No, Trump Is Not Diminished

Midterm losses typically humble a sitting president of the United States, but Donald Trump is beyond humbling.

He is the most unbowed president ever to lose a house of Congress. Anyone who thought Trump would be taken down a notch, even by a more stinging electoral rebuke, doesn’t know the man. He will remain the ringmaster of American politics until the day, presumably in January 2021 or 2025, when he waves and gets on Marine One for the last time.

He made the midterms about him, because, really, what else would he make them about? Trump will never lose his interest in airtime, or the ratings. He boasted at a rally that, thanks to him, interest in the midterms was running higher than ever. And he was right.

Even if Democrats had a larger victory, on the scale of the Republican sweep in 1994, it would be impossible to imagine Trump getting upstaged.

After the so-called Republican Revolution, Newt Gingrich became a figure of fascination and stole the bully pulpit out from under President Bill Clinton. Gingrich soaked up every ounce of the attention and sought to govern the country from the House. This was ultimately unsustainable because a House speaker, no matter how compelling, isn’t the president of the United States and Gingrich, mercurial and undisciplined, didn’t hold up well under the press attention.