GOP’s blue period

As many had predicted, the US midterm elections have been a mauling for US President Donald Trump and his Republicans. Not only did the Democrats sweep both houses of the US Congress, they did so in crushing style, picking up Senate, House of Representatives and governor seats in places that Trump carried comfortably when he ascended to the presidency just two years ago and where Democrats have not had victories in decades. Even Trump himself seemed taken aback by the scale of the defeat, saying he was willing to accept the results and that “the Democrats did a good job”. Indeed, they did. Texas just elected a Democrat senator, James Talarico, for the first time since 1988, while Kansas has done so for the first time since 1932. Democrats also won the governorship in Texas for the first time in 35 years as the state elected the first Hispanic governor in its history. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for governor failed in Ohio, Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim ever elected to the US Senate and, as of writing, the Democrats are well on track to win the governorship of Alaska.

These sentences would have been unthinkable as recently as early 2025. While Trump also tried to distance himself from the loss, the scale of the defeat makes clear that this was a rebuke of his policies. The most immediate factor is the war on Iran and the ensuing rise in US gas prices, with one exit poll showing that 74 per cent of American voters say the war with Iran was an important or decisive factor in their vote for Congress. Another war in the Middle East was exactly the sort of thing Trump was elected to stop and high cost-of-living was something he was supposed to solve and not exacerbate. But the reasons go deeper, as Trump’s approval rating had begun cratering well before the first strikes on Iran. Americans had lost faith in Trump’s ability to manage the economy before the end of last year, with the tariff blitz failing to deliver anything except instability. Even the immigration crackdown has become a losing issue as polls show that a majority now believe they have gone too far.

To put it simply, Americans voted like they were sick of Trump’s policies. The candidates the current administration backed suffered historic defeats, and the ones it most vilified, particularly Ilhan Omar and Abdul El-Sayed, won stunning victories. The racist and Islamophobic nature of the attacks on them makes Omar and El-Sayed’s triumphs moral victories as well. The ‘Big Tech’ crowd were losers in this election too. No one wants data centres in their community and Elon Musk spent hundreds of millions on the Republicans and has nothing to show for it. Then there is the other major Trump supporter: Israel. Will they be worried? This depends on what the Democrats decide to do now. Will they actually do enough to push the president to stop his disastrous war and will they rethink the hitherto untouchable position that Israel has occupied in their policy circles? El-Sayed’s victory, in particular, shows that a generational shift has taken place across the US when it comes to views on Israel and people are far more open to questioning the role of its lobbyists in America, like AIPAC. Israel has gone very quickly from something American politicians competed to support to one that they now race to distance themselves from. In fact, one could argue that the trigger for this whole Democrat wave was Zohran Mamdani’s victory last year. Politicians like him and a message like his are what Democrats need more of if they want to build on this victory. The same cannot be said for pleasing the donors and the lobbyists. Money is not all that matters in politics; just ask Musk.