Ron DeSantis the big winner in US midterms

Donald Trump is “livid” and “screaming at everyone” in his inner circle after a poor showing by candidates he endorsed in the US midterms.

Results are still coming in after tens of millions of Americans headed to the polls to choose their congressional leaders and pass judgment on Joe Biden’s first two years in office. The picture emerging is of a President battered and bruised by a truculent electorate, but still standing.

It wasn’t all bad for the GOP, which looks set to overturn a slim Democrat majority in the House of Representatives. Republican candidate Brian Kemp prevailed over Stacey Abrams to retain the state governorship in Georgia, and venture capitalist JD Vance defeated the Democrats’ Tim Ryan in the Ohio Senate race.

Yet the Dems, who had feared electoral disaster, scored notable wins. The most vital was their man John Fetterman – whose speech is severely impaired after a stroke in May – turning the swing state of Pennsylvania blue after defeating the Trump-endorsed TV-doctor Mehmet Oz.

The battle for control of the Senate is still on a knife-edge. This wasn’t in the script. Republicans had been expecting a red wave to sweep them to a majority in both the House and the Senate. Considering Biden’s negative approval ratings, and a spluttering US economy, who could blame them? In the end it was more of a knee-deep puddle.

The candidates backed by Trump haven’t done nearly as well as he would have hoped, a hint that his hold on the party is starting to loosen. It deals a blow to his ambitions for a second presidential term. The former president has hinted heavily he’ll announce his decision to run next week.

The big winner to emerge after a dramatic election night is Ron DeSantis, who bulldozed his opponent to be re-elected as Republican governor of Florida. DeSantis made gains with nearly every demographic group, including women and Latinos – a group he lost by 10 points in 2018.

The result gives him a springboard to challenge Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. The New York Post’s front page features a victorious DeSantis and the headline, “DeFuture”.

Before the first vote was cast, the betting markets put Trump on 27 per cent to be next US president and DeSantis on 18 per cent. Now those percentages have switched, and DeSantis is frontrunner, with Joe Biden trailing on 15 per cent.

We have more coverage of what the midterms mean for America and the world on the Reaction site. David Waywell argues that the results set Biden apart from both Clinton and Obama, who suffered disastrous midterm losses in their first terms. And as Gerald Malone writes in his brilliant read on the results, the Dems’ best hope in 2024 could well be Josh Shapiro, who saw off Trump-backed neo-Confederate army officer Doug Mastriano, in what the Make American Great Again crowd had billed as a bell-weather contest for governor of Pennsylvania.

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