Politico’s John Harris argues President Donald Trump lost his “aura of mysticism” in Tuesday’s midterm results, and that his political style leaves him poorly suited to adapt.
The wave swept Republicans out of former strongholds including Texas, Ohio, Kansas, and South Carolina, in a movement Harris says was powered by Democratic voters as motivated to oppose Trump as his own movement once was to back him.
Harris points out that former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush responded to midterm setbacks by recalibrating. Trump, he argues, might never have won the presidency if that were his instinct. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Trump said of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom many in both parties expect to depart, “I think he’s terrific actually.” He told Politico he would work with Democrats when possible and veto when not, sounding, Harris writes, “notably subdued.”
Harris asks whether Trump’s team understood that the grievance that fueled them could be turned against them, and says Trump politics runs on “tribal psychology.” After 2024, even Democrats came to see Trump as having an “imponderable power,” Harris writes, and Trump himself believed in it most.
Against that, Harris cites a New York Times analysis estimating a 15-point swing toward Democrats from 2024, with 28 points among Hispanic voters. He credits a reaction among legal Hispanic voters to Trump’s deportation policy for Democrats’ strength in Texas, including Gina Hinojosa’s win over Gov. Greg Abbott. He says high Black turnout was needed for Democrats to win a South Carolina Senate seat and possibly a Mississippi race that was still too close to call.
Harris says Trump owns the Texas and South Carolina Senate losses because he helped lead to the nominations of Ken Paxton and Darline Graham. Trump told the Journal, “It’s just the way the ball bounces sometimes.”
Harris’s verdict: Trump asked voters to make the election about him, “and they agreed.”
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