In the name Of Don Trump

Washington: Blues have it. Reds are in retreat. Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump and his agenda. Enough is enough, said the voters of wars and ballrooms, runaway prices and cynical indifference, broken promises and mega corruption.

The unusual Trump coalition of African American men, Hispanics, White conservatives, and a section of Indian Americans, lay fractured, as many moved back to their traditional Dem home. It was a rout. Or, to recall Barack Obama after Democrats’ 2010 defeat, a shellacking.

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His power checked and agenda soundly rejected, Trump faces a new reality. He must now find ways to work with a Congress controlled by Democrats, not pliable Republicans who rolled instead of rule over the past two years. Worth noting that Trump hasn’t challenged the election results as was widely feared. They are too definitive and stark for a makeover.

As results poured in for 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 seats at stake in the senate, voters’ anger was palpable. Defying wildest expectations, Dems won senate seats in places they haven’t for decades--Texas, Kansas, and the two Carolinas--gaining a foothold in places they hadn’t dreamed of. Trump’s hand-picked candidates, especially Ken Paxton in Texas, lost despite more than $150 mn fuelling his campaign.

But the big question: Was this a rejection of Republicans, or an embrace of Democrats? Overreading the results one way or another can be dangerous, especially because the battle between centrists and leftists for the heart of the Democratic Party is far from settled. Both will insist on their legislative agenda going forward.

Similarly, Republicans face an enormous dilemma: should they come out of Trump’s shadow, move towards normalcy, and rebuild? Or continue as a party of invertebrates? The answer will become clearer in the months to come.

Republicans now know that voters can see through war-mongering, fake promises, ferocious redistricting, and Elon Musk’s millions into campaign funds. If there’s one overarching reason for the rout, it’s the Iran War and resultant jolts in oil prices--a decision they could have affected were they united.

Trump should take the blame for defeat, but he won’t. That’s not his schtick. He continued to defend his war of choice as necessary on Tuesday night. As for the electoral rebuke, he insisted that things would have been different if only he were on the ticket, conveniently forgetting he had repeatedly asked voters to ‘pretend’ he was on the ballot. They did just that, but to stamp their strong disapproval.

Trump’s attempts to rally voters by talking up the economy and talking down Democrats as socialists and communists who are in bed with jihadists--a not-so-veiled reference to Democratic senate candidate Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan--came to naught. He even announced he would end $4 bn-a-year military support to Israel to bring back voters angry at US financing Benjamin Netanyahu’s constant wars in the region.

To be fair, the president’s party has generally always lost the midterms ,with two exceptions since WW2. But this loss was by invitation. Trump was elected in 2024 with a clear mandate to curb inflation, bring down prices at home and avoid new wars abroad. He broke all three promises, actively ignored voter concerns, and even ridiculed them.

Turned out that ‘affordability’ was not a ‘hoax’ as Trump repeatedly declared, but a fulcrum for this midterm election. Republican candidates attempted to walk a fine line between Trump’s extremely unpopular agenda and voter concerns, trying to have it both ways.

The too-clever-by-half strategy failed in the face of lived experience of the young and old. The former felt cheated of a future, and the latter found the system failing them after they paid into it with decades of hard work.

Republican candidates, desperate and disoriented by voter anger, tried the old trick familiar to nearly all democracies: fear-mongering. Except they didn’t have a clear villain this election--neither Nancy Pelosi nor Joe Biden was running. The scare tactic that America would turn socialist if Democrats took control because they harbour ‘crazy leftists’ didn’t stick.

Instead, voters connected their deeply felt experience directly to Trump, especially on economic issues. But he occupied another reality. In his last campaign pitch, he talked about the White House ballroom, rusty drainpipes, the long life of granite, and Bermuda grass. He claimed he had already ‘won’ the Iran war, as he has repeatedly done for the last 8 months since co-launching it.

Democrats, on the other hand, focused relentlessly on the high cost of living in the face of Trump family’s enormous financial gains in crypto, real estate, oil, stock and hedge fund deals linked to presidential decisions. The open season was so open, even Republicans were embarrassed. Polls registered voter shock at the brazen misuse of executive power to self-deal. Last week, a Fox News poll found 60% of registered voters as extremely concerned about government corruption.

P.S. Trump has two more years, and the power of veto.