A WEEK or so ago as the news came through that a blue tsunami had swept the US and that Donald Trump’ s Republicans had suffered near-annihilation, I thought of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
That book may have been inspired by Cave Hill, with its famous profile suggesting a giant face. Centuries later in the US, the giant of Trumpism had at last been overpowered, pinned helpless on the ground by the tiny Lilliputians acting together and delivering their ballot box verdict.
It’s safe to say the results exceeded the wildest hopes of US Democrats and civilised people throughout the world. After so many disappointments – remember how heavily-tipped Hillary Clinton was to comprehensively defeat the gross Orange Face in 2016? – there was a part of even the optimistic of us that thought somehow Trump’s supporters/brain-dead idiots would manage to win. I know people who refused to say out loud that they were hopeful Trump would be trounced, in case it’d put a hex on Democratic success.
Not that the game’s all over. Trump has two more years to run as a lame-duck president, but as someone suggested, a wounded beast might be nearer to an accurate description than a lame duck, and wounded beasts do tend to lash out at anyone within reach.
Still, there were many reasons to be cheerful with the results. For one, it softened Trump’s cough – he won’t have the unfettered power he had. Almost as importantly, the race produced Democratic politicians who might well be chosen to run in 2028.
One such is Jon Ossoff, the Democratic Senator for Georgia. If he ran and were elected, he’d be the first Jewish US President. Then there’s James Talarico, who won his Senate race and is – wait for it – a seminarian. And maybe the pick of the bunch, the new senator for Michigan.
The defeated Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, and allied groups linked Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism – with zero proof, of course. Donald Trump also called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and mocked his Muslim identity. Some of the Republican attack ads referenced Islam and his Arabic name, though many framed the attacks as being about his political associations and comments.
If he were to do nothing else, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed’s victory speech will be remembered with a heady dose of schadenfreude: Referring to Trump, he said: “I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in in January, you can go on and call me ‘Senator.’”
Boom. Whacked it out of the park.
Some commentators wonder if this really marks the end of Trumpism. There are two years left in his term in office and this deranged orange blob Is still capable of doing anything. Besides, these pundits say, Trump kept winning elections and was popular right until it began to bite into the average American’s pocket. That’s certainly true, but it’s also true that many identified corruption as the source of their disillusion.
That is to say, dismay at the sight of their idol lining his own pocket while they struggled to pay for food and a roof over their head. During the year 2025, Trump profited by $2.4 billion. No, Virginia, not million, BILLION.
We should all rejoice with the cheering American citizens and hope that they don’t fall under the spell of Mr Crazy again. After all, as we learnt at our mother’ s knee, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not even Trump could fool all of the people all of the time.
At the risk of being labelled racist, I’d simply say to the average American voter: What took you so long?
