Americans show their hand
Turbulent Trump rule falls under the spotlight in midterm elections
US voters decide on Tuesday whether President Donald Trump will keep his Republican majority in Congress or face a hostile Democratic majority after a bitter campaign for midterm elections described by both sides as a battle for America’s soul.
For almost two years, Trump’s rule-breaking, sometimes chaotic administration has enjoyed a largely free hand from the twin Republican-controlled chambers, but the midterms could finally see his wings clipped.
The entire 435-member House of Representatives and a third of the 100-seat Senate are up for grabs.
According to nearly all pollsters, the Democrats have a good chance of winning the House, while the Republicans are likely to retain the Senate.
But with turnout a key unknown factor and pollsters still unsure about the effect of Trump’s maverick style on voters, both parties admit that they may be in for nasty surprises.
After a campaign in which Trump was accused of racebaiting with repeated and unsubstantiated references to an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants bent on rape and murder, left-right divisions in America could not be deeper.
Although not on the ballot, Trump made himself the focus of the entire contest, jetting around the country to hold rallies, including in three states on Monday alone.
Trump declared “the Republican agenda is the American dream” and at his final event, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he called on supporters to seize their “righteous destiny as Americans”.
Democrats saw the election in equally historic terms.
Voters will “define the future, not just of Texas, but of this country, not just of this generation but every generation that follows,” said Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Senator Ted Cruz in traditionally deep-Republican Texas.
At every rally, Trump has vowed to his supporters that they will “win, win, win”.
But as he touched down in Indiana on Monday, even Trump conceded that the House may slip from his party’s grasp.
“We’ll just have to work a little bit differently,” he told reporters when asked how he’d live with a Democrat-controlled lower chamber.
Stirring fear of foreigners and trumpeting American nationalism worked for the real estate billionaire in his 2016 election victory against the Democrats’ establishment candidate Hillary Clinton.
But the angry tone has also turned off swathes of Americans.
Bernie Sanders, the leftist populist who some feel would have had a better chance than Clinton to take on Trump in 2016, lashed out Monday at the president, calling him a “pathological liar”.
“He is a sexist, a racist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot.
“He is trying to do what we have never seen in the modern history of this country, to do what he is doing right now, to gain votes by trying to divide the Americans up based on where we came from,” Sanders said .