Presidential United States: Donald Trump’s low hours. Will he be the Republican candidate again?

Donald Trump, president number 45 in the history of the United States, declared on November 15 that he will participate by nominating his name to be the candidate of the Republican party in the next presidential elections of 2024. The announcement was made from Florida, at his residence Mar-a-Lago vacation. Although his name no longer seems as strong as when he left the White House, expressing his desire to run again is Trump's move, in a bid to become the second president to return to office non-consecutively. This happens after the outlook for the Republicans in the mid-term elections was not as encouraging as they expected.

Generally speaking, it can be said that the ground gained by the Democrats in close victories leaves them ahead of their Republican challengers . In the Senate they maintain the majority with only one seat difference; 50 against 49 for the opposition. A very narrow margin, but one that allows them to maneuver politically for the remaining two years of Joe Biden's term, for example, promoting his proposal agenda or in an aspect as important as the power to confirm the current president's own judicial candidates.

Republicans without Senate and with House

In several states, CNN had already made forecasts with the wind in favor of the Democrats during the count. One of them was Nevada , where the blue candidate, former prosecutor Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated Republican Adam Laxalt. Democratic Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman succeeded despite the fact that his opponent, Mehmet Oz, a celebrated physician, had been endorsed by Donald Trump. Likewise, the Democratic party managed to keep their parliamentary seats in states like Colorado, New Hampshire and Arizona, while in Georgia they will go to a second round in December with the Republicans, who in turn kept North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida.

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Although the Republicans manage to control the House with 218 seats, over the 210 of the Democrats, the power of the latter in the Senate can stop the bills promoted by the Trump party. David Byler, an analyst and columnist for the Washington Post, says in this newspaper that what they called the Republican "red tide", that some polling figures showed higher numbers and above the Democrats, exceeded what a reading could have said. more realistic of those data.

In this scenario, the question arises as to how much the radicalism of some candidates who support Donald Trump's denialist discourse on the results that put Biden as president harmed. For the political scientist Alan Abramowitz, from Emory University, consulted by BBC Mundo, these defeats weaken "his (Trump's) influence within the Republican Party" for which some advocate restraint and moderation.

Trump, after his victory in 2016, said: "We are going to win so much that you are going to get sick of winning." However, for Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland, this is "the third election in a row that Trump costs (them) the result," as he said in statements to CNN, showing the discomfort of some within the same party towards the former president. Also, for others, he was in a kind of consultation about him and his allies in different crucial states in these votes.

For a significant section of Republicans, Trump's extremism loses them voters who are on a more moderate spectrum , which could hurt them in the future presidential race. Geoff Duncan, the Republican Lt. he distances himself from the ex-president tycoon.

Why does Trump seem weaker today?

On another margin, if anyone has been strengthened by these elections, it has been Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida reelected comfortably. This victory puts him as a strong candidate against Donald Trump to be the one who seeks to occupy the White House from 2024 to 2028 . The midterm elections have also shaken that image of a winner that the former president always wants to emanate, this for various reasons: his investigations, from his influence in the seizure of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to those related to the finances of his company, going through his absence from Twitter, after closing his account on this social network.

In this last sense, the arrival of Elon Musk as the new owner of Twitter seemed to indicate the reopening of Trump's official account, given the support that the Tesla billionaire has shown in the past for the former president's freedom of expression. However, according to a report by The Washington Post, Trump does not want to leave Truth Social, his own social network, seeking to make it grow and continue to be associated with his own personal image , despite having a much lower reach compared to the blue bird giant. With DeSantis strengthened and without as big a media megaphone as Twitter, Trump will have a harder time fighting his Republican return to the Oval Office in 2024.