Jacob Heilbrunn

Donald Trump’s presidency now looks in danger of capsizing completely

It’s starting to look as though the historic mission of Donald Trump, who was a registered member of the Democratic party as late as 2009, is to revive American liberalism. On Tuesday night, Trump, who earlier in the day had tweeted ‘Roy Moore will always vote with us’, accomplished his most improbable feat since winning the presidency. He helped hand over a Senate seat in Alabama, sweet home Alabama, the reddest of red states, to the Democratic candidate Doug Jones, a supporter of abortion rights and stricter gun controls. And so there was no sweetness for Trump last night. Instead, he had to eat bitterness, as the Chinese saying has it. A presidency that was already lurching unsteadily is now in danger of capsizing completely. As he bellows and rants about his enemies, the Captain Queeg of the White House may be about to face a mutiny inside his own party.

The first and most obvious danger to Trump is that he has lost the nimbus of being a winner.

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