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The electorate strikes back: America back to democracy and Democrats
For 20 months, Donald Trump’s presidency was marked by a deliberate, visible, and structured assault on America’s system of checks and balances.
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For 20 months, Donald Trump’s presidency was marked by a deliberate, visible, and structured assault on America’s system of checks and balances. On Tuesday, American voters struck back and re-established the democratic equilibrium in America.
Trump interpreted the 2024 presidential mandate as a blank cheque to concentrate power. He then used that centralised power to implement the most extreme version of his ideological agenda. Trump scaled down America’s welfare system, deployed the American military for wars on Israel’s prodding, altered how Americans traded with the world, dismantled parts of the American federal government, backed the ambitions of American big tech, made life dramatically difficult for immigrants (including citizens), turned the United States into an imperial extractive power even vis a vis friends, and amassed wealth for his personal ecosystem of family and loyalists.
What flipped and why?
In the process, a Republican-led Congress, petrified that defying Trump would alienate base voters and jeopardise their own seats, played along. The Senate and House aided the cut to health subsidies. The two chambers neither asserted their powers sufficiently to stop the Iran war nor did they challenge White House on inflation. They ceded authority on tariffs and did not channel the voices of small businesses devastated by higher costs. They did not stand up for legislatively established federal agencies and their decimated workforce. They did not aggregate and articulate the anxieties around artificial intelligence across the American heartland and among younger professionals and students. They did not speak up against White House’s treatment of American allies and partners. They did not investigate any wrongdoing. And the US Congress did not outline the illegality, amorality, and the grave economic and social costs that have come with the crackdown on immigration.
Deep Dive
But there was a simple fact about American politics that Trump chose to forget, and other Republicans were too fearful to remind him about.
America is a 47-47 country, with its electorate almost equally divided between the two parties. A presidential election boils down to six to seven per cent swing voters in seven swing states. Interpreting even a sweep of the seven states by a few percentage points as a mandate to completely alter the make up of the American constitutional order, the nature of the American state, and America’s relationship with the world — as Trump did — carried high political risks of overreach. With the Congress no longer performing its constitutional role of being a coequal branch of the government, and Trump surrounding himself with those unwilling to challenge his instincts, the executive went on a rampage. And Americans had nowhere to express their anger.
They finally got their chance to speak in the midterms — and they spoke loudly, in two distinct ways.
American voters take back power
For one, voters have buried Trump’s 2024 multiracial umbrella coalition. A simple rule of politics, often articulated by the late Arun Jaitley in the Indian context, was to watch which party had retained its base and managed to eat into its rival’s base and which party was struggling to even retain its own base. In 2024, Democrats struggled for various reasons to retain young men, Hispanics, Muslims, even South Asians and African Americans, while Trump not just retained the older White Republican base but expanded it to include precisely the constituencies Democrats lost.
In this election, the reverse has happened. A New York Times analysis of the shifts in voter behaviour offers a stunning picture. Fifty-one per cent of the male voters, and 61% of women voters, voted blue, marking a 17 percentage point increase among men and 13 percentage point increase among women for Democrats from 2024. Democrats gained among Whites, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, and every single demographic group broken down by age and levels of education. Indeed, if Democrats have won senate races in Kansas, Texas and South Carolina and even gubernatorial races in Georgia and Texas — all Republican strongholds — it is a telling indicator of national mood. The big picture is simple. Democrats turned out, angry and charged. Swing voters turned Democrat. Low propensity voters turned Democrat. The Republican base shrank.
Also Read I Trump defends Iran war after JD Vance blames it for Republicans' midterm losses: 'We had to do it'
Second, voters did not just repudiate Trump but also signalled an openness to a new kind of Democratic messaging on issues ranging from Israel and AI, and receptivity to radically different kinds of Democratic candidates. Zohran Mamdani’s pioneering mayoral campaign in New York — with its single-minded focus on affordability, unapologetic critique of Israel and America’s Israel policy, embrace of American pluralism, and use of social video — created a template for candidates and brought a segment of the Gen-Z crowd into left and progressive politics across states. Abdul El-Sayed, now America’s first Muslim Senator-elect, made history in Michigan while Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, put up a formidable senate challenge in a state such as Florida which is ground zero of Trump world. While more centrist Democratic candidates have prevailed, too, for instance Roy Cooper in North Carolina, voters appear to be sending a message to the Democratic establishment: this is not the time for cautious, middle of the road, politics; discontent and alienation is rife; and candidate authenticity and radical systemic critiques with progressive policy road maps can electorally work.
As America processes this mandate, and both parties draw lessons, get ready for two implications: a divided government in Washington DC, and a battle of succession within both parties.
The next two years and 2028 presidential polls
Trump’s personality and track record suggests he will continue to disregard Congress, use executive orders, and deploy his proxies to continue his confrontational and extractive approach to policy, politics and people. The Democrats, armed with a triumphant mandate, will control the finances available to the administration, kick-start investigations into alleged corruption, and exercise control over any nominees Trump wants confirmed. Don’t overestimate the legislative breaks that can be imposed on the executive, but don’t underestimate how difficult it can make everyday management of government either.
Murmurs will begin with Republican ranks on whether JD Vance is equipped to take over the MAGA mantle after this rout, or someone like Marco Rubio would have a better shot, or whether room has opened within the party for a candidate outside the Trump world. Which way Trump and his family weigh in will be critical. Within the Democratic universe, a mad scramble for the nomination among close to a dozen ambitious politicians will kick-start from this week, and the appetite for more progressive platforms will increase, even as the nomination is only likely to be locked in after Super Tuesday sometime in February or March 2028.
But beyond the immediate and tactical, the importance of America’s midterm results lie not in the victory of Democratic Party. It is in the return of democratic spirit and checks and balances to the world’s oldest democracy. And that is good news for the world and India.
