Mid-term election results: what they hold for the US – and us
The biggest upsets from the extraordinary results in America’s recent polls were reserved for Republican politicians who thought beating the Donald Trump drum would resonate with voters. By
The US mid-term election took place on 8 November and although final results are not yet entirely compiled, we can already begin to draw conclusions. The results of this election actually were a stunning repudiation of what had been presumed (or at least hyped by Republican, partisan pollsters) to be an incoming electoral “Red Wave” as well as a rebuttal to the tradition of incumbent presidents being embarrassed by mid-term electoral results.
This election was also supposed to be in tandem with the impact of the veritable colossus that was presumed to be Donald Trump (and perhaps even, to a degree, Trumpism as a kind of inchoate ideological framework). It was going to be the backdrop for Trump to announce his next try for the presidency as well.
Then, a week after the election, Trump did formally announce that he was running again in 2024. If he is successful in this quest, he would be the only person besides Grover Cleveland, back in 1892, to be re-elected for a second term after being defeated once.
While Trump’s fans remain committed to him, a growing roster of Republican-leaning commentators have already decried his decision and Republican politicians and strategists stayed away from his announcement.
The leading Republican candidates most closely embraced and endorsed by the former president have largely crashed and burned. This time around, the electorate declined to buy the myth Trump was selling, even generating an unusual degree of introspection by Republican political pros.
Instead of voting for candidates genuflecting before that false god of 2020 election denialism and the idea the economy was in peril, that crime and immigration threatened to overwhelm the nation, and that the price of petrol would doom Democratic Party candidates, voters in Senate and gubernatorial electoral contests significantly proved unwilling to follow that script.
For many voters, there was continuing unhappiness about the Supreme Court decision that had nullified a guarantee of reproductive and abortion rights at the federal level, and a growing concern over dangers to the country’s democratic traditions by vigilante and extremist violence.
There also appears to have been a slowly growing appreciation of the impact of the Biden legislative victories related to the economy that, taken together, became more important for many voters than that Republican fearmongering over inflation, crime and immigration in many state races.
The result was a barely noticeable red ripple. In 36 of the past 39 mid-term elections, the incumbent president’s party took a beating, but not this time.
In fact, with some significant victories in state governor races, the likely addition of one seat in the Senate to the Democratic column, holding Republican gains in the
House to a marginal change, and various referendums in several states regarding reproductive rights, the Biden administration’s rhetorical gamble to focus on threats to democracy seems to have paid off.
As a result, the Democratic Party will now have a majority of the Senate with the vote from the vice-president available for any tie votes, and the remaining race in Georgia subject to a run-off on 6 December.
If that goes Democratic as well, the party will have a small but secure majority. With the Senate in Democratic Party hands, it will remain largely supportive of the president’s judicial, senior official and ambassadorial appointments, as well as any treaties that come to the body for a vote.
If the Democrats pull off a miracle and actually hold the House of Representatives as well, it will represent the most unlikely of results: the retention by an incumbent president’s party of control of both houses of Congress in a mid-term election.
This would be despite the relative unpopularity of that president (although polling has been showing a gentle uptick in Biden’s support and it is higher than that of Trump, the titular head of Republicans).
Expect the Republicans in Congress to be a faction-ridden bunch, bickering over how obsessively they should oppose anything proposed by Biden, or if they still owe some sort of fealty to Trump.
Meanwhile, Florida governor Ron DeSantis pulled off a stunning defeat of his Democratic opponent and veteran politician Charlie Crist, and pulled Republican candidates on the rest of the ballot to victory all across Florida as well.
DeSantis had at one time been
“mentored” by
Trump when he was first making the jump from a junior congressman to gubernatorial candidate, but feuding between the two men has now broken out into open verbal sparring, especially as the governor is increasingly being spoken about as a potential presidential candidate who would put an end to any ideas Trump has for gaining that nomination for the third time.
Despite there being very little that separates the two strictly on policy ideas, there seems to be a world of difference between the two men in their personal styles, demeanour and deportment.
Meanwhile, given the Republicans’ debacle in this electoral cycle, a number of its more rational office holders, political strategists and supportive commentators (even including long-time supporter and media mogul Rupert Murdock) are pointing at Trump and calling him out as yesterday’s man. Thus the Republicans’ fight for the nomination has now been joined over how it will play out in 2024.
The Democrats are going to have a bit of their own internal bickering over whether or not they should nominate a man in his eighties for a second term as president. Pressure about this will likely continue to rise, especially if it appears the other team is headed towards finding a new champion who is a generation or more younger than the incumbent president – or the previous one.
With this political landscape in mind, what does it mean for Biden’s actual policy choices and agenda?
One friend of mine, who has had a long career as a congressional aide and corporate representative, noted: “The small [Republican] majority in the House will give the yahoo caucus more sway. There is risk of the idiots holding up the debt ceiling vote in order to force draconian spending cuts in social programmes...
“I really don’t see much happening in the new Congress. Even if something passed in the House, the filibuster awaits. I heard one commentator suggest that Biden has decided to push filibuster reform for the purpose of codifying Roe [v Wade]… “I am fairly confident that Ukraine assistance will be continued because most Republicans support it, including [Republican Senator and Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell (although there is a Senate revolt re his leadership brewing).”
Looking beyond domestic politics, my informant added: “I see no hope for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, based mostly on the results of the Israeli election. I think there is hope for more brokered deals between Israel and the Arab states. Republicans generally support such deals so long as the [Christian] evangelicals agree. I do wonder what support we may give to the uprising in Iran. I think that could be bipartisan.
“I do think the new year will bring crazy investigations in the House including [into] the Afghanistan withdrawal. But without majorities in both Houses, I don’t see progress on climate change.
“Biden has shown a willingness to use all of his executive powers and then some (i.e. student loans), so I think he will do the same in foreign policy where a president is less constrained by the Constitution. Look for him to continue to try to strengthen Nato.”