Midterms weaken Trump, but…

 As the reality of a deluging ‘blue wave’ hit home in the United States midterm poll last Tuesday, the White House shared a picture of a stern-looking President Donald Trump standing behind his Oval Office desk. The photograph, posted on the administration’s official X handle, had the caption: “Trump is still your president.”

The message was clear: Trump remained unbowed and in charge despite a shellacking of his Republican party at the elections by which Democrats snatched control of Congress and flipped many governorship seats. 

The poll was widely viewed as a referendum on Trump, although the presidency was not on the ballot. Left unsaid by the White House was that without control of Congress, American presidents yet have broad powers to wield. And Trump has shown a disposition to push the limits of those powers even when Republicans controlled both chambers of U.S. Congress following the 2024 election that brought him back in office.

Republicans were mauled in last Tuesday’s poll as Democrats racked up victory after victory to net 54 seats in the Senate, where they needed 51 for control, and 242 seats in the House of Representatives, where 218 seats were needed for a majority. The party flipped at least seven Senate seats in Republican strongholds and battlegrounds, including in Kansas that hadn’t elected a Democratic senator in nearly a century, in Texas where Elon Musk had staked his enormously deep pocket on Republicans to no avail, in Iowa, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. In the House, the Dems flipped some three dozen districts, including states that Trump comfortably won in the presidential poll two years ago.

Historically, U.S. midterms end up in bad nights for the party of the sitting president. But the scale of Republican defeat on Tuesday marked sheer carnage, interpreted as a resounding rebuke of Trump’s two-year reign at the White House and portending difficult days ahead in the remaining two years of his term.

Even with his renown for bluster, Trump could not gainsay the poll outcome. In media interactions Tuesday evening, he conceded that Democrats “did a good job” and congratulated the winners, acknowledging that the war in Iran and high fuel prices – with the spill-on effect on consumer prices – were issues that infuriated voters. Against the backdrop of his election denialism in 2020 when Joe Biden broke his incumbency, he said he would accept the results this time and was looking forward to working with the Dems; but he soon after touted his power as president to veto undesirable legislations by them.

There were a number of historic outcomes in this latest poll. Democrats won a Senate seat and the state governorship in Texas, upending Republican domination for about two generations past. Gina Hinojosa who got elected as governor emerged the first Latina to be so elected in the state. In Kansas, Adam Hamilton flipped a keenly-fought Senate seat to give the state its first Democratic senator in nearly a century. Senior party figures who cheered the results included Hakeem Jeffries, currently the House Minority Leader. If Jeffries’ colleagues keep him as party leader in the incoming House, he will be the next Speaker, taking over from Republican Mike Johnson and becoming the first black person to fill that role.

There was also a historic win in Michigan where Egyptian-American doctor, Abdul El-Sayed, got elected. Although he was retaining the seat in the hands of Democrats, he became the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate, beating Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, for the key battleground. The race was one of the bitterest of the midterms and got Trump personally involved as he campaigned for Rogers. Trump invoked 9/11 and branded El-Sayed a “jihadist,” saying he would be the only lawmaker put through metal detector screening before being allowed into the Capitol should he get elected. El-Sayed fired back, challenging Trump to first undergo a lie detector test on Jeffrey Epstein and his 2020 denialism, among others. 

“Now that the guardrail posed by the American midterms is off, Trump may become less restrained in resolving the unpopular war in Iran”

The defeat of Susan Collins, who served as Republican senator from Maine for the last 30 years, epitomised the ‘blue wave’. She was felled by Democratic candidate Troy Jackson, having run as one of the most vulnerable incumbent Republicans seeking re-election, and finding that her tactic to distance herself from Trump did not work. A fellow Republican in Iowa, Ashley Hinson, suffered similar fate, losing a keen race for the Senate seat to Democratic candidate, Josh Turek. Hinson had tried to distance herself from Trump, urging him to end the war with Iran and breaking with him on aspects of his tariffs policy.

Other seismic wins include in Georgia where former Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, won the governorship – becoming the first black governor and first woman to be elected to the state’s highest office. The state also has not had a Democratic governor for more than 20 years. Bottoms trounced Republican Rick Jackson, a billionaire businessman and healthcare executive, for the position. In New Hampshire, Democrats produced the first openly gay man to be elected senator, Chris Pappas, who defeated former Republican senator, John Sununu.

So, why did the Republicans lose so badly? The ready answer is, Trump. In the weeks preceding the midterms, the president’s approval rating among Americans was reported at rock bottom, dipping below 30 percent in some opinion polls. This was believed to have constituted a drag on Republican candidates. Two of the issues that voters were most unhappy about – rocketing consumer prices and the U.S. war in Iran – were directly linked to Trump. His rating even fell among Republican voters, making some states that backed him in 2024 particularly vulnerable. 

Trump thought otherwise, though, and argued that his not being on the ballot disadvantaged the red party. During campaign pitches he made for some candidates, he urged voters to imagine him on the ballot in an effort to galvanise his MAGA (Make America Great Again) base. But after about a decade as a central figure in American politics, the glitz seems to have worn off the Trump brand. Against the backdrop of voter anger over his policies and administrative style, making himself the focus of Republican campaign was ill-advised and it apparently backfired.

Some analysts argued that the midterms outcome would make the American president a lame duck for the rest of his tenure. Trump himself did not give that indication. On Tuesday night, he posted on social media and spoke to a series of media outlets on how he would deal with the Dems. “We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them… We’ll probably work something out,” he told the New York Times. Then on Wednesday, in response to media probing about his political future, he said: “I’ll get along probably with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive. But I have the power of the veto.”

Going by his tack hitherto, Trump may not be hamstrung by legislative preferences of the incoming Congress. Many of his most significant measures have been by way of presidential orders rather than laws passed by the present Republican-controlled Congress. That includes his tariffs policy, and military operations launched in Venezuela and Iran. Even with the Democratic majority in the incoming Congress, Trump could stay course. And if the Dems try to curtail him through legislation, the American Constitution provides Trump with a uniquely formidable response – the presidential veto that can only be overridden by congressional majorities larger than what the Democrats control.

Question is whether Trump could muster the presence of mind to deploy powers at his fingertips within established norms of law. Many Democrat lawmakers are heading to Washington to challenge his every move, and that could be a monumental hurdle for his famously brittle patience. The biggest test may come from within his camp. For many years, Trump has kept a vice-like grip on the Republican party that is now badly shaken up by the midterms, such that some Republicans have picked courage to criticise his decisions in a way few would dare before now. His own vice-president, JD Vance, last Wednesday posted on social media, blaming the war in Iran that Trump launched in concert with Israel for the sweeping Republican defeat. With his control of the Republican fold challenged, he may struggle to find confidence to tackle Democrats’ irritation.

And there’s an aspect that should bother us here in Nigeria. Now that the guardrail posed by the American midterms is off, Trump may become less restrained in resolving the unpopular war in Iran and, in vengeance, unleash fiercer strikes against the Gulf foe. Strikes and counterstrikes before now reached into the pocketbook of families around the globe with inflated fuel prices and rising consumer costs. If Trump goes for broke, the pangs could become more compounded and send our local economy further reeling.