TOI Correspondent From Washington: Americans are streaming into polling stations across the country on Tuesday in one of the most consequential midterm elections in modern U.S history, with Donald Trump facing the prospect of losing control of Congress and spending the final two years of a lame duck presidency negotiating with an opposition that has plenty of scores to settle. The MAGA boss used his closing campaign appearance rhapsodizing about the renovation of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool, a fittingly ironic finale to a campaign built around his promise to drain the swamp. By Tuesday night (Wednesday morning IST), if polls are correct — and they often aren’t — he may discover that his own political fortunes are sinking.Trump’s closing appearance was billed as a final midterm appeal to voters agitated by war and cost of living issues, but the 53-minute event often resembled a municipal contractor’s presentation to a homeowners’ association. Rather than delivering a reassuring economic and political argument, he walked his audience through the pool’s renovation, complete with photographs, elaborate explanations of the plumbing issues, and some outright falsehoods, leaving political pundits slack-jawed at the tone-deaf approach to the elections where Republicans are on the backfoot.It was a bizarre climax to a campaign in which the MAGA supremo barnstormed roughly 20 states, addressing more than 30 rallies at which, in his own words, he “ranted and raved” in marathon two-hour speeches while treating congressional elections as a personal referendum despite asserting he is not on the ballot.Latest surveys suggests voters may be preparing to hand the President and his party a pasting, with one model by pollster Nate Silver giving Democrats roughly a 95 per cent chance of capturing the House and an 80 per cent chance of taking the Senate. Prediction market Kalshi has put Democrats winning the House at about 93 percent odds and taking the Senate at 71 percent.Headlines in major U.S newspapers include: “A terrible night awaits the GOP, and even that might be an understatement,” “Democrats can’t believe their luck. No, really, they can’t” and “Five tell-tale signs of a Democratic blowout.”However polls measure intentions, not votes. Republicans are counting on Trump’s ability to mobilise his loyalists in the final hours, while Democrats are hoping that the discontent reflected in surveys translates into actual ballots. If, however, Republicans do lose both chambers as is being widely projected, Trump will enter the final two years of his presidency in territory familiar to three recent predecessors, though none approached the prospect with quite his combination of combativeness and appetite for confrontation.Barack Obama experienced the most recent equivalent after the 2014 midterms, when Republicans took the Senate and strengthened their House majority, leaving a Democratic President facing a Congress controlled entirely by the opposition. The result was legislative gridlock, with the most consequential episode coming in 2016, when Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court following Antonin Scalia’s death. Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, refused even to schedule confirmation hearings, arguing that the vacancy should be filled by the next president. Garland’s nomination expired without a vote.It was an extraordinary exercise of Senate power, with consequences that extended far beyond Obama’s remaining months. Trump subsequently nominated Neil Gorsuch for the vacancy, and it ultimately helped reshape the Supreme Court for a generation.Similarly, George W. Bush ran into a Democrat-controlled House and Senate after the 2006 midterms, in the final two years of his presidency. The political backdrop was the deeply unpopular Iraq war, declining confidence in his administration and growing public dissatisfaction. Democrats used their congressional majorities to intensify oversight, challenge the administration’s Iraq policy and push domestic legislation. Bush nevertheless negotiated on some issues, including the minimum wage and other measures, while foreign policy issues like the U.S-India nuclear deal found bipartisan support, demonstrating that divided government need not mean complete paralysis.Bill Clinton had perhaps the longest and most instructive experience of being hamstrung by a congressional opposition. After the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” he faced the formidable speakership of Newt Gingrich in a relationship that was hardly cordial. It produced two government shutdowns in 1995-96, a succession of bruising legislative confrontations and, eventually, Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. His political survival and high approval rating towards the end of his term demonstrated that an opposition-controlled Congress can sometimes become an opportunity for a president to reposition himself as a pragmatic centrist.No one is holding their breath about Trump adopting this course although he likes to present himself as a master deal-maker and negotiator. Past records and current form points to a man who prefers winning to finding compromises, and his instinct is to attack opponents, question their legitimacy, and turn political disagreements into personal vendettas. A Democratic Congress could therefore mean investigations, subpoenas, aggressive oversight of the administration and a near-constant battle over budgets, appointments and executive authority.