Richard Warnica: This is the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s America. It’s going to be worse than you think - Toronto Star

Early tallies suggest significant wins for a Democratic Party that, for more than a decade, has proven mostly incapable of standing up to and beating back Trump, writes Richard Warnica.

A person walks to the Kanwaka township hall to vote Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, near Lawrence, Kan. 

Richard Warnica is a Toronto-based senior opinion writer for the Star. Reach him via email: rwarnica@thestar.ca.

The Donald Trump era in America — a uniquely destructive period of shattered norms, outrageous corruption and state-sponsored cruelty — began a two-year fade to black Tuesday night.

The final results of the American midterm elections weren’t available by the Star’s deadline. But late tallies suggest huge wins for a Democratic Party that, for more than a decade, has proven mostly incapable of standing up to and beating back Trump.

By midnight Tuesday, the Democrats seemed poised to gain control of both houses of Congress. They swept to wins in both the House and Senate in Republican strongholds like Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, redrawing the American political map in a midterm wave not seen in generations.

South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews and her family react after receiving news of favorable election results at the Charleston Marriott on November 03, 2026 in Charleston, South Carolina. Andrews faced off against incumbent Sen. Darline Graham in a closely-contested race for the U.S. Senate.

The election marked an inflection point in American history. It was the most decisive defeat for Trump’s party since the president first entered elected politics in 2016. It was also the last time the Trump presidency will ever be on the ballot for voters to judge.

The next time Americans go to the polls in a general election, in 2028, the president won’t be running. For the first time since 2014, Americans will be voting in something other than a referendum on Trump, his obscenities and his rule.

There is reason to celebrate then. Americans used the last real election of Trump’s career to deal him an embarrassing, emphatic defeat. The New York Times reported late Tuesday that House Democrats were ahead by 12 points nationwide, the largest such margin in any election for either party since 1982. It genuinely couldn’t have happened to a worse guy.

(Unsurprisingly, Trump himself denied any blame for the defeat. “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on social media. “Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”) 

Tuesday’s massive defeat, then, marks the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency — six years, so far, of spite and self-dealing. But it should not be taken for a new American dawn. Even with Democrats in charge of both houses of Congress, Trump’s ability to do damage in his final two years will be extreme.

He is, at this point, like a nuclear-armed Lear: a deteriorating, all-powerful egomaniac who can see the end coming. There may be no telling, over his final two years, where and why he directs his rage.

(It’s entirely possible, for example, that Trump will blame Canada if the Republicans lose both Michigan and Maine.)

Just as importantly, the world that built Trump, and the world he built in turn, aren’t going away. We are not going back to the time before. The old world is gone. There’s no guarantee the new world, the one after Trump, will be any less chaotic, any more predictable, any more humane.

In the lead-up to the midterms, I spent some time in Maine’s second congressional district, a toss-up seat held by a retiring centrist Democrat. In Lubec, on the New Brunswick border, I visited two houses on opposite sides of the same street.

Cars cross the International Bridge between Lubec, Maine (L) and Campobello Island, Canada, on the U.S.-Canada border town of Lubec, Maine. Lubec is the easternmost town in the contiguous United States with a border crossing to Canada.

On one side, the owner, a Trump supporter, told me he spent his days watching livestreamed press conferences from Fox News. On the other side, an elderly couple, both staunch Democrats, welcomed me into a living room cluttered with stacks of the New Yorker and the New York Times.

Two Maine households that live in the same physical space. They shop at the same stores. They watch the same sunrise over the same bay. But they exist in different realities, in different Americas. And as long as those differences — fuelled by algorithmic social media, a splintered information environment, and floods of unregulated political cash — persist, some core part of Trump’s world will endure.

The Democrats had a good night Tuesday. Their version of reality came out on top. Americans, and the rest of us too, should expect them to spend the next two years curtailing the worst excesses of Trump’s sundowning reign.

But it would be a mistake, now, to see Trump as an aberration. It’s a mistake we’ve all made before, after Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. We let ourselves believe that Trump’s first term was a fluke, that it wasn’t real. If nothing else, we know now that isn’t the case.

Yes, Trump’s party lost Tuesday. In a very real way, Trump lost too. But he is still president. His movement sustains. He remains, in many ways, the most American man. 

In Maine’s rural second district, which shares a 983-kilometre border with Canada, voters appeared set to buck the blue wave. Republican Paul Lepage, an anti-immigrant populist and the descendant of French Canadian loggers, was well ahead in early returns.

Lepage, a former governor, first gained national fame in 2016 when he proudly billed himself as “Trump before Trump.” His likely victory Tuesday should be a reminder that even after Trump, Trumpism, and many of its worst acolytes, will remain. 

Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a candidate for Maine’s second congressional House district, greets supporters before Vice President JD Vance speaks during a visit to Compotech, a composite technology company, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Brewer, Maine.

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Richard Warnica is a Toronto-based senior opinion writer for the Star. Reach him via email: rwarnica@thestar.ca.