Midterm of reckoning for Trump
THE day of reckoning for American politics has arrived. Voters today will decide the $5 billion (R70bn) debate between President Donald Trump’s take-no-prisoner politics and the Democratic Party’s super-charged campaign to end the Republican Party’s monopoly in Washington and statehouses across the nation.
There are indications that an oft-discussed “blue wave” may help Democrats seize control of at least one chamber of Congress. But two years after an election that proved polls and prognosticators wrong, nothing is certain on the eve of the first nationwide elections of the Trump presidency.
Democrats have largely resisted excoriating Trump on his words and actions, although he has denounced the party at his political rallies as an angry, dangerous “mob”.
All 435 seats in the US House are up for re-election. And 35 Senate seats are in play, as are almost 40 governorships and the balance of power in virtually every state legislature.
While he is not on the ballot, Trump himself has acknowledged that the 2018 midterms, above all, represent a referendum on his presidency.
Should Democrats win control of the House, as strategists in both parties suggest is likely, they could derail Trump’s legislative agenda for the next two years.
Today’s elections will also test the strength of a Trump-era political realignment defined by evolving divisions among voters by race, gender and especially education.
Trump’s Republican coalition is increasingly becoming older, whiter, more male and less likely to have a college degree. Democrats are relying more upon women, people of colour, young people and college graduates.
Just five years ago, the Republican National Committee reported that the GOP’s very survival depended upon attracting more minorities and women.
Those voters have increasingly fled Trump’s Republican Party, turned off by his chaotic leadership style and xenophobic rhetoric. Blue-collar men, however, have embraced the unconventional president.
Democrats are most optimistic about the House, a sprawling battlefield extending from Alaska to Florida. Most top races, however, are set in America’s suburbs where more educated and affluent voters in both parties have soured on Trump’s turbulent presidency, despite the strength of the national economy.
Democrats need to pick up two dozen seats to claim the House majority.
Democrats face a far more difficult challenge in the Senate, where they are almost exclusively on defence in rural states where Trump remains popular. Democrats need to win two seats to claim the Senate majority, although most political operatives in both parties expect Republicans to add to their majority.
While Trump is prepared to claim victory if his party retains Senate control, at least one prominent ally fears that losing even one chamber of Congress could be disastrous.