Μake us preferred on Google Hubris triggers Nemesis. And Nemesis is even more cathartic when it’s delivered by the entity that brought the Hubris into being. In this instance, the American voter.
Because the President the American electorate chose in 2024 had become hubris incarnate.
He has antagonized U.S. society and its institutions, America’s allies and the entire Western world, as well as the global international order.
He has proclaimed that the only constraints he recognizes are the limits of his own power.
The November 3 elections slammed the brakes on this President. They stripped him of his control over the legislative bodies—and did so by substantial majorities.
Above all, they stripped him of the narrative that he is God-sent to save America, and perhaps the entire planet.
But it remains to be seen whether his unbridled megalomania can be reined in. At the very least, we will see what can be rectified, though people do not change.
Because Trump remains President of the United States, which is something the November 3 elections could not alter. He remains in the White House, wielding the authority and prerogatives of a U.S. President.
It would be more accurate to say the new blue majority in Congress has brought Trump’s “imperial period” to an end But not his presidency.
So I won’t rush to declare “the beginning of the end.” There are two whole years of his term still to run, and that’s a chunk of time.
Still, the U.S. President is an elderly man in the twilight of his presidency, facing widely acknowledged limitations now compounded by a heavy electoral defeat.
It will not be easy for him to govern by veto, as he has threatened to do.
But American democracy possesses both tolerance and resilience. As has happened in the past, it will find ways for a President and an opposing legislative majority to coexist.
Naturally, it won’t be easy for Trump to revise the style and behaviors that fed into his Hubris. He may not even have grasped the magnitude of the rejection he has suffered.
We will have to wait and see what the future brings. For now, America will plunge into the partisan battles that precede a presidential election. And slated for 2028, this presidential race appears more wide open than ever.
The question now is how the world—and Europe in particular—will gird itself to respond to the Nemesis brought down by the American electorate.
Which is to say how it will deal with an America that is no longer what it once was—and likely never will be again.
