Donald Trump continues to confound those who regard
his very presence in the White House as an affront to democracy and decency.
The US president’s detractors never thought he would win
the Republican nomination, and then were convinced he
could not possibly triumph in a presidential election.
When he did both,
they said his star would crash to
earth in the mid-term elections. But they were wrong
about that, too. While the Democrats did win control
of the House of Representatives, the Republicans consolidated
their grip on the Senate.
Mr Trump, with customary braggadocio, claimed victory
and declared himself to be a “magic” president, based
on the statistic that in 105 years only five times has
an incumbent won seats in a mid-term Senate race.
But it was much more complicated than he would like to make out.
The Democrats, after a wretched couple of years,
can build on electoral success in the lower House
and stymie the President’s legislation, bringing stalemate
to Capitol Hill. But Mr Trump can point to the fact that
wherever he campaigned, Republicans won.
His chances of securing a second term –
again, something that his critics considered inconceivable –
now looks more likely than not. Moreover, it suits his brand
of politics for the Democrats to block his legislative plans.
He will spend the next two years bringing forward tax cuts
and immigration controls and daring the Democrats to vote them down.
He has laid a trap that his opponents seem unable to avoid,
and nor do they yet have a leader able to develop
a coherent counterblast to Mr Trump’s populist identity politics.
The great danger for the Democrats is that they
now lurch leftwards, leaving Mr Trump to move into
the centre as the next presidential election approaches,
having shored up his base. For that he needs to rely on a
continued economic boom.
This was a theme the president avoided for much
of the campaign, preferring to focus on immigration.
But enough Americans evidently felt prosperous
enough to let him get away with his divisive
rhetoric and wreck the Democrats’ hopes of a
“blue wave”. Ironically, Mr Trump risks throwing
away his best card by pursuing his ill-judged trade war.
He likes to think he is uniquely brilliant; but as a former
presidential advisor once remarked, what matters most
is still the economy, stupid.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/...8/trumps-trap/
Looks like he has them by the short and curlies?