He’s still standing
US mid-term elections show that it’s going to take a lot more than the Democrats have demonstrated to date to topple Trump, writes Matthew D’Ancona
WITNESS, then, the difference between a bad night and a disaster. All US mid-term elections are a referendum on the presidency they interrupt — and these were no exception.
Donald Trump was certainly scolded by the voters, who handed control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats.
The President had to watch as, for the first time, more than 100 women were elected to the Lower House.
Though the pollsters are still sifting the results, there is evidence of a suburban recoil from Trump and his rebarbative style.
As Adam Schiff (Democrat, California’s 28th district) assumes presumptive control of the House intelligence committee and Jerrold Nadler (Democrat, New York’s 10th district) is poised to take over the judiciary committee, the President can expect investigations into his tax affairs, relationship with Russia and the inner workings of his shabby administration.
The risk of legislative gridlock is clear and present. And looming over the remaining two years of his presidency will be the spectre of impeachment: the House needs only to vote by a simple majority for this process to begin.
So, Trump has lost the freedom of manoeuvre that has marked the first, imperial phase of his years in the White House.
But there is a difference between an electoral scolding and a tornado of public fury.
Even the most partisan opponent of the President would be hard-pushed to describe these elections as transformational in character.
Yes, there were many symbolically, or statistically, significant victories for the Democrats.
In the 14th district of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest woman ever to be elected to the House of Representatives. In Colorado, Jared Polis will be America’s first openly gay governor. Rashida Tlaib (Michigan’s 13th district) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota’s 5th district) are the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress.
But there were disappointments, too. Beto O’Rourke, who captured global attention with his audacious bid to represent Texas in the Senate, failed to topple Ted Cruz. Andrew Gillum, tipped like O’Rourke as a potential presidential candidate, did not manage to win the governorship of Florida.
No less important: the Republicans have tightened their grip on the Senate.
They can block congressional proposals on (for instance) immigration, healthcare and tax-cut repeal. And, crucially, it is the Upper House that acts
There is evidence of a suburban recoil from Donald Trump and his rebarbative style
Where President Trump campaigned, Republican candidates tended to prosper
as the court of the American republic in a presidential impeachment.
These results mean, crudely, that Trump might well be impeached, but is unlikely to be convicted.
It is partly true, as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi declared in the early hours, that these elections had been about “restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances”. There was much animated talk about Trump being compelled by the new political realities into a new pragmatism, if not outright bipartisanship.
Some commentators even
expressed the hope that the President would now ease off his battle with the media and engage in a more conventional negotiating process between Congress and White House.
But this is to misunderstand how Trump operates.
As he never ceases to remind his audience, he is not averse to deals. But the notion that he is now, suddenly and contritely, going to sue for peace with the “fake news” mainstream media — his most reliable foil since he announced his candidacy in June 2015 — is laughable. The old battles will continue. The President will also be able to claim — with cause — that he is not the electoral liability many predicted.
Where he campaigned, Republican candidates tended to prosper. These elections were an expression of widespread discontent. But they cannot plausibly be presented as the first surge of a serious resistance movement. From which Trump can, regrettably, take comfort.
In the course of this campaign he explicitly praised a congressman who had body-slammed a journalist; he promoted anti-immigration adverts so toxic in their bigotry that major television channels, including Fox News, stopped running them; he shrugged off questions about the ad by telling a reporter “Your questions are offensive”; he warned in a tweet this week that “illegal voting” would be punished with the “maximum criminal penalties allowed by law”; and, worst of all, he promised to send 15,000 troops to the US-Mexican border to fend off the approaching “caravan” of migrants, warning that they would be authorised to fire live bullets at those who threw stones. In the past two years Trump has ripped up the rule book of the presidency, borrowed the language of authoritarian leadership and governed via Twitter, rather than the institutional machinery.
He has nurtured division, equated the neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville with those who opposed them, separated hundreds of migrant families at the Mexican-US border and, with the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh
(below), plunged the Supreme Court into the most bitter and controversial ratification in modern times.
The charge-sheet is extraordinary. And Trump was, indeed, chastised by the US electorate, but scarcely to the extent that he might have feared (and many hoped).
The resilience of his political base and the strength of the US economy — which has recorded growth near or above 3% in five of the seven quarters since he took office — saw him through: bruised, but still standing.
What will it take to topple this man? A lot more than the Democrats have yet mustered.
“Thanks to you,” said Pelosi, “tomorrow will be a new day in America.” Not so: there are, it seems, many dark hours yet to come before the long-awaited dawn.