American voters have not only administered a comprehensive rebuke to President Donald Trump, they have also resuscitated the very Idea of Democracy, not just in the United States but around the world as well. Simply put, American voters have demonstrated that democracy as a working principle of governing arrangements has not lost its curative power. This happy denouement will be cheered across continents by all democratic and progressive voices.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.In his second presidential innings that began on January 21, 2025, Trump has almost on a daily basis demeaned the soul and spirit of American democracy. During these 20 months, perhaps every student of public affairs in every country has been given a reason, at least once, to wonder how could the United States – the world’s most prosperous country, with robust public institutions – allow itself to be molested by its own president. There seemed to be no power – in or out of the US – capable of slowing him down. Trump devalued the idea of American exceptionalism.Now, the disparate democratic voices have regrouped mysteriously – and, magically – to give Donald Trump one across the face. A good day for democracy.To be sure, he has not been unseated from the presidency. He will remain in the White House till January 2029. He will still have available to him the enormous, lethal power of the United States – to be deployed in his capacity as commander in chief. He will still have the presidential heft to make life miserable for his perceived enemies. He will still have sufficient elbow room to slow down the Democratic Party’s efforts to impose its legislative agenda on him. All that and much more; but, that aura – the invisible yet very much felt air of indestructability – has vanished. His friends and foes will no longer have any reason to fear him. The chessboard at home and abroad will get re-arranged.More importantly and perhaps more consequentially, the American voters’ rebuff to Trump will have a demonstration effect beyond the United States. To begin with, all autocrats, especially those who decorate themselves with the paraphernalia of electoral legitimacy, have been given a warning: elected authority is not to be exercised arbitrarily nor whimsically.Perhaps the most corrosive example President Trump has set these past two years was allowing his family and friends to make lucrative business deals. Cronyism was raised to a fine art. The blatant abuse of the prestige and power of the White House for business transactions got normalised. His son-in-law Jared Kushner has been romping all over the West Asia, entering into dubious business partnerships with unappetising princes and sultans in the Gulf region. [And, here in India we had poor Robert Vadra costing the Congress party a Lok Sabha election.]In rejecting Donald Trump’s Republican Party, American voters can be said to have reasserted the principle that public office is a sacred duty and that power has to be exercised responsibly. This principle is worth reiterating not just in the United States but all over.The voters’ rejection of Trump’s political persona is also a refutation of the idea of a “strong man” as the ideal leader. This ‘strong man’ theory carries with it the suggestion that the inherent divisions and disputatiousness of a democracy slow down a nation’s progress to greatness. In these last two years President Trump was a source of comfort and acceptance to almost every autocrat masquerading as a ‘strong man.” Invariably, the presumed “strong man” anchors himself in racial animosities and religious bigotry. President Trump has set a bad example and now he stands refuted. This too will find an echo around the world.Beyond Trump, American voters seem to have given a warning to political “establishments” of all variety. That New York and Los Angles, America’s two largest cities, will now have mayors from outside the established coterie is a clear message that conventional policy prescriptions are no longer working. New thinking and new sensibilities are needed in and beyond the United States.The most urgent and critical aspect of the US midterms seems to be the re-animation of the civilisational values of decency and probity in public life. As a society, the US never thought it necessary to ignore its spiritual and religious moorings; despite all the scientific achievements and the triumph of capitalism, American popular culture continues to anchor itself in a lasting belief that there are moral laws that lend an individual and society vitality and sanity. The average American, irrespective of his or her station in life, has always been encouraged to think that every individual is entitled to a good life, an ethically uplifting life. There was no place for the cynicism and immorality of the kind that Trump came to symbolise.It is this individual quest and collective assertion that have shaped the United States’ posturing of moral idealism during and since the Cold War. The Obama presidency, for better or worse, re-energised this moral posturing streak. Trump wilfully scorned any demands of moral consideration in public affairs; shabby and shallow preoccupations – like the staging of WWF wrestling matches on the lawns of the White House – carried the day and shaped American responses.Belatedly, American voters seem to have realised that President Trump has coarsened the country’s cultural and social capital. They have revolted. And the aftershocks of this revolt will be heard beyond the American shores.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.