ALTHOUGH the final results of Tuesday's US mid-term elections are still not in, a clear pattern has emerged: candidates supported by former president Donald Trump did badly.
As Republican commentator David Frum put it: "With few exceptions, from New Hampshire to Arizona, Trump-endorsed candidates slumped. Candidates who topped Trump's enemies list - such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp - won handily."
All except Trump supporters will welcome this outcome. Investigations into the January 6 storming of the Capitol may yet prove his downfall, but the man who still refuses to accept the result of the election that replaced him with Democrat Joe Biden is still out there in the field, leading, as usual, with the lip.
But the support he hoped would re-emerge at the mid-terms did not materialise.
Even so, Mr Trump's sense of self-importance may yet persuade him to run again in 2024, and the Republican Party may even be mad enough to renominate him.
But a more likely candidate for the GOP, it seems, is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who shares a range of policy positions with Mr Trump, but who remains within the conventional norms of US politics.
Governor DeSantis opposed mandatory vaccination and masks during the pandemic. He is a typical low-tax, low-spend, deregulating Republican who criticises Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
President Biden turns 80 this month and is showing his age.
Whoever stands for the Democrats, and whether or not Mr Trump is on the scene - or in jail - in 2024, America is a bitterly divided country.
This election did not result in Mr Trump's "red wave" but a colour-coded map of the US shows blue Democrat seats clustered along either seaboard, and a swathe of red down the centre.
Late yesterday, Republicans needed to a net gain of five seats to control the House of Representatives, and a single seat to win back the Senate.
The Australia-US relationship survived the Trump era, and no matter who is in power in Canberra or Washington, our positions as traditional and close allies is unlikely to change.
Luckily, the transition of power in this country is almost automatic.
Mr Trump may try again, but the results from these mid-terms are not the electoral encouragement he was hoping for.
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