Donald Trump: the beginning of the end?

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The former US president’s star seems to be waning, which could affect his decision to run for president in 2024

Donald Trump was not on the ballot for the 2022 US midterm elections. Yet the former president’s shadow lingers over US politics, and he has done everything he can to keep it that way. His effort to set the political agenda for 2022 and support candidates like him appears to have had a major impact on voting this year and has implications for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The former president is considering running for president. He previously said he would announce his decision on Tuesday, November 15. But after the poor performance of the candidate list he enthusiastically endorsed before the midterm elections, many political analysts are speculating that he may put his ambitions on hold.

Trump takes much of the blame for the GOP’s failure to capitalize on the highest inflation rates in 40 years, the rising murder rate in the United States, and what Republicans view as Joe Biden’s underperformance as president.

Many commentators wonder if the failure of the Republican Party’s anticipated “red wave” could also spell the end of the 45th president’s political adventure. Or, put another way, is the US past “Trump Peak”?

Midterm elections are traditionally used to show disapproval of the incumbent president. With the Democrats holding the House by just five votes and the Senate tied evenly, the Republicans were confident of a landslide victory.

Instead, what happened was one of the best interim results for a sitting Democratic president in decades, as Democrats retained control of the Senate and lost fewer seats in the House than expected. This will inevitably bring the Republicans to a halt. The answer will not be difficult to deduce.

While Trump elicits cult-like admiration from about 15% of the population, his nationalistic “America first” brand has never garnered mainstream support. Indeed, in the 2016 presidential election, the 2018 midterm elections, and again in 2020, Democrats consistently won the popular vote, though that popularity didn’t always translate into power.

But in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump’s negative impact on the outcome was evident. Leading up to the November 9 ballot, Trump approved a list of candidates. These were chosen not for their political experience, but for their loyalty to him and his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. These candidates underperformed nationally, robbing Republicans of potentially winnable seats in several swing states.

It was in Pennsylvania, where out-of-state TV doctor Mehmet Oz lost to the Democrats by 8%, and in Georgia, where Hershel Walker also underperformed. This last case is especially illustrative. Walker, a former soccer star, received just 48% of the vote against veteran Raphael Warnock and faces a runoff election in December. Meanwhile, non-Trump Republican Governor Brian Kemp was re-elected by a margin of more than seven points.

What this suggests is the willingness of many voters to reject Trumpian extremism without necessarily giving up the entire Republican ticket. This pattern repeated itself nationally, as the Trump-backed candidates underperformed the mainstream Republicans.

The most radical deniers got disastrous results. Doug Mastriano, who reportedly spent thousands of dollars chartering buses to transport people to Washington DC on Jan. 6, 2020, when the U.S. Capitol riot took place, was defeated by 14 points in his bid for Pennsylvania governor. Daniel Cox — who promised to control the 2020 election if elected — was defeated by 24 points in the Maryland gubernatorial race.

In cases where Trump-backed candidates won, like Ohio’s JD Vance, they did so by moving away from their patron’s more extreme views. It seems that many swing voters and moderate Republicans have heard Joe Biden’s call to reject candidates who posed a threat to the proper functioning of American democracy.

Another major conclusion of the midterm elections with implications for Trump’s future is the success of his former protégé, now rival, Ron DeSantis. His re-election as governor by nearly 20 points in what is now Trump’s home state of Florida was a result that bucked the national trend.

Significantly, DeSantis rejected Trump’s denial of voters and abortion extremism and instead talked about the economy, immigration and crime. He now has a clear power base from which to run for the Republican presidency in 2024 if he so chooses.

While his stamp as a white Christian nationalist embraces much of the cultural conservatism of the American First movement, DeSantis is careful to avoid the most extreme positions. And more importantly, he also lacks the personal baggage and fanaticism of his former mentor. Of his generation of Republicans, DeSantis is the most dynamic and seems well placed to act nationally and portray his version of populist conservatism in a less alienating and hostile light than Trump.

The lessons of the midterms for Republicans can be seen quite clearly. Although Trump remains extravagantly popular with his supporters, the 2022 results show that even many Republicans would rather vote for alternative candidates than for Trump and his followers. And with the appearance of DeSantis, the GOP has a chance to embrace a candidate with a proven electoral record.

The verdict of the American electorate after this election is that the moment of “Trump’s peak” is over. All the Republican Party has left to do is go through the painful process of breaking Trump out of his Grand Old Party dominance.

This article was published in ‘The conversation‘.

Source: La Verdad

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