It’s been one of those weeks when you feel that maybe, just maybe, the global tide is starting to turn on the politics of division and hate.
On Tuesday, voters built on a recent global run of hopeful election results to deliver a repudiation of Donald Trump that has reshaped the future of US politics. It was quite a night.
From regular battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, to those once presumed to be solidly Republican, like Texas, Kansas and South Carolina, a blue tsunami gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress and the majority of governorships. Some of the results were simply astounding. Trump still has two more years in office, but his power, and aura, have been greatly diminished. It was, as our editorial put it, a “reprieve for democracy”.
Our brilliant team of US reporters were spread across the country to capture the key moments.
David Smith was on the ground in Austin, Texas for a historic Democratic sweep, including a first governorship and Senate seat for decades. His interviews registered not just a shift in power, but a shift in tone, also noted by senator-elect James Talarico in his victory speech: “We are tired of being told to hate each other.”
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor and grassroots progressive, will become the country’s first Muslim senator. In an electrifying edition of our Anywhere but Washington video series, Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone were in Detroit to witness both the jubilation at El-Sayed’s victory party and some vicious displays of Islamophobia at a rally for his opponent Mike Rogers. Arwa Mahdawi was great on the significance of Abdul El-Sayed’s use of Arabic in his victory speech.
Gaya Gupta was in Kansas, to report on how discontent with Trump led the state to send its first Democrat to the Senate since 1932, while Ariana Baio looked at how the Republican candidates that had been explicitly backed by Trump were hindered by his endorsements.
Once the scale of the landslide was clear, we set out to explain what impact it will actually have: from the Democrats’ powers now they’ve taken Congress, to the implications for the global economy and a glut of historic firsts, including a first out gay male Senator. Politics Weekly America with Jonathan Freedland and Shrai Popat and The Latest, with Ankita Rao and Lucy Hough, featured sharp analysis of the Trump repudiation, too, while Stateside asked if Elon Musk, who poured hundreds of millions into the race, was actually Tuesday’s biggest loser.
There was an awful lot for our opinion writers to take in. Robert Reich wrote that this wasn’t “the inevitable midterm swing of the pendulum against the party in power”, but a more significant movement of anti-establishment populism fuelling the stunning rebuke of Trump. Aditya Chakrabortty looked at how the relatively new coalition that put Trump in the White House had been smashed apart by old fashioned class politics.
What a diminished Trump means for the world, and for other rightwing populists, over the next 24 months remains to be seen. The Guardian’s reporters will continue to cover in critical depth the decisions the president makes as his time in office drags to a close.
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