Record loser Donald Trump will see his authority ebb away after humiliating midterms: Andy Brown
It couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. Donald Trump is now officially a record loser. It turns out that voters don’t like putting their cross against the name of someone who promises to bring down the price of eggs and put an end to US involvement in costly foreign adventures, only to discover that they are paying record high prices to fill up with fuel because of one of the most ill-judged wars an American President has ever launched.
Not, of course, that the US President is naturally inclined to graciously accept defeat and to listen to the concerns of those who once supported him. He has a long record of ignoring evidence that contradicts his own world view and of declaring himself to be a winner regardless of which way people actually voted.
Because of the extent of the lies, the corruption, the attempts to break the law, the intimidation and the outright cheating that Donald Trump has normalised there are many who believe he should be impeached and live out the rest of his life in jail.
That would be a huge mistake. No matter how bad our politicians are or how enormous their crimes it isn’t good for democracy for one side in an election to start trying to lock up the chosen representative of the other side. That is more likely to turn him into a martyr for his cause than to prevent the possibility of any future politician trying to copy his aggressively boastful and petulant playbook.
The greatest punishment that Donald Trump could suffer is to become a powerless witness to his own decline. Prosecute him and a significant number of people will flock to his defence. Sideline him and he will become increasingly shrill and implausible in his efforts to blame his demise on anyone and anything other than his own mistakes.
For “The Donald” there are few worse words to be associated with than loser. That is what he is and there could be few things he would hate more than to have to live every day with that humiliation. Nor could there be a better way of inoculating the US and hopefully the UK against any repeat of shoddy ‘popularist’ politics than for increasing numbers of Republicans to admit they have lost their way and need to refocus.
We know from the reliable evidence of his former Vice President Mike Pence that Donald Trump asked him to find enough votes to defeat Biden in 2020 and was furious with him for refusing to cheat.
We know that Trump tried to prevent significant numbers of voters in these mid-term elections from being allowed to do so. We know that he gerrymandered the voting boundaries in an attempt to win seats unfairly.
We know that the vast bulk of the Republican party either went along with or stayed silent on these efforts. What we don’t know is how quickly Republican Party supporters will wise up to just how badly Trump’s boastful politics has damaged them.
The survival of US democracy has been put at risk. The United States has been led by a President who thinks Vladimir Putin is a genius and gave every indication of holding autocrats in higher regard than US electors. He remains capable of incredibly irresponsible acts such as declaring a state of emergency in a desperate attempt to cling onto more power.
Importantly the verdict of voters has been so clear and unequivocal that it should put an end to Trump’s fantasies about serving a third term. Even his own hand-picked Supreme Court judges are likely to become cautious about allowing any further damage to the normal workings of their constitution.
We live in dangerous times when some very rich and powerful people would have happily turned a blind eye and allowed a bullying President to find ways to over-ride the rules and remain in power for a third term.
They certainly donated a great deal of money to try to buy the elections that they just comprehensively lost. Elon Musk alone is reported to have spent over half a billion.
That kind of donation isn’t made because people care about poor white working class families being able to afford the price of eggs and fuel. It is made because of pure self interest. They believed that Trump was serving their own interests very profitably.
The risks to the democratic institutions which make the US strong have been resisted by voters who used them to deliver a stunning blow to huckster style politics.
Donald Trump is going to have to live with seeing his authority ebb away as people on his own side try to figure out how to avoid an even bigger electoral disaster in 2028. He is destined to become no more than a sad reminder of what can happen when a politician promises to make a country great and proceeds to damage it domestically and abroad.
The question for Britain is whether we wish to follow the States down the rabbit hole of aggressively far right politics. Or whether we can see through our own versions of wannabee strong men promising easy ways to make us great but only capable of delivering huge disappointment.
Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.