Democrats should not get their hopes up after Roy Moore's defeat – Trump still holds power over the electorate

Democrats have been walking on air for a few days now. Actually, since last Tuesday. First Donald Trump actually managed to insinuate that one of their senators – Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York – was a whore. Then, later that same day, the man he had endorsed to win the special Senate election race in Alabama, Roy Moore, went down in flames against his Democrat opponent.

Well, OK, so the Gillibrand Twitter posting wasn’t anything especially new from this President. It went like this: “Lightweight Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a total flunky for Charles E Schumer and someone who would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions not so long ago (and would do anything for them), is now in the ring fighting against Trump.” Vintage, boorish Trump. But it was offensive enough that eight sitting Democrat senators called on him to resign.

But it was the results in Alabama that really got the party dancing a jig. First, it was a giant humiliation for Trump who’d taken a gamble throwing his support behind Moore – even though he stood accused by multiple women of sexual assault (when they were teens) – and had persuaded the Republican machinery to do the same.

The loss also took Steve Bannon, the former advisor to Trump and Moore champion, down not just a peg, but a fathom or two.

It’s natural that the Democrats see the outcome as a first swallow in spring (or early winter) presaging joy in the midterm congressional elections next November. Already the Republican majority in the Senate has been cut to one.

If Democrats can be motivated nationally in the way they were on Tuesday, there is surely hope for taking back the House of Representatives too.

Never mind that the race was still close – just 1.7 percentage points separated winner from loser – or that Moore was a uniquely bad candidate. Democrats smell honey.

“Senate Republicans are rushing to duck responsibility and blame all of their problems on Roy Moore,” the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee declared last week. “But make no mistake: the same trends that our counterparts want to gloss over are emerging in Senate races across the country.”

But one swallow does not make a congressional landslide. There are all manner of reasons why even reclaiming the majority in the Senate will not be easy. The Democrats will, for instance, be defending no fewer than ten seats in states that voted for Trump last year.

Then there is the question of the stock market. It keeps going up. Not far behind are things like consumer confidence, job creation and even the biggest indicator of them all: economic growth.

In case you haven’t been paying attention (and don’t own any stocks on this side of the water), these last several months have been giddy for Wall Street. The S&P Index has risen no less than 28 per cent in the 13 months since Trump’s election.

While Trump loved to call his opponents names last year – Low Energy Jeb, Li’l Marco and Crooked Hillary – he has now earned a new nickname for himself. They are calling him the “Paycheck President”.

Earned? It is of course true you can’t trace the recent upturn in economic numbers just to Trump. Many economists will tell you it was the heavy lifting done by Barack Obama and his team that got the train back on its tracks, and Trump is fooling no one by claiming all the credit for himself.

Trump did not make it so that a string of large corporations are finally enjoying a high earnings streak just now. He certainly wasn’t the one who kept the monetary chains so loose for so long. That would be Janet Yellen, the outgoing Federal Reserve chief.

But he does claim the credit, and so do his aides. “Can’t make it up: Obama now wants credit for the booming Trump economy,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a tweet of her own last week. “At least we can all agree the economy is better under President Trump.”

Nor is it wrong that there are two big Trump things out there that the stock markets, at least, do like very much: the package of deep tax cuts, especially on corporations, that he expects to receive from Congress next week and sign – a “giant Christmas present for all Americans,” he says (a dubious claim) – and his undeniable alacrity for slashing red tape and setting businesses free.

More howls from you. Setting polluters free, more like. And profit-gluttons who have no concern for consumer safety or protection. But rolling back regulations is his favourite thing, especially since he can do most of it on his own.

Indeed, just last week he stood before reporters in the White House beside a mountain of papers meant to represent regulations all those Republican donors hate so much, and boasted that before long America will have fewer of them than it did in 1960. Sixty years of progress, almost, towards a fairer and safer land, swept away by one man!

Cutting taxes, gutting regulations. They are the reasons why most experts say that the climb of US stocks may have only just begun, and the Trump bonanza will last through to the end of 2018 before intoxication gives way to hangover and remorse.

That is why the Democrats should temper their excitement. Because for all the nastiness of the Trump tweets, the ferociousness of the cultural wars he has unleashed, the divisiveness of his administration and the humiliations and stumbles of America on the world stage, Trump and the Republican Party may yet come out of next year’s midterms singing songs of victory and of majorities maintained, because the economy will still be looking good.