The US midterms winner: Donald Trump by a long mile

So, the Blue Wave turned out to be a trickle. In the US midterm elections the Democrats, as expected, won control of the House of Representatives by a modest margin and the Republicans increased their hold on the Senate. Media commentators who had been geared up to hail a Democratic blue wave ended up by saying it had been a mixed night, good for Democrats in the House, good for Republicans in the Senate. With most of the results in, the Democrats are seven seats ahead in the House, and the Republicans have a six seat advantage in the Senate.

The reality was that this election had only one winner: Donald Trump. By throwing himself into the conflict, when he could safely have lurked inside the Oval Office, he turned the tide of what was set to be a genuine blue wave at the beginning of campaigning. Even the leftist media commentators, caught off guard amid the emotions of election night, wondered aloud at Trump’s uncanny political instinct and his relish for the fight.

Republican voters’ comments to exit pollsters in crucial battlegrounds made it clear they had been motivated to come out and vote by Trump’s appeal for their support. Donald Trump is the best communicator with the Republican base since Ronald Reagan. He has single-handedly and often against the opposition of his own party reshaped American politics. He is now the yardstick by which all political calculations, friendly or hostile, must be measured.

In aircraft hangars and sports stadia across the nation hundreds of thousands of American conservatives met Trump in person; he showed he was still with them, leading an insurgency in their company rather than disappearing for four years into the White House; greeting them and encouraging them. Trump has turned “Have a nice day” into a political motivation.

Incumbent party meltdown is an established tradition two years into a new presidency: Barack Obama lost 63 House seats in his first midterm election. Trump, in contrast, held the line. His chief preoccupation was to retain the Senate and with it such powers as appointment of Supreme Court justices. By increasing the number of GOP senators he secured that bridgehead and relieved himself of the need to telephone Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski every time he wants to appoint a judge.

The elephant in the polling booth was Brett Kavanaugh. Before any results were announced the television commentariat was telling us how post-Kavanaugh angry women were now motivated to create the blue wave. Then their own exit polls showed that Kavanaugh had indeed been a major motivation – for vengeful GOP voters to go to the polls and stick it to the Democrats.

Even the liberal commentariat conceded that Trump’s intervention had been decisive in certain key races he targeted, notably Marsha Blackburn’s Senate win in Tennessee and the defeat of Andrew Gillum in the Florida governor’s race. At every election media commentators fabricate a new totem that becomes an obsessive mantra: this time it was “suburban women”, allegedly responsible for Republican reverses in the House elections. Like all such categorisations it is dubious and patronising.

Nancy Pelosi, bravely ignoring the fact that the limited size of the Democrats’ House majority may deprive her of the Speaker’s gavel, gave an unconvincing and tedious victory speech. The Democrats have attained just sufficient power to make themselves troublesome and unpopular without being effective. While results were still coming in they were already obsessing about Trump’s tax returns, an issue to which mainstream America is passionately indifferent. The Democrats are a useful scapegoat to which Trump will be able to point throughout the two years before the next presidential election.

This was supposedly peak Democrat power, the backlash after two years of Trump, the resistance, the “woke” people, led by Hollywood, turning the tide back to the days of Utopia under Obama. If this result is all the Democrats can achieve at the moment in the electoral cycle considered most favourable to them, Donald Trump can look forward to six more years in the Oval Office.

Even pro-Democrat commentators could not muster the enthusiasm to hype this Pyrrhic victory. The blue puddle is no more than an irritant; the real power resides in the White House and the reinforced Senate. The Democrats finding themselves in a position to wield a little power is ideal for Trump: it gives him ammunition to demonize them as they oblige him by demonizing themselves.

It was notable in the aftermath of this technical Democratic “victory” that the usual suspects were no longer laughing at Donald Trump. They now fear him. Trump is a real leader, who leads from the front and, unprecedentedly in recent politics, does exactly what he promised his voters he would do. His enemies are beginning to realize what a formidable force he represents, how deeply embedded with his core vote he is and how likely it is that he will transform America dramatically and irreversibly.