'I was cock-a-hoop in 2024. But that glorious Trump presidential win seems a long time ago'

Laura Perrins

WHEN DONALD J Trump was elected President of the United States for a second but not consecutive term in 2024 I was cock-a-hoop. Such joy!

The Americans had thoroughly rejected DEI Harris, and the sunny uplands of steady economic growth, the rejection of woke nonsense and an end to stupid foreign wars lay ahead.

Sure, Trump is unconventional and unpredictable, but you hope for the best.

After the blue tsunami of the midterm elections on Tuesday, that glorious Trump presidential win seems a long time ago.

Conservatives should not underestimate the scale of the loss. Wins for the Democratic Party included Senate seats in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina and the governorship of Texas, all for the first time in decades.

In 2024, Trump carried Texas by 13.7 percentage points, Kansas by 16.1 and South Carolina by 17.9. As of 5 November, Democrats flipped seven Republican-held Senate seats, bringing the Democratic caucus to 54 seats, including two independents.

Abdul El-Sayed, a left-wing Democratic candidate, took the Senate race in Michigan against Mike Rogers. In Maine, Democrats won the Senate seat from Republican incumbent Susan Collins, who had held it for almost 30 years.

Trump put together an amazing coalition to win the presidency in 2024 which included taking the popular vote by 2.3 million votes. Hispanic men broke substantially in his favour, and of course young, white working class men were his base (many called him Daddy) and white women without a college degree strongly supported Trump, with more than 60% voting for him. He increased his vote among African Americans although overall they voted overwhelmingly for Harris.

The Trump coalition was similar to the one that Robert F Kennedy was pulling together for his presidential run in 1968, before he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet. Pat Buchanan, a Republican, also tried to build a similar coalition, eating away at the Democrats’ traditional working-class base. In fact, Buchanan was the first Republican to use the phrase America First in 1992.

But coalitions, by their very nature, are fragile. They consist by definition of differing groups with different identities. Once-in-a-generation charismatic figures can bring these groups of working class men and women with diverse identities, who love their country, together under a unifying vision. Trump’s message was simple: he would put America First. Trump’s slogan of ”Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” was seen as campaign defining.  

It turns out President Trump put Trump first.

The months rolled by and the whiff of corruption grew stronger, the talk of ballrooms grew bolder. This, I believe, would have been tolerated (or priced in) if the economy had remained strong.

Trump decided against that, slapping tariffs on goods and finally starting a ruinous war against Iran. The president failed to secure regime change in Iran; he got regime range in Texas instead.

MAGA can blame woke, leftist women all they want, but the Iran war, and its consequences were a major concern for American voters.

Indeed, a Fox News survey showed 75% of respondents were either “extremely” (42%) or “very” (33%) concerned about the war in Iran.

According to the AP-NORC poll, 62% of registered voters named the war as one of the most important issues, and a further 31% said it was “an important issue, but not one of the most important”.

The Fox poll further found that six in 10 voters oppose US military action against Iran.

As early as June this year outlets such as the Daily Beast were running headlines such as ’Trump voters turn against him over ‘terrible’ gas prices’ and ‘Americans are paying more for gas now than at any point over the last four years’. The vice-president also blamed the war in Iran for the crushing defeat.

Indeed, the Maine Morning Star reported on 30 October 2026, that ‘Heating oil now 82% more expensive than this time last year’. The piece explained “the average price for heating oil reached a new high this week at $6.05 a gallon, according to the Maine Department of Energy Resources. That means it will cost roughly $750 more to fill a standard 275-gallon oil tank”. That $750 dollars might not be much to Trump or Elon Musk, but it is a huge amount for the average voter in Maine.

This week voters in Maine elected a Democrat to the Senate for the first time in 30 years.

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Since Vietnam, American voters are sceptical of foreign wars on their own terms. When these wars are a direct cause of increasing domestic energy prices, on top of tariffs, they will punish whoever started that war. American presidential candidates nearly always promise to stay out of foreign wars and yet once elected repeatedly they get dragged into them. 

I suspect once the presidents are sworn in and the generals start pointing out all the shiny toys at the tip of their fingers, presidents seem to turn into eight-year-old boys once again, playing soldiers. Resistance is futile.

President Kennedy was dragged into Vietnam, although he did avert an actual nuclear war only months before. President Johnson was desperate to end the war in Vietnam, a war that destroyed his presidency, but that passed to Nixon.

President Bush Sr launched the first Iraq war, President George W Bush launched the war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war. In Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq 2, the Americans eventually cut and ran. America has many admirable virtues, the ability to wage war to any purpose is not one of them.

President Trump is still at war in Iran, although without soldiers on the ground. He now needs an exit route, which will be difficult to find.

The Republicans can still put together a convincing campaign for 2028, but they will struggle to put together the same coalition of voters as 2024.

Coalitions need to be nurtured, not ignored; their interests must be protected, not sacrificed to presidential whims and dreams of a foreign war.

It is a long way back for the Republicans.