It is a failsafe and oft-repeated line, one we’ve all heard uttered each election cycle as a friend (or a TV talker) proclaims his undergraduate knowledge of political patterns: “The president’s party loses seats in the midterm elections.”

It’s about as profound as the trailblazing financial advice “buy low, sell high,” or hearing your overweight, armchair-quarterback pal explaining “if the offense puts more points on the board, the Jets can win.”

Thanks, coach!

Unfortunately for both the GOP and Gang Green, these clichés almost always hold true.

But while the Jets might struggle to score this Sunday, the Republican Party under President Donald Trump is charging downfield, routinely stretching past its first-down markers.

And fresh data this month — funding totals, handicappers’ forecasts and more — make the GOP seem better positioned for the 2026 midterms than any party in the White House since George W. Bush in 2002.

Apparently Democrats across the country already see the writing on the wall: They’re more eager to perform the political equivalent of taking their ball and going home than to actually play the game.

Texas Republicans’ redistricting efforts got all the blame from legacy media, but it wasn’t the Lone Star State that set the example in the national tit-for-tat gerrymandering fight, nor even California’s Gavin Newsom or Illinois’ JD Pritzker, but New York’s own Gov. Kathy Hochul.

In 2022, Hochul’s own party’s appointees on the Court of Appeals squashed her efforts at reimagining New York’s district maps as an unconstitutional splatter of Picasso-shaped contours.

Their push to rearrange the deck chairs should come as no surprise.

Democrats are rudderless, routinely falling into the trap of standing up to Trump by defending fan favorites like carjackers in Washington, DC, antisemitic protesters at Columbia and a howling illegal immigrant accused of human trafficking.

Now they’re paying the price, embattled on two fronts: voter registration and political donations.

Both indicate the 2026 midterms won’t be like 2018’s, when Nancy Pelosi flipped 41 seats to take back the House.

Last week we learned that Joe Biden’s presidency saw the largest-ever mass Democratic exodus: 2.1 million voters fled its ranks over four years as Biden’s missteps on inflation and immigration were matched only by his stumblings on staircases.

At the same time, the GOP gained 2.4 million votes.

But the greater cause of fear in Democratic hearts is becoming more evident with every campaign-finance filing: The GOP’s outside fundraising arms are moving and shaking, while the Dems’ are struggling to find a spark.

The Senate Leadership Fund and its affiliate One Nation recently released its first set of filings under the stewardship of Majority Leader John Thune.

Together, the two raised a whopping $85 million — double their previous record for the first half of an off-election year.

And while the Senate Leadership Fund is already spending heavily in five battleground states, its $29 million cash on hand is three times more than it reported at the same point in 2023, and five times what it had in 2021.

On the House side, it’s a similar story. The Congressional Leadership Fund and its affiliated American Action Network have raised a combined $60 million during the first half of 2025 — a record high, and nearly double the $35 million they brought in during the first half of 2023.

And the House Republican-aligned groups have far outpaced their cross-aisle rivals: The House Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC and the nonprofit House Majority Forward have managed to scrounge up just $40 million this year.

Party accounts show a widening divide as well.

The Democratic National Committee raised a paltry $8.5 million in July and is sitting on just $14 million in the bank — after shelling out more than $20 million to settle up bills racked up by Kamala Harris in her disastrous $1.5 billion presidential campaign.

Can’t blame DNC donors for feeling gun-shy.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee raised $13 million last month and holds $84 million on hand.

The fundraising figures indicate across-the-board GOP momentum that polling numbers and prediction models are starting to reflect.

The Cook Report, a respected political handicapper, now places 10 vulnerable Dem seats in their toss-up column, to just 8 on the GOP side; nonpartisan election-map website 270 To Win shades a two-seat advantage to Republicans.

All this, of course, must be seen in the context of Trump, the unstoppable force driving the entire spectrum of political opinion over the last 10 years. 

Much to Democrats’ chagrin, Trump’s job-approval numbers are about 8 percentage points higher today than they were in August 2017.

In his time on the national stage, Trump has broken conventional political wisdom to bits.

Shattering the notion that his party faces certain midterm doom may just be the next move in his playbook.

Joe Borelli is a managing director at Chartwell Strategy Group and former minority leader of the New York City Council.