Midterm elections in the USA: debacle for the Republicans – but Trump is not over yet

The USA has not experienced such a political storm for a long time. The party of Donald Trump, who clearly won the presidential election two years ago, suffered a comprehensive defeat in the midterm elections. This is no longer a reminder, this is a vote-out that anyone who values ​​democracy and the rule of law should be happy about. Another reason for gloating is that neither Elon Musk's millions nor the unrestrained redrawing of electoral districts could have prevented the Republican disaster. Despite all this, Trump was roundly punished.

It's just that Trump himself, no matter how often he demanded that voters act as if he was on the ballot, was actually not on the ballot and was allowed to continue governing for another two years.

With such a result, any other president would become the lamest of all lame ducks, hole up in the White House and watch as his party fights for the successor candidate. That's difficult for Trump to imagine - in any case, he won't leave the spotlight voluntarily.

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So in step one, Trump does what he always does: he denies any responsibility for the defeat. Strangely enough, it's always the case that the government party loses in the midterms, and he doesn't understand that either. But the fact is that his presidency is the greatest and most successful in US history. Clear.

Both major parties are now entering difficult territory. The Republicans don't know whether they can break away from Trump and at what cost - after all, his MAGA base isn't enough to win elections, but it won't work without it either.

The Democrats were actually looking forward to seeing whether the centrist or left-wing candidates would win - the party, which is currently without a leader, has important decisions to make with regard to the 2028 presidential election. Now everyone has won and the analysis is not that easy. It was like a firewall election, everyone together against the right-wing extremist aggressor. We know from the debate here that this hardly results in any coherent policy.

So it's true that not everything is solved with the election, the nightmare of the Trump presidency is not over, and in terms of foreign policy, many could feel the wrath of this president, from Havana to Kyiv, without Congress being able to do much about it.

Core elements of Trumpism and the anti-liberal culture war have not been overcome in people's minds either. Millions of Americans have turned their backs on the Republicans because Trump has not fulfilled his 2024 promises to reduce inflation and the cost of living, on the contrary. The fact that they recognize that Trump's customs policy and the Iran war he started are not least responsible for this means, on the one hand, that they are coming to terms with reality.

But it does not mean a turning away from all the other horrors of his politics and the tendency towards authoritarianism. If the Democrats were only elected by those who potentially went to the No Kings protests, they would have lost badly. The right-wing culture war is also alive: In Colorado and Arizona, the Democrats won the congressional and gubernatorial elections - but at the same time voters voted in referendums for drastic restrictions on trans rights.

And despite all of this: The fact that Trump and his spineless, cowering, anti-intelligence yes-man squad of unqualified reality deniers have suffered the most severe midterm defeat of a government party in over 50 years is a sign of life of intelligence and socio-psychological health. The United States is far from healed. But the election results at least give an indication that they are not completely lost.

It is now up to the Democrats in Washington to ensure that Trump cannot continue his work of destruction unhindered in the final two years of his term in office. This will be difficult. Maybe, just maybe, they'll finally get support from sensible Republicans, if they still exist somewhere. One can still hope.