Former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) had hoped that the victories of candidates he supported in the midterm elections on Tuesday (8) would accredit him as the undisputed leadership of the Republican Party today and pave the way for his attempt to return to the White House.
The result was not exactly that, and setbacks in the names he endorsed undermine his political capital to the point that his candidacy two years from now is put in jeopardy.
The most striking defeat among Trump supporters was in Pennsylvania, where Republican Mehmet Oz lost the Senate race to Democrat John Fetterman, the seat that the former president’s party held in the house.
In Michigan, two Trump-backed candidates, Tudor Dixon and Kristina Karamo, were defeated in the race for governor and secretary of state, respectively.
In Arizona, Kari Lake, a candidate for the government supported by Trump, and Blake Masters, a candidate for the Senate, appear in second place in the poll that had not indicated a definitive result until the beginning of the night of this Thursday (10).
Candidates with the former president’s seal also won victories, such as JD Vance, who won the Senate race for Ohio, as well as Ted Budd and Katie Britt, who won seats in the house for North Carolina and Alabama, respectively.
However, the defeats seem to have outweighed the victories, and part of the Republicans and the conservative American press already express the desire that the re-elected governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, be the party’s candidate for the presidency in 2024.
Many supporters asked Trump to postpone an announcement he had promised until next week (probably of his pre-candidacy). “It’s clear that the GOP’s center of gravity is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago,” David Urban, a former Trump ally, told the Washington Post, referring to DeSantis and the United States. former president’s resort.
Conservative press distances itself
The New York Post, traditionally aligned with Republicans, on Thursday put on its cover a caricature of Trump as the character Humpty Dumpty (making the pun Trumpty Dumpty) sitting on a wall. “Don (who failed to build the wall) suffered a huge fall – will the Republicans be able to rebuild the party?” the headline asked.
“What Tuesday night’s results suggest is that Trump is perhaps the most profound vote-repellent in modern American history,” wrote columnist John Podhoretz.
In an article on the website of conservative magazine National Review, columnist Charles CW Cooke called Trump a “loser”.
“He narrowly beat America’s most unpopular woman in 2016 [Hillary Clinton]was president during a blue wave in 2018
[numa referência às vitórias democratas nas midterms daquele ano]lost to a barely breathing Joe Biden in 2020 and handpicked a bunch of losing Republican candidates in 2022,” he criticized, before arguing that Ron DeSantis is a “winner”.
“He stopped the Democrat wave [na Flórida] In 2018, he overcame the biggest challenge of the past four years – the Covid-19 pandemic – and was re-elected by the largest margin achieved by any Republican gubernatorial candidate in Florida’s 177-year history,” said Cooke.
Wear
For public management specialist Ricardo Valadão, the Republicans did not achieve the landslide victory they had hoped for due to several factors, such as the democratic mobilization after the overthrow in June of the Roe v. Wade (which prevented American states from banning abortion before the so-called viability – the minimum period of gestation for a fetus to survive outside the uterus, now estimated at about 24 weeks), but also because of a erosion of Trump’s image – a problem that also hits Democrat Joe Biden.
“Both Biden and Trump have a very tired image, they have already suffered a lot of wear and tear. Anyone seeking a more central debate is being excluded,” Valadão pointed out.
“Biden is approaching 80 years old, people want a bolder leadership, his approval doesn’t reach 40%. Trump, on the other hand, will have a very close race with Ron DeSantis, who was easily re-elected in Florida,” said the expert.
Even without a “red wave” (the color of the Republican Party), the perspective is for a strengthened opposition for 2024. “The Republicans will come out strong, regardless of whether Trump or Ron DeSantis is the candidate, because the economy will weigh much further down the road, even more with the interest rate increasing”, said Valadão.
#allied #midterm #defeats #threaten #Trumps #candidacy