Profs & Pints Charlottesville: What the Midterms Mean
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Profs and Pints Charlottesville presents: “What the Midterms Mean,” an examination of the upcoming Congressional elections in historical context, with Robert Strong, emeritus professor of politics at Washington and Lee University, nonresident faculty senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, and author of several books on the presidency and foreign policy.
[All tickets must be purchased online with sales tax and processing fees added at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/charlottesville-midterms .]
In a democracy, elections always matter. Will the 2026 midterm elections matter more than most? And what can—or can’t—history tell us about their likely outcome and long-term impact?
Hear such questions tackled by Robert Strong, a scholar of politics and the presidency who has worked with presidential oral history projects at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center since Jimmy Carter’s term.
In weighing the prospects for Democrats and Republicans in the coming contest, we’ll look at what we can learn from midterms over the past 80 years and whether this might be an election cycle when established patterns get broken.
We’ll consider how the elections might be influenced by the fact that we live in a period of deep political divisions, intense partisanship, and electoral volatility amidst dramatic changes in technology, economics and information distribution. Dr. Strong will examine a very similar period with similar rough-and-tumble politics, during the late nineteenth century, and consider the possibility that our current time might end in a similar political realignment that leaves one party with a firm grip on power for decades to come.
No matter what your party affiliation, this talk will give you a more sophisticated understanding of the political forces at work and a better sense of what to expect. (Advance tickets: $13.50. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open for talk attendees at 4:30 pm and the talk starts at 6 pm.)
Image: The U.S. Capitol before a storm. (Photo by Mish Sukharev / Creative Commons.)