The Trump train slows
THESE DAYS are dire and dour for Democrats. But April 1st brought a brief reprieve—and not because of jokes. That was the day that the most expensive judicial election in American history in the battleground state of Wisconsin ended in a decisive triumph for the left-leaning candidate. It had drawn $100m of spending, including an estimated $25m from Elon Musk who also, perhaps counter-productively, personally campaigned in the state. The same day, two special elections in Florida for vacant congressional seats took place in safe Republican districts. Although they did not win, Democrats improved their margins by 17 and 20 percentage points compared with the general elections held just five months ago. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, staged a one-man protest on the floor of the Senate, excoriating President Donald Trump’s administration for 25 hours straight—a stunt, to be sure, but one that demonstrated proof of life in a party that supporters worried had gone limp.
These are signs that a backlash is building to Mr Trump’s thundering first months in office. “What you can take away from my race is Democrats are really mad,” says Randy Fine, one of the newly elected Republicans from Florida. “That should come as a surprise to no one.” Republicans had been so nervous about preserving their razor-thin margin in the House of Representatives that they withdrew the nomination of Elise Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, to be ambassador to the United Nations, in case they lost her seat.
Mr Musk has relished taking his chainsaw to the federal government, firing thousands of bureaucrats and cancelling contracts with impunity. That has also made him a radioactive figure. On April 2nd Politico, an American news outfit, reported that Mr Trump had informed his inner circle that Mr Musk’s turn in power would be concluding soon. Having the world’s richest man so involved in the gutting of the federal government may prove a liability long after Mr Musk’s departure from Washington—it does not require political genius to write the copy for television advertisements leading up to the 2026 midterm elections.
There is also greater appetite for self-criticism among Democrats over their electoral failures. “People felt patronised by Democrats. There was this idea that if you’re a woman, you must care about abortion. If you’re Latino, you must care about immigration,” says Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic state senator from Michigan who announced her candidacy for the US senate on April 2nd. Ms McMorrow, who is 38 years old, has called for Chuck Schumer, the 74-year-old top Democrat in the Senate, to step aside from leadership because the rules he grew up with no longer apply. “Trump has completely taken over this party and remade it in his image to a party that prioritises tearing down the government piece by piece…and that requires very different leadership,” says Ms McMorrow. The old guard of Democratic politics—the Bidens, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi—have almost aged out of relevance.
There is even a dim sense of optimism about who will emerge in upcoming elections. Two states, Virginia and New Jersey, will elect new governors in November of this year—contests that will be seen as bellwethers for the congressional elections of 2026. Historical political patterns suggest that, absent some sort of calamitous implosion, Democrats should recapture control of the House thereby ending Mr Trump’s legislative prospects. Even if the president is woefully unpopular, though, it is unlikely that Republicans would lose control of the Senate. There are not enough vulnerable incumbents. Still, momentum matters in American politics. Mr Trump’s momentum has made him appear unstoppable; it may finally be slowing. ■
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