Bowen: Trump's loss limits powers at home, but it will likely be different abroad

Donald Trump deals in superlatives, so there is political karma in the sheer size of the defeat handed to him by a big majority of the voters of America. But do not expect him to go gentle into the political twilight of his career. Losing both houses of the US Congress limits his capacity to dictate, manoeuvre and disrupt at home.

As president of the United States and commander-in-chief of its armed forces he retains broad powers to use America's military might. It is not easy to predict the actions and oscillations of Donald Trump. As president, he has turned policy u-turns into weapons.

Some things, though, are constants. The president might be tempted to blot out the electoral rout of the midterms by taking actions abroad. He might try to make moves that he can boast about as the decisive and victorious moves of a strong president, undiminished by an election that he insists, despite all the evidence, that was only lost because he was not on the ballot paper.