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America Letter: Trump is under pressure but ready to fight

Another bid for the White House has been undermined by a better-than-anticipated Democratic performance in the midterms

Some on the right in the United States were quite open about their intention of turning the midterm elections this week into a referendum on president Joe Biden.

Conservatives and Republicans sought to tie their Democrat opponents to Biden’s policies which, they claimed, caused inflation and higher prices.

Some Democrats, to avoid this, wanted the president anywhere but canvassing in their constituencies.

Former president Donald Trump appeared set to use an anticipated Republican landslide as a springboard for a new bid for the White House. He teased supporters about an announcement next Tuesday.

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Trump is arguably weaker this weekend than at any stage since the January 6th riots last year

The better-than-anticipated performance of Democrats in the elections has changed the political calculations.

Biden spent recent days on what seemed to be a victory lap even though his party appears likely to lose the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, Trump is being criticised within his own party.

Biden did far better than many of his recent predecessors in their first midterms, including Barack Obama and Trump. He happily reminded everyone his strategy proved correct and the pollsters and pundits were mostly wrong.

Trump, on the other hand, is arguably weaker this weekend than at any stage since the January 6th riots last year. He is still expected to launch his White House campaign within days. However, there are serious voices on the right openly questioning whether he is the person to lead the Republican Party into the future.

Trump, it has to be said, won the White House against the expectations of many pundits in 2016. But electorally, it has been downhill since then. Republicans lost the House of Representatives in 2018. Two years later Trump lost the White House and it is arguable his allegations of electoral fraud contributed to his party losing the US Senate by dissuading his supporters from going to the polls for two run-off elections in Georgia.

After January 6th it looked for a while as if the Republican establishment was going to break with Trump. But, it ultimately concluded it needed his support base and his fundraising capacity.

At the time there was no obvious alternative to Trump. Perhaps now there is. On Tuesday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis crushed his Democratic rival. He appears to have realigned traditional voting blocs in the state – generating support, for example, in traditional Democratic areas around Miami. DeSantis also delivered the opportunity for additional Republican seats in the House of Representatives following a redrawing of constituencies.

Trump is obviously concerned. He has hit out repeatedly at DeSantis over recent days, suggesting he had unflattering information on him which could be released if he ran for the presidency.

This is not all just a parlour game for political wonks. Trump has transformed politics in the US

It was Trump’s ambition to reshape his party in his image, which backfired, and led to his current predicament. He promoted election candidates who were loyal to him and who backed his (unsupported) allegations of electoral fraud in 2020.

Ultimately, voters appear to have considered many of these candidates as extreme and opted for Democrats despite general unhappiness about the economy.

Worse still for Republicans, some Trump-backed candidates appear to have dragged down party colleagues in other contests who could otherwise have won. Karl Rove, the White House adviser under George W Bush, described some of the Trump candidates as “knuckleheads with strange beliefs and closets full of problems”. Republican senator Pat Toomey said there was a correlation between Trump’s Maga movement candidates and Republican underperformance in the elections.

There are fears now about the impact of a new Trump bid for the White House on the forthcoming run-off election in Georgia which is crucial for a party establishment desperately seeking to regain control of the Senate.

Intriguingly, there are suggestions the Murdoch media empire may be coming to the end of the road with Trump. The New York Post, once a strong supporter, mocked him as “Trumpty Dumpty” – who had a great fall. The Wall Street Journal said Trump was the Republican Party’s “biggest loser”.

Another bid for the White House has been undermined by a better-than-anticipated performance by Democrats in the midterms

This is not all just a parlour game for political wonks. Trump has transformed politics in the US. If his dominance in the Republican Party is on the wane, it represents a very big deal.

There have been forecasts of Trump’s political demise previously and he is unlikely to go quietly into the night.

Defeating Trump for the Republican presidential nomination would likely be ugly, as Trump showed in a statement on Thursday disparaging DeSantis, claiming he saved him politically in a contest for governor in 2018.

Trump may be wounded after the election, but he still is very popular among a sizeable chunk of the party. He may be around for a while yet.