Trump times are ending: who wins, who loses?

VANCOUVER - The way to figure out reality, the Greek philosopher Protogoras once said, was: “homo mensura.” Meaning, essentially, that humans are the measure of all things, and how we measure existence. Not God, us.

For the past two years - and for four long years, four years before that - Donald J. Trump upended Protogoras’ formulation. Trump was The Everything. He was the scale on which all politics was measured.

Unless you were in a coma in 2016-2020 (and for a timely reoccurrence in 2025-2026), you knew that. There was nothing, nowhere, that was not affected by the presidencies of Donald Trump.

In Canada, we were supposed to have a big Conservative majority government led by Pierre Poilievre. Remember that? Didn’t happen: it was in all the papers. Justin Trudeau finally departed the scene, Mark Carney appeared, yes. But the biggest change was wrought by Donald Trump. He elected Mark Carney, and made Carney one of the most popular Prime Ministers in history by saying and doing stupid things.

In Ontario, Doug Ford had been granted successive majorities by the desire for change, then the pandemic. The third time around, he won a majority solely because of Donald Trump - Mark Carney hadn’t appeared on the scene yet, so Ford became the nation’s designated anti-Trump guy.

Because Trump was wildly, excessively Right-wing, the pendulum swung wildly to the Left in America, of all places.  Zohran Mamdani, a crypto-Islamist democratic socialist, was elected mayor of the city with the biggest Jewish diaspora in the world - Trump’s hometown - because he was the anti-Trump.

In Australia, in Hungary, in Poland, in the Netherlands, everywhere else, too: Trump’s second-round bullying and bluster shocked and angered much of the world. Policies were passed, and parties elected - or un-elected, as in Israel this month - partly in reaction to Donald Trump. Trumpa mensura.

Well, as they say, that was then, this is now. On Tuesday night, the Democratic Party oversaw the biggest Congressional landslide in half a Century. The Iran war, the corruption, the cost of everything all were factors, yes. But none so much as Donald Trump. The mid-terms weren’t an election as much as a ritual exorcism of the President of the United States.

When the vote-counting is done, Trump will have been rendered the lamest of lame ducks. All of his grand project - the insane tariffs, the bloody immigration policing, the coddling of enemies and the alienation of allies - will sputter to an ignominious end.

People everywhere, in their wisdom, have already factored this in. The pundits may not have known it, but the people sure saw it coming.

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