‘I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!’ So concluded Donald Trump, nonsensically, as his party’s disastrous midterm results came crashing in.
Trump, now 80, is becoming less and less coherent. In a speech on Monday, he claimed: ‘I’ve actually kept far more promises than I made.’ On the campaign trail, he kept talking about Senator Jon Husted’s ‘powerful’ bottom. And now, as the colossal wreck of his leadership emerges, he’s taken to fantasising madly about alternative careers. ‘If people in the United States get fed up with me,’ he said this week, ‘I’ll move to Israel and become prime minister.’
Most alarmingly for Republicans, a core Trumpist demographic has begun to desert the party
The Middle East is on his mind. On Saturday, he had by most accounts a ‘tough’ telephone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who persuaded him to launch the war in Iran, which even Trump now acknowledges played a part in his party’s loss of both houses of Congress. As America went to the polls on Tuesday, Trump announced that he had decided to end US military aid to Israel by the end of the year. ‘It’s a bad talking point,’ he said, as he contemplated the rise of the fiercely anti-Israel Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who has now been elected as America’s first Muslim senator.
But the conflict in Iran is far from over. In the coming days, the President will decide whether to order another massive bombing campaign – or allow his Vice President to keep suing for a very difficult peace.
Poor J.D. Vance. Now that the midterms are over, he – or whoever else takes Trump’s place as the Republican presidential nominee in 2028 – will face an almighty mess. The victorious coalition of 2024 has shattered and can probably never be put back together. ‘America is done with Trump,’ is how one Republican operative put it. But Trump isn’t done with America. He has more than two years left in the White House. And the worry for his would-be successors is he may cause more carnage in the coming months.
On Tuesday, the Republicans lost not just in typical swing states such as Michigan and Ohio. They were routed in historically ‘deep red’ states such as Kansas, Texas and South Carolina, too. Latino, young and black voters swung back towards the Democrats in huge numbers. Even more alarmingly for Grand Old Party strategists, non-college educated whites – that core Trumpist demographic – have begun to desert the party. Citizens of all ethnicities are appalled by the war, angry about the impact that conflict has had on ‘gas’ (petrol) and food prices, and disgusted by the avariciousness of Trump’s Washington. In one exit poll, a staggering 90 per cent of voters said ‘corruption’ was a crucial or major factor in their vote. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have not yet been embroiled in any Trump stories involving cryptocurrencies or shady foreign investments. But they are tied to an administration that is failing on any number of fronts.
Team Trump’s closeness to the overlords of Big Tech also seems to be a major problem. In Texas, where data centres are a pressing concern, Elon Musk spent more than $150 million trying to make the witless Ken Paxton a senator. But Paxton lost to the Democrat James Talarico. The extent to which fears about AI played a part in these elections is a matter of debate. But the results in Texas, and Ohio, suggest that voters do not reward the party most closely aligned with Silicon Valley’s interests.
The only well-known Republican who enjoyed a good night on Tuesday was the man Trump brushed aside for the party’s nomination in 2024: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
He was not up for re-election but his state proved to be the one bright red spot, as Ashley Moody defeated the Democrat Angie Nixon with relative ease. The result was hardly surprising, given Nixon’s association with the Democratic Socialists of America. But it’s already being interpreted as a validation of DeSantis’s political strategy, which has been to keep his distance from the White House. This week, with impeccable timing, DeSantis appeared on the ‘Straight Shooter’ podcast and shot straight. ‘We’ve just got to be honest,’ he said. ‘Gas is higher. It hurts people, working-class people, and it’s higher because of the [Iran] conflict. That’s just a fact. If you can’t admit that to voters, then you’re gaslighting them.’
The governor also cleverly distinguished himself from members of the Trump cabinet who have sought to ape the President’s style: ‘People think acting like Trump is somehow going to work. Only Trump can pull that off.’ The odds of DeSantis being named as the next Republican presidential nominee improved dramatically in the early hours of Wednesday.
In 2024, some powerful Republican donors put their faith in DeSantis. He was seen as someone who could lead Maga to the non-orange uplands of a less vulgar politics. As things turned out, America didn’t want that. Now, however, after two exhausting years of Trump 2.0, many analysts are beginning to think again that the public are crying out for decency and moderation. On the Democratic side, the pundit class point not towards Abdul El-Sayed or his similarly radical ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but to the handsome and mild-mannered Senator Jon Ossoff from Georgia.
But it would be rash to write off Maga after one bad set of election results – and naive to think that politics-as-used-to-be-normal must resume because the sun is setting on the Trump era. We’ve just gone through a midterm cycle in which the Democratic Socialists of America emerged as a serious force in US politics. In Maine, the left-populist Graham Platner was forced to quit his campaign following a rape allegation from an ex-girlfriend (which he denies). In South Carolina, after the death of Senator Lindsey Graham, who has of late been accused of being a serial user of rentboys, Trump backed his sister, Darline Graham. She was clueless and duly lost. And in Ohio, the now Governor-elect Amy Acton’s mother starred in an attack ad denouncing her daughter’s character – only for Acton’s campaign to reply that her mother had stood by Acton’s stepfather, who had been indicted for sexually abusing her as a child.
America may be sick of such sordidness. But nastiness still thrives on the national stage. After Trump, expect another deluge.
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