Lorenzo Maria Pacini
The tragedy of two years of broken promises has ended with an unequivocal verdict.
A promise fulfilled in 22 months
On January 20, 2025, from the Rotunda of the Capitol, Donald Trump announced to the American people that the country's golden age was beginning at that very moment. Twenty-two months later, that promise revealed its true nature: an orange bubble inflated with slogans, which burst on the night of November 3, 2026, with a crash that few - even among the president's harshest critics - had anticipated.
The Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. The most significant result, politically speaking, was in the Senate, because there the race seemed all but decided from the start. Even at the beginning of the election cycle, independent observers considered regaining control of the Senate an uphill battle: the Republicans held a 53-to-47 majority, and only two of their seats were considered truly competitive. The result went far beyond that. The Democrats won seats in Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, and North Carolina and defended their vulnerable seats in Michigan, Georgia, and New Hampshire; ABC News projections - with the count not yet complete and Mississippi and Alaska still to be allocated - assign them 54 seats (as of the morning of November 4). In the House, the Democratic majority is estimated at at least 245 seats out of 435.
We are not witnessing the usual decline for the president's party in midterm elections - the one that Trump himself had alluded to in January with a mix of annoyance and superstition. We are witnessing a rupture that we can describe as geographic.
Rural and deep-state America - the part of the country that, until two years ago, would not have even considered voting against him - has slammed the door in his face. It was the vote of the average person who was promised prosperity but ended up with higher prices, a distant and costly war, and a president primarily concerned with talking about himself.
To gauge the significance of the vote, it's best to start with the exceptions, because here the exceptions have become the rule.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews defeated Republican Senator Darline Graham with about 50.6 percent of the vote to 47.2 percent. She is the first Democrat to win a statewide race for the Senate or the governorship since 1998, and she will be the first woman elected to the Senate in the state's history. This case is doubly telling. Darline Graham had been serving in the Senate by gubernatorial appointment following the sudden death of her brother, Lindsey Graham, on July 11, and had secured the nomination thanks to Trump's direct support; two weeks before the election, he had returned to South Carolina to campaign for her. It was in Myrtle Beach on August 21, during a rally for her, that the president coined the phrase destined to define his campaign: he asked voters to pretend his name was on the ballot. The state that gave birth to that slogan is also the one that disproved it first.
In Texas, James Talarico, a 37-year-old former middle school teacher and state representative from Austin, defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton. No Democrat had won a Senate election in Texas since 1988; Democratic candidate Gina Hinojosa also took the governor's seat from Greg Abbott. The numbers speak louder than slogans: Talarico finished with around 55 percent of the vote against Paxton's 43 percent, while two years ago Trump had won the state by a margin of nearly fourteen points. The net shift exceeds twenty-five points, and in the border counties of the Rio Grande Valley - the very ones that in 2024 had been held up as proof of the Hispanic conversion to Trumpism - the Democratic margins have returned to levels that seemed consigned to history.
In Kansas, Methodist Reverend Adam Hamilton - pastor of the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States and a self-declared centrist - defeated incumbent Senator Roger Marshall, a staunch supporter of the presidential agenda, with about 51 percent to 46 percent. Kansas had not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932: nearly a century. Compared to the 2024 presidential election, the state has shifted by about twenty-one points toward the Democrats. A shift of this magnitude cannot be explained solely by the suburbs of Kansas City. It must necessarily have extended into the agricultural counties of the Great Plains - that is, the sociological heart of the Republican electorate.
Finally, in Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed defeated former Congressman and former FBI agent Mike Rogers. A 42-year-old physician and former Detroit health commissioner, El-Sayed will be the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate. He won on an openly progressive platform, in a state that Trump had won twice, against an opponent who had staked almost everything on his alleged disconnect from the values of the Midwestern electorate. The symbolic significance is clear; the political significance is even greater, because it shows that stoking fear against a candidate is no longer enough to offset discontent with those in power.
"Pretend my name is on the ballot"
Trump ran this campaign as a referendum on himself. He held twenty-eight rallies, all in predominantly Republican states, and repeatedly told voters to vote as if his name were on the ballot. Americans took him at his word. The November 3 election was exactly what he had asked it to be: a judgment on him personally and on his two years in office. The verdict is in, and it was a rejection.
One fact is worth noting - and, knowing the man, it was by no means a foregone conclusion. This time, Trump did not cry foul; he said he was willing to accept the results, congratulated his opponents, and limited himself to arguing that, had he actually been the candidate, the Republicans would have won by a landslide. The difference from 2020 is stark. The simplest explanation is also the most likely: the defeat was so sweeping, so widespread across the country, and so well documented that any alternative narrative is untenable. Even a leader who has made himself the center of everything knows there is a limit beyond which propaganda stops working and begins to make him look ridiculous.
What remains, however, is the reflex of the offended child who takes his ball home. An hour after speaking of cooperation, Trump posted an image of a red cap with a single word, "VETO": anything the new Congress passes that he doesn't like will be vetoed. The message is clear. The last two years of his term will not be about governing but about blocking.
This is no empty threat. Overriding a presidential veto requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers, and with about fifty seats in the Senate, the Democrats are a long way from the sixty-seven-vote threshold. The result is almost certain legislative paralysis: Congress will be able to pass laws, the president will be able to block them, and neither will have the strength to prevail over the other. The new majority retains real tools, such as investigative powers, control over Senate confirmations, and above all, budgetary leverage, but these are tools of restraint, not of governance.
In the realm of foreign policy, the picture is even less favorable for Congress. The Constitution formally grants Congress the power to declare war and fund it, and the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was intended to bring the use of force back under congressional control. In practice, however, from the Korean War onward, presidents have waged war without declarations of war, and Congress has almost always ended up retroactively ratifying - through funding - decisions that had already been made. A resolution mandating the withdrawal of troops can, in turn, be blocked by a veto. In practical terms, therefore, Trump retains a very broad margin for international maneuver, and a president with nothing left to lose on the domestic front may be tempted to seek abroad what has been denied to him at home.
This is where electoral defeat becomes a geopolitical issue. The war with Iran, which began in late February with the joint U.S.-Israeli attack, has never truly ended: ceasefires, renewed airstrikes, and intermittent negotiations. In early October, the American press reported that the Pentagon was preparing options to resume large-scale operations, with three aircraft carriers heading to the region and plans to attack Iran's missile and drone arsenal as well as its energy infrastructure. According to the same sources, Trump had rejected five proposals for major operations in the preceding months. Other rumors, never confirmed, attributed to his advisers the belief that the best time to strike would come after the midterm elections, not before.
The risk of a furious last-ditch attack is therefore very real. And here lies a bitter irony. Today we are forced to hope for the military's common sense so that another war does not break out in the Middle East. However, we must be precise about which military officials we are referring to. Not the political leadership of the Department of Defense, which under Pete Hegseth continued to extend deployments in the region even as the president was considering declaring the conflict over, but the professional leadership of the armed forces - those who know the actual status of interceptor stockpiles and the human cost of a new campaign. That in a republic founded on the primacy of civilian authority, the hope for moderation must rest with the military leadership rather than with elected institutions is, in itself, a symptom of a deep-seated institutional pathology. But such is the situation, and it is best to view it without illusions.
The same applies to those around the president. For two years, his entourage was selected on the basis of personal loyalty, and that loyalty produced a court system in which no one dared to contradict him. After November 3, that loyalty lost its main incentive: it no longer guarantees either careers or reelection. One can hope that part of that apparatus will begin to do what it should have done from the start: set limits. Not out of virtue, but out of a survival instinct.
Every man for himself
The most instructive spectacle in the coming weeks, however, will be another: watching Republican lawmakers who, until yesterday, supported Trump unreservedly rush to jump off the sinking ship. This dynamic had already begun before the vote. In August, six candidates backed by the president were defeated in the primaries for the House or for governor - twice as many as in the entire first half of the year. The president cannot run for re-election in 2028, and this defeat effectively kicks off the race for his succession within the Republican Party.
In this race, closeness to Trump - which until yesterday was a requirement - risks becoming a liability. We will see senators who voted for every nomination, every tariff, and every war appropriation suddenly rebrand themselves as guardians of congressional prerogatives, the balance of powers, and fiscal prudence. We will see governors who have built their careers on deference to the president present themselves as the voice of "serious" and "responsible" conservatism. It's a farce as old as politics itself, and there's no need to be all that shocked. If anything, we should remember who said what - and when.
That said, it would be a mistake to write off Trump - and with him, Trumpism - as politically finished. The midterm election punished the president; it has not yet decided the post-Trump era. And within the logic of American politics, there is a perfectly rational strategy for the Republicans: to let the Democrats take the heat.
The reasoning is simple. With control of both chambers, the Democrats become jointly responsible for everything that happens over the next two years, but without control of the executive branch - that is, without being able to truly change things. Every bill will be blocked by a veto; every budget standoff could escalate into a federal government shutdown; every congressional investigation could be portrayed as partisan retaliation. Trump himself predicted this back in January, when he warned his supporters that, if they lost the election, the Democrats would find "a reason" to impeach him for the third time. The House can approve impeachment by a simple majority, but conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate - a threshold that is currently unattainable. An impeachment doomed to fail would be the best-received gift the Democrats could give the Republicans.
In this scenario, the country continues to deteriorate, and the blame is shifted onto those who control Congress. The Republicans, freed from the burden of a president whose term is coming to an end, would present themselves in 2028 as the alternative to chaos and secure a resounding victory. It is a possibility, not a certainty. But it makes sense, both within the logic of American politics and within the interplay of strategy and tactics that Trump has always practiced: losing a battle to shift the theater of war.
History offers evidence to support this interpretation. In 1948, Harry Truman won a reelection race that had been written off as a lost cause by campaigning against the Republican-majority "Congress of Do-Nothingers." In 1996, Bill Clinton was reelected after Newt Gingrich's Congress - which had emerged triumphant from the 1994 elections - had worn itself out through federal government shutdowns. In 2012, Barack Obama secured a second term following his 2010 defeat. In all three cases, the president who had been punished in the midterm elections managed to turn a hostile Congress into a target.
These same precedents, however, also point to the weakness in this calculation. Truman, Clinton, and Obama were running for re-election themselves: they could directly capitalize on the clash with Congress. Trump is not - and cannot be - a candidate running for re-election. The benefit of this strategy would fall to a successor who would have to, at the same time, capitalize on the legacy of Trumpism and distance themselves from it. Furthermore, when the opposition's midterm victory was accompanied by the president's forced departure from office - as in 2006 with George W. Bush - the presidency changed hands two years later. Nor should we forget 1998: the Republicans who sought Clinton's impeachment lost seats in the House, bucking all historical trends.
The outcome will therefore depend on which of the two parties manages to shape the narrative of the next two years. If the Democrats use their majority for revenge and gridlock, the Republican strategy stands a good chance of succeeding. If, on the other hand, they manage to present the country with concrete and understandable economic measures, forcing Trump to veto popular legislation, it will be the president who comes up short, and the blame will shift. Neither scenario is a foregone conclusion.
The tragedy is over, but the comedy continues
For those looking at the United States from the outside - and particularly from Europe - the night of November 3 delivers a lesson that is less comforting than it might seem. A superpower with a politically defeated president who still holds war powers is an unstable variable. Capitals that have unresolved issues with Washington - from Tehran to Moscow to Beijing - will interpret the vote as a sign of weakness and will tend to wait until 2028; in the meantime, however, the man sitting in the White House might want to prove that he is not finished. The most dangerous phase of a presidency is not always its rise. Sometimes it is its decline.
Domestically, the tragedy of two years of broken promises has ended with an unequivocal verdict. Now the farce begins: last-minute defectors, spiteful vetoes, investigations, and maneuvers for the succession. It would be naive to consider it harmless. Behind the scenes of a political farce, wars and peace are often decided, and the curtain has not yet fallen on the Trump presidency.