Writing as the polls open in the US midterm elections but before any results are declared, I make a prediction which may be more clinically forceful because unaccompanied by any elation or depression. Namely, that Donald Trump won’t change, whatever the outcome.
For starters, Trump will declare victory no matter how the Republicans perform, from huge losses to surprising resilience. Whether this “victory” is a gross exaggeration based on surprisingly limited losses in the House and Senate, or a colossal, fantastic lie in the face of a massive rout, only affects the word salad he confects in the face of every camera. If the victory is a Big Lie, we also know the form it will take: that the elections were “rigged” and “stolen”, and that he won them really. Either way, he will declare victory ad nauseam, and his monstrously egocentric and unrestrained behaviour will continue much as before.
I don’t have a crystal ball, just a rearview mirror. Trump has behaved like this at every electoral juncture since he came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower to launch his first presidential campaign, now more than 11 years ago.
When he lost Republican primaries in 2016, from his very first loss of the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz on 1st February 2016, they were always rigged and stolen. “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” ran one of many tweets demanding that the result either be nullified or a new election be held—the first of thousands of similar declarations over the next decade.
When in the national 2016 election he narrowly secured an Electoral College majority against Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote, he really won by a landslide—either unqualified or asserted on the basis of unspecified “counties” and “marginal states”.
When Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, he really won by a landslide, refused to concede and, in addition to all the declarations and lawsuits claiming victory, attempted to overturn the result.
When in 2024 he won the popular vote narrowly, it was another spectacular landslide, his third since 2016.
So we know what Trump is going to say this week and hereafter, whatever the result. We also know how he is going to behave. He will attempt to carry on regardless. The ballroom, the tariffs, ICE, the family business deals, the appeasement of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the impulsive foreign adventurism, the outrageous executive orders, the illegality, the constant vulgarity and bullying, the pardons and handouts to servile donors and fawners, the vicious persecution of foes personal and political. It will all carry on much as before. As will the cascade of posts on socials and the daily media blitz overwhelming the national attention.
On the more positive side, the Trump who has ruled for six years without sending huge American armies to fight abroad is also unlikely to change, whatever the midterm results. The Iran offensive may continue, but Trump hasn’t put any boots on the ground, and it doesn’t look as if he is going to start now.
If Trump loses the House, the Senate, or both, the big issue isn’t what he does differently, but what the rest of Washington does differently.
If they run part or the whole of Congress, will the Democrats find a way to thwart Trump and his apparatchiks, more effectually than the impeachments and theatrical inquiries that achieved little when they controlled the House after the 2018 midterms? A special prize if you can even name the current Democrat leaders in the House or Senate.
Will a leading Democrat, maybe Jon Ossoff or Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, rapidly come through as leader of the opposition in a way no Democrat succeeded in doing until the late emergence of Biden at the end of Trump’s first term?
Will the Supreme Court do less kow-towing to a president and Maga cult that looks less invincible—particularly if the Democrats get to fight Trump in the Senate on vacancies created by the demise of, say, justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas?
Will the media, journalists and owners, be less intimidated by a wounded Trump and do some aggressive cut-through reporting of all the sleaze and scandal?
Will foreign leaders, particularly Volodymyr Zelensky, Mark Carney and those of Europe and Asia’s democracies find a way of circumventing Trump to mobilise support in Congress for a rebooted western alliance?
Will the military, and Trump’s own executive appointees, start asserting themselves more against the man himself?
Last but not least, what does a wounded and waning Trump mean for Republican leadership after him? Is it more Maga populism under JD Vance? Or might a rival, maybe the Marco Rubio who so brilliantly critiqued Trump back in those 2016 primaries, start manoeuvring effectively to a different place on the more traditional right?
These are the questions that will determine the fate of the US and its politics after this week’s midterm elections. Most of the answers are unwritten and genuinely, even alarmingly, open to bad as well as good outcomes. But the least open question is how exactly the orange 45th and 47th president will behave.
