I still wouldn’t want to be a Democrat right now

The midterms show that Trump is far from toxic everywhere. But he’s no longer the man to beat

Donald Trump is expected to announce another presidential run tomorrow, and many Republicans would rather he did not. Don’t dismiss him out of hand. Trump will say that by several metrics, life was far better under him than Joe Biden – and he’s correct.

But the narrative coming out of the midterm elections is that his political brand is now poison. With inflation running high and Biden operating in a world of his own – last week he flew to Cambodia and said it was a pleasure to meet the president of Columbia – the GOP ought to have won a landslide. That it failed to do so is being blamed on Trump’s conspiracy-toting batch of candidates, and there’s a lot of evidence that his chaotic style of populism is holding his party back.

Look closer, however, and the picture complicates. Consider two neighbouring states where the Trump candidate won the Republican nomination for Senate: JD Vance of Ohio and Mehmet Oz of Pennsylvania. Of these, Vance ran the most Trumpy campaign against the Democrats. He claimed the 2020 presidential election was fixed, hammered away at immigration and said he “didn’t care” about Ukraine.

Oz, on the other hand, accepted the outcome of 2020 and sold himself as a centrist who wants to get things done. By the logic of the “Trumpism is toxic” narrative, Vance should’ve lost and Oz won, but it was the other way around. Not only did Vance win comfortably, but Oz performed worse in rural Pennsylvania than Trump previously did. If Trump hurt Oz among moderates, and mobilised the Left against him, Oz’s failure to articulate populist themes simultaneously reduced any compensating enthusiasm among conservatives. In short, a Republican has to fire up the base to win.

Knowledgeable readers will say I’m wrong because the Republicans also lost the race for governor in Pennsylvania, and that candidate, Doug Mastriano, was Trumpitry to his fingertips. True. But Mastriano, a very odd man, rejected orthodox campaigning techniques, like talking to journalists, in favour of “fasting and prayer” – while his opponent, Democrat Josh Shapiro, proposed the novel and popular idea of fighting inflation by cutting taxes (are you listening, Jeremy Hunt?). So we can say that the Republican field was definitely tarnished by Trump – the Dems knew it would be, which is why Shapiro spent $840,000 (£710,00) promoting Mastriano in the Republican primary – but it also didn’t help that Trump often picked peculiar hopefuls with scant appeal beyond his fan club. When they ran in solidly Republican states they of course did much better. Katie Britt became the first woman elected to the Senate from Alabama in history, with a whopping 66 per cent of the vote.

The midterms really only proved that red states vote red, blue states blue, and it’s becoming harder to do what Biden dreamed of and meet in the middle. His home state of Delaware hosts an annual event wherein officials of both parties ride in horse-drawn coaches through a settlement called Georgetown and bury a literal hatchet in the soil, to represent the triumph of patriotism over party.

This year, the Dems refused to sit in the coaches. Why? Because they are supplied by a museum that flies a Confederate flag at a Civil War memorial. Traditions are creaking under the weight of polarisation; democracy is distrusted due to its tendency to produce the “wrong” result. Yes, Trump is an “election denier”, but so is Stacey Abrams, a Democrat from Georgia who narrowly lost the governorship in 2018, insisted it was a steal and, worshipped by the Left like an exiled queen, landed herself a cameo in Star Trek playing the President of United Earth. I am sad to say that last Tuesday, the voters of Georgia stole the governorship from her yet again, though by a larger margin this time, so it’ll be harder for her majesty to dine out on it.

Biden has earned the right to gloat. These were the most successful midterms for an incumbent in two decades. But if he decides to run again on the strength of them, he’ll saddle the Dems with a candidate whose best years are not only behind him but predate the Louisiana Purchase. If not him, who? Kamala Harris? Pete Buttigieg? Hillary Clinton? They’re all ghastly. The assumption till now was this didn’t matter because they’d be running against Trump, but by humiliating him so badly, the Dems have accidentally done the GOP a favour, because Republican interest has shifted from Trump to the governor of Florida, Ron Desantis.

Ron was once a Trump nominee, too: he leant him a critical primary endorsement in 2018. But now he is considered Trump’s chief rival for the presidency, and last week won re-election with 59 per cent of the vote. Fellow Floridian Senator Marco Rubio was returned very easily, too: the Republican label is popular in the state because they are perceived to serve it well, particularly during Covid when they adopted a Swedishstyle approach.

Already, the Dems are warning that Desantis is every bit as extreme as Trump, which is the exact reason why many Republicans are falling in love. They need a new Trump. A version with experience and sophistication, one who can do what Donald cannot: convert more voters than he repels.