Trump's Midterm debacle: A warning to Modi and Netanyahu

1.The Beginning of a Political Reckoning

The American midterm elections of November 3, 2026, may eventually be remembered as one of the most consequential electoral reversals in contemporary American political history. Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in 2024 promising to restore 'American greatness', has suffered a devastating political setback. The Democrats have captured both chambers of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives, breaking the Republican monopoly over the legislative branch that had enabled Trump to exercise presidential authority with relatively limited congressional resistance.

This is not merely an electoral defeat for the Republican party. It is a significant political repudiation of the governing ideology, economic policies and international adventurism associated with Trump's second presidency.

The historical importance of this moment must be understood in the context of the worldwide emergence of authoritarian populism. From the United States to India, Israel, Hungary and elsewhere, political movements have increasingly combined charismatic leadership, cultural nationalism, religious majoritarianism, hostility towards minorities and the systematic delegitimisation of political opposition

Trump's defeat raises an important historical question. Can authoritarian populism reproduce itself indefinitely through the manipulation of democratic institutions, or does democracy retain the capacity to generate resistance from within its own institutional and electoral structures?

The answer is neither automatic nor predetermined. Nevertheless, the American elections offer several important lessons.

2.The Failure of Authoritarian Populism

One of the most important lessons of Trump's electoral debacle concerns the limits of political spectacle. Trump constructed his political identity around an extraordinary combination of nationalism, personal authority, and economic populism. His promise was that America could be restored through the assertion of national sovereignty, the exclusion of 'unwanted' populations, the protection of American industries and the projection of overwhelming military power. However, his administration's policies generated contradictions that became increasingly difficult to conceal.

His tariff policies disrupted international trade and increased economic uncertainty. His confrontation with Iran produced an expensive military conflict and contributed to rising energy prices. His immigration policies generated opposition, while concerns about the cost of living became increasingly central to American political consciousness.

According to Reuters' November 4 reporting, frustration over the Iran war, economic difficulties and Trump's stewardship of the country contributed substantially to the Republican defeat. The results also demonstrated that Trump's endorsement was no longer sufficient to protect Republican candidates in several traditionally conservative constituencies. The fundamental lesson is that political identities cannot permanently substitute for material conditions.

Karl Polanyi, in The Great Transformation (1944), demonstrates how attempts to subordinate society entirely to the mechanisms of market generate social resistance. Economic arrangements cannot remain insulated from the demands of social protection. Trump's political experience illustrates a related contradiction. A government that promises economic protection while generating economic insecurity eventually encounters a crisis of political credibility.

The electorate may temporarily respond to nationalism, racial anxieties and cultural antagonisms. But when the cost of living becomes unbearable, political symbolism loses some of its capacity to determine electoral behaviour. The American experience therefore challenges the assumption that cultural polarisation can indefinitely compensate for economic failure.

3.Democracy and its Institutional Self-defence

Perhaps the most significant historical lesson concerns the resilience of democratic institutions. In their influential book How Democracies Die (2018), Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that contemporary democracies do not necessarily collapse through military coups or the immediate abolition of constitutional arrangements. They can deteriorate gradually through the erosion of institutional conventions, attacks on independent institutions and the transformation of political opponents into enemies. Their argument is particularly relevant to Trump's political trajectory.

The concentration of executive authority, attacks on institutional independence, hostility towards independent journalism and the personalisation of political loyalty are familiar characteristics of democratic erosion. Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) offers another important theoretical perspective. Arendt examined how political movements mobilise social isolation, ideological narratives and mass political participation to construct systems of domination.

Trumpism, however, should not automatically be equated with historical totalitarian regimes. The comparison is useful in identifying certain political mechanisms, not in declaring historical identities.

The American elections demonstrate that electoral democracy retains a capacity for institutional self-correction. The Democrats' capture of both chambers means that the Trump administration will face congressional investigations, legislative resistance, scrutiny of executive decisions and greater difficulty in advancing its political programme. The new Congress will also have substantial powers over appointments, appropriations and oversight. However, there is an important qualification. The Democratic victory does not remove Trump from the presidency. Nor does it automatically terminate his congressional executive powers. The new congressional majority will take office in January 2027. Until then, the Republicans retain their existing congressional authority.

The American constitutional system therefore enters a period of divided government. The historical lesson is that democracy is not simply the periodic counting of votes. It is an institutional relationship between competing centres of authority, where no single political organisation can legitimately claim permanent ownership of the state.

4. The International Consequences

Trump's defeat has consequences far beyond the United States. His second presidency has been characterised by the aggressive use of tariffs, confrontational diplomacy, military interventionism and the weakening of established international arrangements, The American electoral reversal introduces greater uncertainty into this political domain. A democratic-controlled Congress can investigate foreign-policy decisions, challenge military appropriations and demand greater accountability concerning international commitments. It can also increase scrutiny of presidential trade policies. Nevertheless, the American president retains considerable authority over foreign policy and military operations. Congressional control does not automatically produce a different international policy. Three consequences deserve particular attention.

First, the international credibility of American unilateralism has suffered.

Countries dealing with Washington may now recognise that presidential policies can encounter substantial domestic resistance. The assumption that an American president can indefinitely impose his personal preferences on international economic and political relationships becomes less sustainable.

Second, American allies may reconsider their dependence on presidential political commitments.

Governments that have organised their international strategies around Trump's personal relationships with their leaders may face new uncertainties.

Third, authoritarian and national governments elsewhere may discover that their political alliances with Trump cannot guarantee their international security.

The implications are especially important for Israel and India.

5.Israel: The Crises of Netanyahu's American Political Alliance

Benjamin Netanyahu has invested heavily in his political relationship with the American Republican Party and Donald Trump. The relationship has provided Israel with an important diplomatic tie and strategic advantage, particularly during the Gaza Conflict and the subsequent confrontation with Iran. However, Netanyahu's close identification with the Republican political establishment has created a vulnerability: the traditional bipartisan character of American support for Israel has increasingly become a subject of political contestation. Trump's defeat may accelerate this development.

Reuters reported on November 4 that Netanyahu's political opponents in Israel were already using the Democratic victory to argue that his political strategy had damaged Israel's traditional bipartisan support in Washington. Opposition leader Yair Lapid argued that Netanyahu's continued leadership endangered Israel's international standing. Historically, American support for Israel has rested on several foundations: strategic interests, domestic political constituencies, religious evangelical networks, historical memory, military cooperation and the influence of pro-Zionist lobbies.

But these foundations should not be confused with unconditional public approval of every Israeli government policy. Since the Gaza war began in 2023, American public opinion, particularly among Democratic voters, has become increasingly critical of Washington's military and diplomatic support for Israel. The Trump's defeat may institutionalize this political change.

A Democratic-controlled Congress can subject military assistance, weapons transfers and American diplomatic support to more intensive scrutiny. It can also demand greater accountability concerning civilian casualties and military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. This does not mean that American support for Israel will disappear. The strategic relationship has deep bipartisan foundations, and there are significant differences within the Democratic Party itself.

Nevertheless, Israel may increasingly discover that its relationship with Washington cannot depend exclusively on the personal political fortunes of Netanyahu and his Republican allies. There is another important dimension. Zionism is not a politically homogeneous phenomenon. It encompasses different historical, ideological and political traditions. Criticism of Netanyahu's government, Israeli military policies or particular expressions of Zionist nationalism should not be confused with hostility towards Jewish people or Jewish identity. The central issue is the relationship between state power, territorial nationalism, Palestinian rights and international accountability. The Democratic victory could become an important turning point in the relationship between Israel and America.

6.The Limits of the Trump-Modi Relationship

The American elections also carry considerable implications for India.

The relationship between Trump and Modi has been presented as an extraordinary partnership between two nationalist leaders who share certain political characteristics: strong personal leadership, cultural nationalism, civilizational rhetoric and national greatness. Their political relationship has also been supported by strategic cooperation, defence arrangements, technological interests and shared concerns about China. However, the American electoral reversal demonstrates the limitations of personal political alliance. Modi cannot assume that his relationship with Trump will guarantee the continuity of American support for every policy pursued by the Indian government. More fundamentally, the Democratic victory raises a question about the political model represented by Modi.

7.Savarna Minoritarianism: The Hidden Structure of Indian Majoritarianism

Here lies a particularly important theoretical distinction. The conventional interpretation of Indian politics describes the present political order as Hindu majoritarianism. But this description raises a fundamental sociological question. Does numerical religious majority necessarily translate into the political, economic and institutional domination of the majority?

The answer requires an examination of caste. The category of Hindu majority conceals enormous internal inequalities of social power, property, institutional representation and access to resources.

A political formation may mobilize the numerical majority of those administratively categorised as 'Hindu' through religious identity, while simultaneously preserving the social, economic and political domination of upper-caste minorities. This is where the concept of Savarna Minoritarianism becomes analytically significant. It identifies a political arrangement in which a relatively small, socially dominant caste formation exercises disproportionate power through the mobilisation of a much larger religious constituency. In other words, numerical majoritarianism can become the political instrument of upper-caste minoritarian domination.

The distinction is crucial. The political majority and the socially dominant minority are not necessarily the same constituency. Gramsci's theory of hegemony, developed in Prison Notebooks, provides a useful conceptual framework. Hegemony operates not merely through coercion but through the organisation of consent, cultural leadership and the construction of a political common sense. A dominant social formation does not necessarily need to constitute a numerical majority to exercise hegemony. It can organise the consent of subjugated groups around an ideological identity, that obscures the inequalities within the coalition itself. The Indian political experience therefore requires an examination of the relationship between religious mobilisation and caste power.

B.R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste (1936) remains indispensable here. Ambedkar understood that caste was not merely a division of labour but a division of labourers, sustained through graded inequality and the reproduction of social separation. His analysis also challenges the assumption that political democracy can flourish independently of social democracy.

In States and Minorities (1947), Ambedkar further examined the institutional and economic foundations necessary for protecting historically subordinated castes. These arguments remain relevant to understanding the relationship between electoral democracy and caste domination.

The American elections offer a limited but instructive comparative lesson. Trump's electoral coalition was not socially homogeneous. It brought together monopoly capitalists, conservative religious groups, nationalist voters and sections of the working class. The contradiction between the interests of these constituencies eventually became politically consequential.

Similarly, Indian religious nationalism must be examined in relation to the different and sometimes conflicting material interests of the social groups it mobilises.

A political coalition held together by religious identity cannot automatically eliminate the inequalities within it. This is one of the fundamental questions that the concept of Savarna Minoritarianism brings into focus.

Conclusion

The historic American elections of November 2026 offer an important lesson to contemporary political movements across the world.

No leader, however powerful, can claim permanent legitimacy. No political organisation, however electorally successful, can assume that its ideological dominance is irreversible. Trump's defeat demonstrates that political spectacle, nationalist rhetoric, personal authority and institutional pressure cannot guarantee electoral invincibility.

For Israel, it raises questions about the long-term consequences of Netanyahu's identification with the American Republican party and the future of bipartisan American support.

For Narendra Modi, it demonstrates the uncertainty of relying on personal relationships with foreign political leaders. For India, the more fundamental lesson concerns the distinction between numerical majoritarianism and the social distribution of power. The upper-caste minority can present itself as the majority by manipulating the religious sentiments. The language of national unity can conceal the persistence of caste inequality. Electoral democracy can coexist with profound inequalities in social dignity and institutional representation.

The historical significance of Trump's debacle lies not in the disappearance of authoritarian populism, but in the demonstration that its claim to political permanence can be challenged from within democracy itself. Democracy is not the permanent possession of those who win elections. It is the continuing struggle to ensure that no group can convert a temporary electoral mandate into an enduring monopoly over the state, society and the nation.