When I wrote The End of Trump’s Toxicity ( The End of Trump’s Toxicity – YOUR EX ) in 2021, I thought America was witnessing the conclusion of a political era.
Instead, it turned out to be an intermission.
Donald Trump returned to power. The politics of division returned with him. The culture wars around LGBT issues that consumed his first presidency became not just campaign talking points but a governing philosophy.
The 2026 midterms may ultimately be remembered as the moment voters signalled they had grown tired of the endless conflict.
Democrats’ recapture of both the House and Senate was undoubtedly a rejection of the Trump administration. But it was also something larger: a rejection of the idea that politics should revolve around cultural grievance rather than practical solutions.
For much of the past decade, American politics has become trapped in a cycle of outrage. Every controversy has been presented as an existential battle for the soul of the nation. Politicians, commentators and activists on both sides have discovered that anger attracts attention, attention generates clicks, and clicks translate into political power.
The result has been a political culture permanently stuck in crisis mode.
Rather than talking about housing affordability, healthcare, wages or energy costs, public debate increasingly centred on symbolic battles that affected relatively few people’s day-to-day lives, social media amplified every controversy until it appeared to be a national emergency. Political parties learned that keeping voters angry was often easier than governing effectively.
No movement embraced this strategy more enthusiastically than Trumpism.
The Trump era transformed political grievance into a business model. Every issue became a culture war. Every disagreement became evidence of a broader conspiracy. Every compromise became a betrayal.
What the midterms suggest is that voters eventually started asking a simple question: where are the results?
You can only tell people their way of life is under threat for so long before they begin to wonder why their grocery bills are still rising, why housing remains unaffordable and why the problems they face every day seem untouched by the political theatre consuming Washington.
That was particularly evident in Trump and his acolytes’ continued focus on a range of cultural flashpoints, particularly including transgender issues, which occupied a disproportionately large space in campaign messaging despite ranking well below economic concerns for most voters. The issue is not whether those debates matter to some people. It is whether they deserved to dominate the political conversation while more pressing economic challenges persisted.
The electorate has now delivered its verdict.
Voters did not necessarily embrace a progressive revolution. They did not suddenly abandon conservative values. Nor did they endorse every Democratic policy position.
Instead, they handed down a message that was both simpler and more devastating: stop fighting imaginary wars and start solving real problems.
This should concern not only Republicans but anyone invested in culture war politics.
The temptation in modern politics is to assume that public opinion is as polarised as social media. It is not. Most people live in the real world, not online. They care less about ideological purity and more about practical outcomes. They are less interested in defeating their neighbours than paying their mortgage.
The loudest voices on the internet often mistake attention for consensus.
The 2026 midterms suggest that assumption remains deeply flawed.
That does not mean the culture wars are over. America has become far too politically fragmented for any single election to achieve that. Trump’s first defeat in 2020 was widely interpreted as the end of his movement, only for him to return four years later. History has a habit of repeating itself when people become complacent.
Nor should Democrats assume they are immune from the same mistakes. Progressives have often been guilty of our own forms of performative politics, substituting symbolism for substance and online approval for real-world persuasion.
The broader lesson is that grievance is a poor foundation for government, regardless of ideology.
People will tolerate outrage in opposition. They expect competence from those in power.
For years, Trump and his supporters argued that America was locked in a civilisational struggle against cultural enemies. The 2026 midterms suggest many voters were less concerned about cultural enemies than they were about economic realities.
That may not be the end of Trump’s toxicity.
But it could be the beginning of the end of the politics that made it so powerful.
