Donald Trump: the beginning of the end?

Donald Trump was not on the ballot for the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. Yet the former president’s shadow continues to hang over American politics, and he has done everything possible to keep it that way. His attempt to set the 2022 political agenda and endorse candidates like him appears to have had a profound impact on voting this year and has implications for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

The former president is considering launching his candidacy for the presidential elections. He previously said that he would announce his decision on Tuesday, November 15. But after the poor performance of the list of candidates he had enthusiastically supported before the midterm elections, many political analysts speculate that he may put his ambitions on hold.

Trump is taking much of the blame for the GOP’s failure to capitalize on the highest inflation figures in 40 years, the rising murder rate in the United States, and what Republicans perceive as the underperformance of Joe Biden as President.

Many commentators wonder if the failure of the expected “red wave” of the Republican Party could also mark the end of the political adventure of the 45th president. Or, put another way, is the US past “Trump Peak”?

Midterm elections are traditionally used to show disapproval of the incumbent president. With the Democrats holding the House by just five votes and the Senate evenly split, the Republicans were confident of a landslide victory.

Instead, what occurred was one of the best midterm results for a sitting Democratic president in decades, as Democrats retained control of the Senate and lost fewer House seats than anticipated. This will inevitably give Republicans pause. The answer will not be difficult to deduce.

While Trump inspires cult-like adulation from around 15% of the population, his nationalist “America first” brand has never had mainstream support. Indeed, in the 2016 presidential election, the 2018 midterms, and again in 2020, Democrats consistently won the popular vote, though that popularity did not always translate into power.

But in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump’s negative impact on the outcome was clear. In the lead up to the November 9 vote, Trump endorsed a list of candidates. They were chosen not because of his political experience, but because of their loyalty to him and his unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 election was stolen. These candidates underperformed nationally, potentially robbing Republicans of seats. ganables in several swing states.

It was in Pennsylvania, where out-of-state TV doctor Mehmet Oz lost to Democrats by 8%, and in Georgia, where Hershel Walker also underperformed. This last case is especially illustrative. Walker, a former football star, got just 48% of the vote against veteran Raphael Warnock and faces a December runoff. Meanwhile, non-Trump Republican Governor Brian Kemp was re-elected by a margin of more than seven points.

What this suggests is the willingness of many voters to reject Trumpian extremism without necessarily abandoning the entire Republican ticket. This pattern was repeated nationally, as Trump-backed candidates fared worse than mainstream Republicans.

The most radical deniers got disastrous results. Doug Mastriano, who reportedly spent thousands of dollars chartering buses to transport people to Washington DC on January 6, 2020, when the Capitol riot took place, was defeated by 14 points in his bid for Governor of Pennsylvania. Daniel Cox – who promised he would audit the 2020 election if he was elected – was beaten by 24 points in the Maryland gubernatorial race.

In cases where Trump-backed candidates won, like JD Vance in Ohio, they did so by distancing themselves from the more extreme positions of their patron. It seems that many swing voters and moderate Republicans actually heard Joe Biden’s call to reject candidates who posed a threat to the proper functioning of American democracy.

The DeSantis Factor

Another key takeaway from the midterm elections with implications for Trump’s future has been the success of his former protégé, now rival, Ron DeSantis. His re-election as governor by nearly 20 points in what is now Trump’s home state of Florida was a result that bucked the national trend.

Significantly, DeSantis rejected Trump’s voter denialism and abortion extremism, speaking instead about the economy, immigration and crime. He now has a clear power base from which to run for the Republican presidency in 2024 if he so chooses.

Although his imprint as a white Christian nationalist embraces much of the cultural conservatism of the American First movement, DeSantis is careful to avoid the most extreme positions. And, what is more important, it also lacks the personal baggage and fanaticism of his former mentor. Of his generation of Republicans, DeSantis is the most dynamic and seems well placed to step up nationally and present his version of populist conservatism in a less alienating and antagonistic light than Trump.

And now what about the Republican Party?

The lessons of the midterms for Republicans are pretty clear to see. Although Trump remains extravagantly popular with his base, the 2022 result shows that even many Republicans would rather vote for alternative candidates than Trump and his imitators. And, with the appearance of DeSantis, the GOP has an opportunity to embrace a candidate with a proven electoral record.

The verdict of the US electorate after these elections is that the moment of “Trump’s peak” has indeed passed. It only remains for the Republican party to go through the painful process of extricating Trump from his stranglehold on the Grand Old Party.

David Hastings Dunn, Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.