Perhaps Trump senses history might not be on his side
The US goes to the polls on Tuesday after an election campaign characterised by racism, anger, fear and a hope for change. Foreign Editor David Pratt takes stock of what we can expect from this bitter battle for the soul of America
IT’S already a midterm election like few others. Even the most cursory of glances at the campaign news and polls these past days make that clear.
Fear, anger, bitterness, hope are the hallmarks of what has essentially become a contest between two definitions of American nationhood. It is, in essence, a dress rehearsal for what in two years time will be one of America’s most consequential White House races ever.
“We’re in a fight for the soul of America,” was how Democrat and former US vice-president Joe Biden summed it up earlier this week, and how right he is.
The United States is no stranger to dramatic midterm elections. Cast your mind back to that Republican landslide in 1994 that changed the course of Bill Clinton’s presidency, or George W Bush’s “thumpin” in 2006 and Barack Obama’s midterm “shellacking” when the Tea Party came of age in 2010 and that much is obvious.
But all of that pales next to the political punch-up scheduled for this Tuesday when America goes to the polls. There is a palpable sense of intensity about these midterms, something very much reflected in the mood of the voters themselves.
In a poll conducted over the past two months by Reuters/Ipsos, anger was shown to be a significant determining factor in how ordinary Americans are likely to cast their vote on Tuesday. Among the 21,000 people canvassed, Republicans supporters were found to be angry about the potential for Congress to try to remove President Donald Trump through impeachment, undocumented immigrants coming into the country and the mainstream news media.
For Democrats, meanwhile, it was anger over the Trump administration’s now abandoned practice of separating undocumented immigrant families at the US-Mexican border, the potential for Russian interference in future American elections and the Republican president himself.
“It’s the most negative, blackest place to find yourself,” said Pattie Blair, a 74-year-old Democratic voter in Phoenix, interviewed in the poll. Anger , she says, washes over her every time she sees Trump on television.
“It’s like being in a bucket you can’t get yourself out of – a hand keeps pushing you back in every time you try to surface,” Blair told pollsters.
The poll’s conclusion points to the fact that angry Americans will be more likely to vote, and Democrats are generally more angry about their hot-button issues than Republicans.
The anger that keeps surfacing as the midterms bear down was very evident on Friday when the Republicans once again took aim at the issue of migrants, sparking fury with one of their campaign television adverts.
In the advert, Mexican man Luis Bracamontes, an illegal immigrant twice previously deported, who in 2014 shot and killed two California police officers, and injured a third, is seen laughing in court and vowing to kill more officers.
Words across the screen read: “Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay.” It then shows migrants pulling on what appears to be a border fence.
Trump, of course, has never been subtle about the racial aspects of his appeal to fear.
“I don’t want them in our country. And women don’t want them in our country. Women want security. You look at what the women are looking for,” he said, speaking about the threat from migrants.
Less than a week before the midterms this was familiar Trump, returning to the image he invoked on the day, three years ago, when he announced that he was running for President: rapists on their way from Mexico.
Needless to say he wasted no time in sharing the latest Republican campaign video on Twitter to the anger of many Democrats and even some Republicans.
Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called it the “dog-whistle of all dog-whistles”. “This has been Donald Trump’s playbook for so long, and when they go low, we go vote,” he told CNN.
The advert, many say, recalls the notorious Willie Horton campaign ad financed by supporters of the George HW Bush campaign in the 1988 presidential election.
That advert has since come to be seen as one of the most racially problematic in modern US political history since it played into white fear and African-American stereotypes.
It was regarded at the time as devastating to the presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis.
There are other ways, though, that the past might be about to repeat itself. Looking back over US political history, presidents have gained seats during the midterms only three times in the last 100 years.
Moreover, a closer look at the number of seats the president’s party has lost over the last 25 elections reveals that 16 midterm elections – nearly two-thirds of them – were “wave” elections, where
There is a palpable sense of intensity about these midterms, something very much reflected in the mood of the voters themselves
wave is defined as an election in which 20 or more seats change hands. In other words this is a recurring phenomenon in US politics.
Perhaps even the usually bombastic Trump senses that history might not be on his side this Tuesday. In an uncharacteristic lack of confidence, the President, at a “Make America Great Again” political rally in Iowa on Friday, admitted that the Republicans could lose control of the US House.
“It could happen. Could happen. And you know what you do? My whole life, you know what I say? ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll just figure it out.’ Does that make sense? I’ll figure it out,” Trump reassured his supporters.
He most certainly would have to “figure it out”, for if the Democrats take a majority in even one of the chambers on Tuesday, then not only does it open up the chance for them to more effectively oppose the Trump agenda but also get serious about launching potential investigations into his administration.
Right now for the Democrats the signs of that happening bode well. According
With just two days until the ballot, indications are that the Democrats after two years of wielding no practical political power in Washington, are poised to take control of the House of Representatives
to the latest opinion polls with just two days until the ballot, indications are that the Democrats, after two years of wielding no practical political power in Washington, are poised to take control of the House of Representatives, and the Republican Party will retain its narrow majority in the Senate and possibly even expand it.
Currently, Republicans hold a 23-seat majority in the 435- seat House, far wider than their two-seat majority in the 100-seat Senate, but are more vulnerable in the lower chamber where they are defending 41 seats without an incumbent on the ballot, the most since 1930.
In the Senate, which gives more voice to the rural voters who make up an important part of the Republican base, Democrats are defending 10 seats in states that Trump won in 2016, some by huge margins. That favours Republicans.
There are 73 highly competitive House seats in contention, according to the Cook Political Report by The New York Times. Of those, 29 are considered toss-ups, with seats in Ohio, California, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, among others, up for grabs.
As the campaigning draws to a close Trump’s closing arguments have almost entirely focused on the notion of American identity.
In the past week he has proposed scrapping the core of the post-civil war 14th amendment that gives citizenship to people born in America.
He has also sent 5,000 US soldiers to protect America’s border with Mexico from a caravan of Central American migrants.
Add these troops to the 16,700 existing border protection agents, and the US will in effect have deployed more armed men and women to stave off what Trump calls a border “invasion” than it has in the field in Afghanistan.
“They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back,” the President warned on Thursday. “We’ll consider – and I told them – consider it a rifle.”
By Friday though Trump’s fiery rhetoric implying that troops would open fire had eased.
“They do that with us, they’re going to be arrested,” he now said. “There are going to be problems. I didn’t say shoot. I didn’t say shoot.”
On Friday, it was left to Trump’s ultimate nemesis, former president Barack Obama, to warn voters against the kind of rhetoric he said was meant to sow fear.
“We have seen repeated attempts to divide us with rhetoric designed to make us angry and make us fearful,” Obama said in Miami, where he was campaigning in support of Democratic candidates.
“But in four days, Florida, you can be a check on that kind of behaviour,” Obama said, despite being repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, prompting him to quip: “Why is it that the folks who won the last election are so mad all the time?”
The mood at the campaign rally was typical of most over the past weeks where both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly conscious that Tuesday’s midterm is considered a referendum on President Trump.
The measure of what they sense is at stake has also been highlighted by the scale of election fundraising by both sides
This year’s congressional campaigns are on track to break fundraising records for midterm elections, with Democrats having collectively out-fundraised Republicans.
Senate Democrats raised at least $551 million, while Republicans raised at least $368 million. House Democratic candidates raised at least $680m, while Republicans raised at least $540m.
The total fundraising in each chamber topped what had been raised at the same point in the 2010 campaign cycle.
Despite polling data suggesting that Democratic candidates could get a turnout boost that exceeds expectations, possibly tipping the scale for them in tight races, observers are still urging caution over predicting the election result.
“On the one hand, the pollsters could be underestimating the Democratic vote, particularly among young people and minorities, who tend to have low turnout rates in midterm elections,” observed New Yorker political journalist John Cassidy last week.
“If a powerful anti-Trump surge materialises in these groups, the much discussed “blue wave” could still drown the GOP. Conversely, the pollsters could be underestimating Donald Trump’s ability to turn out voters attracted to his divisive message, as they did in 2016,” added Cassidy.
While the results will be consequential, the election process, some observers say, will not be democratic.
As long-time America watcher and journalist Gary Younge pointed out in The Guardian recently: “Millions of people will be excluded, potentially hundreds of thousands of votes suppressed and many voting districts brazenly configured to favour one party or the other; not all citizens are eligible, not all those who are eligible are permitted to vote, and not all votes will carry the same weight.”
The makeup of Congress itself still does not reflect the US demographic.
Currently, white politicians, both male and female, occupy 80 per cent of the seats in the House and the Senate. According to census data, this group makes up just over 60 per cent of the total US population.
Women, although half the US population, make up around 20 per cent of those elected.
Meanwhile, the largest minority ethnic groups – Hispanic, Asian and African Americans – are also significantly under-represented in Congress.
But despite these peculiarities and problems of the US voting system, Tuesday will prove to be a momentous day and one in which many people frustrated and angered with the Trump presidency will want to make their vote count and voice heard.
Should there be a Democratic victory then doubtless Donald Trump’s most combative instincts will once again be laid bare.
Certainly, the chances of bipartisan amity will be precisely zero. With so many of the election contests likely going down to the wire, Americans and those of us looking on with eager interest from outside are in for a nerve-jangling few days.
The mother of all midterms and the battle for the soul of America is upon us.
The mood at the campaign rally was typical of most over the past weeks where both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly conscious that Tuesday’s midterm is considered a referendum on President Trump