(Washington) Donald Trump emerges bruised from a disastrous election night for his party, failing to keep the promise that allowed him, exactly one year ago, to be re-elected: to restore the purchasing power of average Americans.
“We did not expect a victory last night” in several local elections won hands down by the Democratic opposition, “but I think it was not good for the Republicans,” admitted the American president on Wednesday, speaking to senators from his party.
Republicans need to hear “the warning,” Steve Bannon, one of the great ideologues of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, warned on Tuesday.
“It was a very, very bad evening for Donald Trump,” Robert Rowland, professor of communications at the University of Kansas, told AFP.
Thomas Kahn, professor of political science at American University in Washington, tells AFP that the Democratic victories in New York, New Jersey and Virginia, beyond obvious differences, have “a common theme: the cost of living”.
“Always be right”
On Wednesday, the 79-year-old billionaire once again trumpeted that the American economy had “never been so booming”.
“His approach is to always be right”, deciphers Robert Rowland, “but all this comes up against what people experience when they go to the supermarket”.
In polls, Americans express growing dissatisfaction with the cost of living and concern about the impact of tariffs.
Trump “has always been an effective communicator”, hammering out simple messages about the cost of living and insecurity, but today he is “freewheeling”, judges Thomas Kahn.
The expert mentions the gilt and marble with which the Republican filled the White House, or a glitzy party he gave for Halloween: “The Americans are struggling and they see him living like a prince.”
The American president assures that the Democratic wave on Tuesday evening can be explained by the budgetary paralysis that the United States has been experiencing for more than 35 days, a record duration, with social assistance suspended, hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants laid off, public services hampered…
“Kamikazes”
Far from signaling a desire for compromise, he described Democratic parliamentarians as “suicide bombers” and called on Republican senators to come out in force to pass a finance law.
This means burying the filibuster. This practice of political compromise requires mustering a supermajority in the upper house of Congress, where Republicans have only a simple majority.
Trump is convinced that if the senators in his camp, so far reluctant, follow him, he will be able to pass reform after reform in order to block the path of the opposition in a year, during the “midterms”.
These mid-term elections renew a third of the seats in the Senate and all those in the other component of Parliament, the House of Representatives.
The Republican candidates are approaching them in a delicate position, after seeing on Tuesday evening voters who had voted for Trump in 2024 turn this time towards Democrats.
“Survive everything”
Conservatives “have linked their destiny to Trump” and the whole question for them is to be able to “dissociate themselves” from him, analyzes Wendy Schiller, professor of political science at Brown University.
Republican candidates “cannot oppose head-on” him under penalty of being sidelined in favor of more radical profiles during the primaries, recalls Robert Rowland.
Not to mention the incredible political rebound capabilities of the American president, re-elected despite the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by his supporters, despite prosecutions and a criminal conviction.
“Those who bet against him always lost,” warns Thomas Kahn.
If the American president returned to power, however, it is not only thanks to the unwavering support of his “MAGA” base, but because he rallied undecided voters, mainly concerned about their difficult ends of the month.
For Robert Rowland, “Trump can survive anything except bad economic news.”
