Trump is past his use-by date

Ahead of the US mid-terms, at a time of steep inflation, few anticipated that the Democrats would receive their best results under an incumbent president for 24 years. That outcome, under Joe Biden, who turns 80 on November 20 and is unpopular, is a major setback for the Republican Party. Sunday’s announcement that Democrats will continue to control the US Senate, with Vice-President Kamala Harris using her vote to break deadlocks, is a disaster for Donald Trump. So is the spectacle of Republicans still struggling to attain the 218 seats they need to control the House of Representatives after polls showed they would do so easily. The Democrats are hot on their heels. If the Republicans win a majority, it is likely to be only a few seats.

Mid-term elections, typically, do not favour the party in power. Not since Bill Clinton in 1998 has an incumbent Democrat president had a better mid-term result than Mr Biden. That is a challenge Republicans cannot ignore if they hope to regain the White House in 2024. They need to be clear-headed about Mr Trump’s role in failing to achieve the success that was forecast.

Mr Trump, typically, is spraying insults, blaming everyone but himself in trying to deflect attention from his responsibility. The New York Post, for years his main supporter in the US media, noted on Monday that all but one of Mr Trump’s so-called “election deniers” – supporters of his disproved claim that electoral fraud cost him victory against Mr Biden in 2020 – lost in the mid-terms. Mr Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidates also lost. As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who worked for Ronald Reagan, wrote: “The weirdness of the Trump candidates – their inexperience and fixations, their air of constant meaningless conflict, their sheer abnormality – asked too much of voters, who said no.”

The “red wave” forecast to sweep the Democrats aside and provide the curtain-raiser for Mr Trump to announce that he is going run in 2024 did not materialise. He cannot escape the conclusion Republicans failed because his massive ego made the mid-terms all about him, not about Mr Biden’s policy failures. Republicans must get past Mr Trump and the destructive mania that appears to be driving him. The party has good potential alternatives. Mr Trump is scathing about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 20-point win last week but he shouldn’t be. The Republicans need strong, new leadership that is more in touch with reality and probity in government.