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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
The author is a contributing editor to the FT
Let’s not forget that there have always been two versions of majesty. In the beginning was the majesty of vanity, embodied in richly decorated palaces and flattering courtiers; a taste for military expeditions; an appetite for plundering and rearranging reality for the sake of self-admiration. The opposing model, which was expressed loud and clear in the United States on Tuesday, is the majesty of the people expressed in freedom of speech, the sovereignty of laws enacted by elected legislatures, and the institutionalized impermanence of rulers.
The US midterm elections are the latest confirmation that reports of the death of liberal democracy have been greatly exaggerated. They were preceded by a succession of elections in which authoritarian leaders were overthrown at the ballot box. Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” was overthrown by an opponent whose last name, Magyar, is the same as that of the Hungarian people. Serbian Aleksandar Vučić was swept aside by an opposition so allergic to sects of leaders that it had none, presenting itself simply as a “list of students”. And in Israel, nearly 60 percent of voters rejected Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc, paving the way for the momentous possibility of a coalition of Arabs and Jews.
Complacency is, of course, dangerous, but the collapse of Republican supremacy in the United States, even where it seemed immutably enthroned, is the mother of all course changes and a sign that American democracy is alive and eager to get going.
Tuesday night, four prevailing truisms evaporated about what is required for electoral success. First, money rules, an assumption shattered by the inability of Elon Musk’s $474 million, much of which was pumped into Texas, to save future Sen. Ken Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott from the trash can. Second, it turns out that all the redistricting you can do will do no good in the face of a hurricane of hatred for your president.
Third, comes the axiom of Lee Atwater and Roy Cohn, the latter the McCarthyite mentor of Donald Trump, that there is no such thing as a pit of mud so clogged with lies that one should not draw out a bucket of gross matter to smear one’s opponent. This tactic was rewarded after Vivek Ramaswamy dug up his opponent’s ex-mother, Amy Acton, to accuse her of lying about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her stepfather. Rather than winning him votes, the indignation aroused by this announcement, shared by Republicans and Democrats, probably sealed Ramaswamy’s defeat.
Fourth, the rule of thumb that voters are locked into tribal allegiance spectacularly unraveled when states like South Carolina and Ohio, which had given Trump massive vote margins two years ago, turned a dazzling shade of blue.
All this took place without being in the tone of the “YMCA” (is that anyone do you want to hear that again?), but rather to the “Topside Down” played by the Redcoats as they lowered their colors to march to Washington at Yorktown. The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was 1932, the year of Franklin Roosevelt’s first landslide. At the time, rural economies had been devastated by successive droughts and collapsing prices. This year, the fertilizer shortage, caused in part by the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the shrinking market due to Trump’s trade wars, had the same effect.
Kansans, who had given Herbert Hoover one of the highest electoral margins in 1928, felt blind to their despair. Likewise, voters in states that have shown stubborn loyalty to Trump — Iowa, for example — are furious at his preference for his ballroom rather than heeding their pain at the checkout counter and the gas pump.
Cindy Hyde-Smith, the outgoing junior senator from Mississippi, also drew derision when she responded to complaints about the price of beef by urging people to choose another protein. “Choose another senator instead,” replied his opponent Scott Colom, a suggestion that voters appear to have followed. While awaiting the final vote count, Mississippi is poised to elect its first black senator since 1874.
It goes without saying that pocketbook problems determined the decline of Trump and his party. But it’s also true that voters made a connection between their economic woes and his isolation from ordinary people. Along with the war with Iran, extravagant corruption and the feeling that the self-proclaimed swamp drainer is actually one of its most fervent bottom feeders has been one of voters’ biggest concerns.
Could it be that the Congressional Class of 2027 will actually replace selfishness with service? If so, special credit should be given to American women, as this was, above all, their revolution. Georgia’s three most important offices – governor, attorney general and secretary of state – will now be held by black women. At least 17 governors will also be women, including a Native American from New Mexico. And women veterans – precisely the ones Pete Hegseth needs the least – will have a strong presence in the new House of Representatives. My local New York district now has Cait Conley, formerly deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then there’s Eileen Laubacher, the Rear Admiral poised to defeat Maga stalwart Lauren Boebert in Colorado, despite all her posturing with her domestic arsenal.
There will also be senators and representatives from the world of medical science besieged by the unproven fixations of Robert F Kennedy Jr, Secretary of Health. And it didn’t hurt that Adam Hamilton and seminarian James Talarico, the new senators from Kansas and Texas, were outspoken about public duty rooted in Christian belief.
All this, I know, may just be a song from “Tomorrow” sung by Annie, a wide-eyed orphan. But it is up to historians to identify the moments when the course of history really changes. So forgive me if I go out on a limb to say that November 2026 in the American Republic could be one of them.
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