With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, a columnist for the conservative outlet American Thinker is making an urgent case to Republican and conservative voters: stay home in November, and everything President Trump has accomplished could be erased.
In a piece published September 15, 2026, under the headline “This time, all must vote in the midterms,” writer M.B. Mathews argues that the traditional pattern of the president’s party losing seats in a midterm does not have to repeat itself. The reason, in the author’s framing, is that Trump is “not even close to what presidents have been in the past,” and precedent can be broken if turnout is high enough.
The column’s central claim is that even though Trump is not on the ballot in a midterm year, he effectively is. “Every voter counts in this midterm,” Mathews writes, asserting that Trump’s supporters must turn out in numbers that would produce what the author calls a blowout “like never before.” The imagined headline, the author suggests, would read: “Trump voters defy precedent and keep the House and Senate in midterms.”
Quelling the ‘why bother’ impulse
Mathews addresses the familiar argument that voting is pointless because the parties are “all alike,” dismissing it outright. The author writes that “our side doesn’t aspire to Sharia Law and murdering our opponents” and that Republicans do not want China, Russia, and Iran running the U.S. economy — a stark contrast the columnist uses to argue that abstention is not an option this cycle.
The piece blends a call to prayer with a call to action, noting that while prayer matters, “God never said to pray and then do nothing.” Mathews urges readers who have skipped midterms in the past to treat this one differently: register if not already registered, and vote.
Warnings about election integrity
A significant portion of the column is devoted to concerns about election administration. Mathews writes that conservatives are now “on to” a list of alleged tactics — mail-in ballot fraud, voter intimidation, “vouching,” ballot harvesting, drop-box cheating, after-hours “suitcases full of phony ballots,” and staged polling-place “glitches.”
But the author insists that awareness alone accomplishes nothing. The proposed remedy is two-fold: first, that every Republican and conservative vote for Republicans; second, that polling places be monitored. The column argues that a margin so large the count becomes “unassailable” is the strongest defense against any irregularities, pointing to 2024 as a model.
The stakes as described by the author
Mathews frames the consequences of a Democratic takeover in sweeping terms. If Democrats win full control of Congress and additional state governments, the author predicts Trump would “certainly be impeached again,” would be unable to get any nominees confirmed, and would see “almost every good thing he has done” reversed.
The column’s predictions of a Democratic-controlled Washington include a reopened border, higher taxes, sharply rising gas and food prices, the rehiring of hundreds of thousands of federal employees the author says were fired, pardons for criminals in newly blue states, and taxes on tips. Whether these outcomes would materialize is the author’s assertion, not a reported finding.
Mathews also pushes back against what the column describes as commentators and writers “pooh-poohing the risks of an ascendant socialist or communist America,” telling them to stop.
“Every American MUST VOTE as though it’s 2024,” the column states. “You cannot entertain not voting.”
It closes by returning to a First Amendment theme the publication frequently emphasizes, saying that the ability to speak freely matters “now more than ever.” The piece ends with a solicitation for donations to support American Thinker’s staff and its “ideas and voices.”
What the argument amounts to
Stripped of its rhetorical flourish, the essay is an argument about turnout math and base motivation. Midterm electorates have historically skewed away from the party holding the White House, and the author’s wager is that Trump’s coalition can be persuaded to treat an off-year election with presidential-year intensity. The column offers no polling or data to support the claim that such a surge is likely — it rests on an appeal to fear of the alternative and a belief that this electoral environment is different from the ones that produced past midterm losses.
Whether Republican voters heed that call is the open question the column cannot answer. What it does make clear is that at least one corner of the conservative commentariat is treating 2026 not as a routine off-year election but as a referendum on the Trump agenda — and is telling readers that the cost of sitting it out could be control of both chambers of Congress and a second impeachment fight.
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/this-time-all-must-vote-in-the-midterms/