The official announcement this Sunday that the Democrats will retain control of the Senate after the US midterm elections represents a setback for Donald Trump's aspirations to run for and win the presidency of the United States in the 2024 election. Very good news, and all the more more striking because it was unexpected. It remains to be seen what will end up happening in the House of Representatives but, in any case, even if the victory falls in his favour by a handful of elected members, it is clear that Trump's bubble has burst, contrary to the poll predictions, dragging the Republicans to very poor results and breaking the tradition that the party that holds the White House loses the midterms.
For the first time in two decades this has not been the case, and with economic conditions difficult and a presidency made blurry by the poor role played by Biden on many occasions, the Republican opposition has taken a major blow. The omnipresence of Trump in the campaign and the result produced allow one to be minimally optimistic that even if the former president may retain significant support among Republicans, he is no longer what he used to be among his own supporters and he prompts a significant rejection across American society.
The truth is that Trump had everything ready to go last Tuesday, election day, to announce his candidacy for the Republican primaries in the White House and he still hasn't done it. First, because the results seemed favourable but they were very tight, and later because in this slow vote count process that we see in the US - it is hard to understand why it takes days to obtain the result - the seats that were in the balance and most disputed have been falling to the Democrats. The definitive result that guarantees control of the upper house was the victory of senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D) in Nevada on Sunday.
President Biden may face a substantially better final stretch of his term than was forecast just a few days ago. The result even allows him to publicly speculate on possible re-election, a possibility that no-one expected, because he is about to turn 80 and his state of health does not seem the best possible, given certain situations that have occurred in public. In any case, it is a midterm blast of oxygen for himself and for the Democrats. Meanwhile, everything points to the fact that the Republicans may have some lively primaries ahead, because the questioning of Trump is starting to get some momentum.