For the first time in over a decade, President Donald Trump’s stranglehold over US politics looks irretrievably broken.
It turns out that festooning the Oval Office in gold at a moment when gas prices are soaring is not a good idea. It turns out that imposing tariffs at a moment when inflation is ticking up doesn’t go over well. It turns out that pilfering millions in cryptocurrency when American households are struggling to pay their grocery bills isn’t such a nifty move. And it turns out that starting a war in the Middle East when you’ve promised “no more forever wars” isn’t all that popular, either. President Donald Trump, who has been floating on a personal jet stream of hot air for the last decade and more, came tumbling down last night as American voters decisively repudiated the GOP in the midterm elections. Ohio is gone. Texas turned blue. Kansas elected a Democrat for the first time since 1932, the year that Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt. Susan Collins’ (R-ME) 30-year tenure in Maine came to a terminus. Keisha Lance Bottoms is Georgia’s new governor. So sweeping were the losses that President Trump forwent any opportunity to challenge the results. Instead, he proclaimed that he was prepared to work with Democrats and, incidentally, that the first two years of his presidency had been remarkably successful.
Trump has been wholly consistent. He went bankrupt six or so times. Now he has wrecked the GOP by squandering the chance to harness the populist forces that he originally rode to the presidency. The result is that he has become what he loathes—a loser. As the National Review rather politely put it in an editorial about the midterms, “Even though Trump’s terms were not consecutive, clearly there is a lot of fatigue with a political figure who has been dominating the political conversation since he came down that escalator more than eleven years ago.”
The MAGA movement is no longer moving. Trump’s signature bullying, braying, and bellicosity have reached their limits, at least in terms of political effectiveness. Trump has succeeded in what seemed impossible. He united the American people—against him.