Donald Trump has been dealt a devastating blow to his authority with a succession of crushing defeats in the midterm elections, in which his Republican party was stripped of control of the Senate and the House as his handpicked “Maga” candidates were swept away by a blue tsunami. The president spent weeks before the election pleading with the American people to pretend he was on the ballot. He may now rue that tactic: the American people took him at his word, and delivered him a bloody nose of historic proportions, flinging his presidency into lame duck status.
He appeared last night to have changed his mind, declaring on social media: “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” As the night progressed, one shock followed another as the rout extended into parts of the US once considered safe Republican strongholds. Top of the list was Texas, the state that has come to epitomise the iron fist of modern Republican rule. In a seismic shift, James Talarico became the first Democrat to be sent by Texas to the US Senate since 1988.
A Democratic dream of flipping the state that has been frustrated in countless previous cycles finally came to pass. The Presbyterian seminarian used his faith combined with a stringent call for economic justice to undermine 30 years of Texas Republican rule. In the process he took down Trump’s controversial pick, the scandal-ridden state attorney general, Ken Paxton, despite hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the race by Republicans, including funds from Elon Musk.
He criticised the negative campaign that had been waged by his opponent, which he said amounted to the “final howls of a dying establishment, the death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered”. In a double whammy, out too went Greg Abbott, a titan of Texas Republican politics. He was ousted by Gina Hinojosa, who becomes the first Democratic governor of Texas in 36 years.
Her elevation to the state’s highest office as its first Latina governor stands in itself as a repudiation of the Trump administration. The brutal mass deportation campaign unleashed by ICE against Hispanics in Texas was one of Trump’s most resounding own goals, as it pushed away droves of voters who had backed him only two years ago. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and progressive insurgent, made history in winning the closely watched Senate race, defeating the Republican Mike Rogers and becoming the US’s first Muslim senator.
His opponent and detractors, including Trump, led a largely Islamophobic campaign against him, often pointing to his name and faith, including the president alleging he was a “jihadist” and that he would need to walk through a metal detector to get into the Senate. It amounted to a withering rebuke of Trump’s broken promises, economic follies, and war with Iran at a time when many American families are struggling to put food on the table and gas in their tanks. The list of astounding results extended to Kansas, a state that until recent days lay well beyond even the most optimistic Democrats’ wildest fantasies.
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