wuthering Heights had not come out when production was in motion), and at one point (according to Hollywood legend) actually slaps Flynn for real in one scene, rather than faking it as would be typical on a production, which caused Flynn to become ill.  Davis, though, had kinder words about Flynn than I do in this movie, conceding that she thought him very good years after the fact while watching the movie, and telling de Havilland "he can act!"

Can Trump Beat the Six-Year Midterm Senate Curse?

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) & Donald Trump

The conventional wisdom about November's elections from most pundits seems to be that the House flipping blue is a foregone conclusion (perhaps even exacerbated by the mid-decade redistricting arms race President Trump insisted upon), but the Senate remains a very steep climb.  This feels accurate on its surface.  Of the competitive races, it does feel like Democrats are in-line to hold all of their current seats (with Michigan or Georgia the toughest hold, but even then Team Blue is in the driver's seat), and that there are true tossups in Maine & North Carolina that, with a blue wave, probably tilt to the Democrats (this past week Republicans got their best recruit of the cycle in the form of Susan Collins running for another term, but even then Collins is in for the toughest environment she's run in since 2008, a cycle she was largely ignored despite the Dems having a good recruit...something that won't be the case in 2026 even if she might arguably have a lesser opponent).

But beyond that, people seem to be operating under the assumption that the Senate contest will not be an even playing field, and that the Republicans seem likely to lose seats, but not their majority.  This is fair-other than Maine & North Carolina, there is no seat on the map that Kamala Harris won by less-than 10-points that the Democrats can target, with the next bluest state (for Harris) being Ohio which she missed by just over 11-points.  This is exacerbated by recent presidential midterms for Donald Trump & Joe Biden where their party actually had a net gain of Senate seats (in 2018 & 2022), with the assumption being that we just don't see swings like that anymore.

However, I want to introduce a new idea here that I don't see discussed a lot, and that's because we haven't really experienced since 2014: the six-year midterm itch.  The second midterm is typically when the public becomes tired of the sitting president-six years of having to endure the same face as a fickle American public results in the American electorate getting restless, and it has historically done some odd things for the president's party in the Senate.

For the sake of this article, we're going to look at the four most recent six-year midterms: 1986 (Reagan), 1998 (Clinton), 2006 (Bush), and 2014 (Obama).  In these cycles, with the sole exception of Clinton (more on that in a second), the president's party got destroyed at the ballot box.  In 1986, the Democrats picked up 8 Senate seats, in 2006 the Democrats won an additional six seats (I'm counting Joe Lieberman as a Democrat here), and in 2014 the Republicans netted 9 seats.  This is a gargantuan turn, and in all three cases, it was worse than what the president endured in the Senate for his first midterm.

This is partially because the Senate, which is a six-year cycle, was anniversarying a really good year for the presidency-the first year that he came into office (and in the case of all but Bush, they came in with landslide victories).  This isn't true for 2026, which is perhaps the biggest nuance here-in 2020, the last time most of this year's senators was up for reelection, Trump lost, and it was a much better cycle for the Democrats.  But the idea that the public is tired of the president was very evident in all but one of these cases: like Trump, Obama & Bush were under-water in their approval ratings, and Reagan had also seen a huge decrease in his popularity.  Again, only Clinton (who had the best approval ratings of the quartet) was popular, and that was reflected in a Senate cycle where 3/5 of the closest Senate races ended up going blue (and the two that didn't involved a deeply unpopular, scandal-prone Senator who nearly won despite that, and a state that was in a transformation into one of the reddest in the nation...that still nearly stayed blue despite polling showing it a likely flip).

I will note that Republicans can feel comfortable to a degree here.  In 1986, eight of the nine Senate races that flipped (all but Maryland) were states that Reagan had won by double digits, but partisanship got in the way more in 2006 and 2014.  In 2006, only one race (Montana) was one Bush had won by double digits the previous cycle, and in 2014 there were none that Obama had won by that margin.  Admittedly, Tennessee in 2006 nearly flipped (and Bush won that by double digits), and in 2014 the problem may have been that there just weren't that many states to begin with that the Republicans might have flipped in this scenario because Obama had won so few of them by double-digits (only six states that went for Obama for double digits were held by Democratic senators in 2014, in part because 2008 had been such a blood bath for the GOP, something that was not the case to the same degree for Trump in 2020).

All of this is to say that we don't know what impact that this will have.  Historically, six-year midterms are rough for the incumbent party, and I think Republicans (or pundits who favor their chances) are taking a bit too much comfort in Trump's impressive turnout in 2024.  I'll close with this-in 2018, a year where Republicans inexplicably picked up two Senate seats, all but one of those seats (Florida, its own universe electorally) were in states that Trump won by 18+ points in 2016.  Do you know what Alaska, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, & Kansas all have in common?  They're all states with Senate elections this fall...that Donald Trump won by less than 18-points.  Food for thought.