Et is still uncertain which party will dominate which Chamber of Congress by how narrow a margin. Nevertheless, one important conclusion can be drawn from the American midterm elections: Donald Trump screwed them up for the Republicans.
The conditions for a stately red wave were actually good: the prices in the supermarket and at the gas station have risen dramatically, while in the White House there is an unpopular Democrat, who is not undisputed even in his own ranks, and who, even with his own majorities, is only a brutally trimmed form was able to push through his agenda – and who will be eightie in November. Also, mid-term presidential memorandum in America is almost a law of nature.
Trump was the Democrats’ trump card
The Democrats could not completely undermine that. But Trump was their most valuable campaign aide. TV doctor Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Senate nominee in Pennsylvania, just wasn’t the man to lure swing voters into the Republican fold in a big East Coast swing state. The fact that in Georgia the very conservative governor Brian Kemp, who has been fought by Trump since the dispute over the 2020 election result, sailed comfortably for re-election, while the football star Herschel Walker, who Trump had singled out for the Senate, has to hope for a runoff election also speaks volumes.
Even in the hard-fought states of Arizona and Nevada in the southwest, the candidates who were particularly eager to spread the right-wing conspiracy myth that Trump was the rightful winner of the presidential election two years ago have had a harder time than many polls had expected. The revolution in the East Coast elections also failed.
Hopeful Republicans wanting to milk the frustration and hold a referendum on “inflationary president” Joe Biden have had to watch as the narcissistic Trump turned the midterms into a referendum on himself instead. Those who wanted to forget who the Republicans had surrendered to were reminded in good time on the eve of the election. After internal warnings, Trump refused to announce his renewed candidacy for the presidency. Instead, he announced the announcement of his candidacy in the usual big talk.
He will not deviate from this plan. Perception of reality has never been one of Trump’s strengths, and certainly not self-criticism. It’s not as if he couldn’t point to any successes at all: for Ohio, for example, the author JD Vance, who turned from Trump-critical Saul to hyper-loyal Paul, made it into the Senate. Also, after the primaries, Trump backed enough candidates whose victory was never in serious jeopardy. But that alone will not be enough to deter other Republicans from running for president.
“America’s governor” DeSantis is becoming a threat to Trump
The greatest danger for the billionaire in Mar-a-Lago comes from next door: Florida’s arch-conservative governor Ron DeSantis was re-elected on Tuesday by an impressive margin. The politician, who recently celebrated himself in a commercial as a fighter specially created by God for politics, has long been celebrated among Republicans as “America’s governor”, while Democrats fear him as “Trump with a brain”. The former president has already taken up the fight against DeSantis, using the derisive nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious” (roughly Ron Hypocritical) and threatening that he knows unfavorable things about DeSantis, which he will leak to the press.
