Democrats should celebrate this week’s victories, but beware: Trump is already plotting his revenge | Jonathan Freedland

The Maga machine is clicking into gear to ensure that defeat is all but impossible in next year's midterm elections

After the joy, the trepidation. Or at least the preparation. Democrats, along with many others around the world, cheered this week's wins in a clutch of off-year elections that saw Donald Trump's Republicans defeated from sea to shining sea. But now they need to brace themselves for the reaction. Because Donald Trump does not like losing. And he will do everything he can to ensure it does not happen again - by means fair and, more often, foul. Indeed, that effort is already under way.

For now, the Democrats are still clinking glasses, enjoying a success that tastes all the sweeter for coming exactly a year after they lost everything - the House, the Senate and the White House - to a returning and triumphant Trump. The most dramatic win was Zohran Mamdani's history-making victory in America's most populous city, New York, but there was success too at the other end of the continent, as voters in California backed Democrats on an apparently technical measure that could prove hugely significant. In between, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia by healthy, double-digit margins.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and host of the Politics Weekly America podcast