Name: Midterms will be a narrow win for Democrats, says Capital Alpha
Uploaded: 2026-01-17T13:46:03.835Z
Duration: 4 min 27 s
Description: James Lucier, co-founder of Capital Alpha Partners, discussed the outlook for the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, predicting a narrow but decisive win for Democrats.

James Lucier, co-founder of Capital Alpha Partners, discussed the outlook for the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, predicting a narrow but decisive win for Democrats.

Washington

James Lucier, co-founder of Capital Alpha Partners, discussed the outlook for the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, predicting a narrow but decisive win for Democrats. He attributed this to the limited number of flippable districts and the effects of gerrymandering, despite both parties' efforts to appeal to voters on economic issues.

Lucier also commented on President Trump's strategy of pursuing multiple policy initiatives simultaneously, describing it as a form of political momentum but warning that a more focused approach on key domestic issues may be necessary for Republicans to improve their midterm prospects. He indicated that the window for significant policy action before the elections likely closes by early summer.

Midterms will be a narrow win for Democrats, says Capital Alpha

To make sense of it all, let's bring in James Lucier, he's the co-founder of Capital Alpha Partners. I suppose we can make sense of it, James. The question is, how much of it should we expect will come to pass? Well, Kelly, the technical term is ice cream headache. There's just too much fun, too many things coming out to really make sense of. And I think that's one of the market's problems in assessing what's going to happen with the Fed chair, what's going to happen with tariffs, what's going to happen in the international situation. Trump has got so many plans he's announcing, and yet, as is the case with the data centers, there's no real sense of how the plan will work. That said, there's a lot of people on the street, I don't know what we'd call this, we need a pithy acronym, I won't mention taco, but they would say, you want to follow Trump in these trades. No one's fighting this, right? They're saying, if you can figure out what he might announce, or if his goal is to lower housing prices, be in that trade. If his goal is to lower prescription drug prices, be careful in that trade. In other words, figure out what the president wants, and then, in a way, jump in on the assumption that in one way or another, he's going to get it, or he's at least going to affect the trade for now. Well, he has the advantage of initiative on his side. He's always on the offensive. He's always attacking, and that means that for the initial period, at least, he's got the momentum. People are trying to accommodate him. It's just like one of the great generals of the past, whether it was Napoleon, or Admiral Wellington, the Duke of Wellington, always stay on the offensive. He's on the offensive somewhere else before he changes, before he finishes the other topic. Right, which I suppose you have to do when you're trying to do multiple things at once. So Elizabeth Warren gave a speech earlier this week to Democrats about how they should try to win the midterms, and her message was, it's all about affordability. Keep it on the economy. Keep it on the pocketbook. After the president heard that is when he called her and said he would partner with her to try to lower swipe fees. So they are both vying. It seems that sort of the political class in Washington, Republicans, Democrats, they all realize this is what really matters to the public. I don't know, though, what that implies when you have a Republican administration and a progressive Democrat who now seem to be aligned. Well, they're both taking the populist line. Trump is going after credit card companies for swipe fees. He's going after big tech companies for power costs. He's going after health care insurance companies for excessive costs of health care. He's going after drug manufacturers. He's consistently trying to be the most populist guy in the room, and sometimes that means having to compete with Elizabeth Warren for that title. Do you think it will work? And he says himself, if you guys don't win the midterms, I'm going to be impeached. So his approval rating is, I think by historical standards, maybe a couple of points shy of where he'd want it to be for a little bit more momentum right now. And what's your expectation about how the midterms go? Well, right now we would expect them to be a narrow win for Democrats, not narrow because they don't have big support, but narrow because of districts and gerrymandering. There just aren't that many flippable seats for Democrats to win, but it would still be a decisive win. And this is a big change from where we were six months ago, where the Republicans were surprisingly competitive in their midterm outlook, given the normal disadvantages that come with being the president's party and in the majority. And if that's the case, then what is the clock for him to get policy done in the months that remain between now and, I guess, January of next year? Well, most of the studies suggest it's late spring, early summer. So, you know, May, June, July is really when he needs to turn things around. The good news is that he does have time to turn things around. He's got the State of the Union. There is time to do a health care package and maybe time to do other things. So he's got the time, but he really needs to have a plan and a focus. Right now, the president acts as if chaos is his superpower. It seems that the more things he tries to do at once, in a way, the more he gets done because it's difficult to anticipate his next move and it's more difficult to resist him in any one place. But he really needs to pick a couple of winning strategies and focus on them and try to get some domestic policy done despite his global distractions or he's going to have a very tough midterm.

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