GO-FOR-BROKE CONTESTS REVEAL A CLASH OF VISIONS
Fear plays starring role in this political drama
WASHINGTON – What’s at stake?
Democrats warn that the midterm elections Tuesday will undermine the future of America’s democracy unless President Donald Trump’s authoritarian instincts are curtailed. Republicans argue that the nation’s sovereignty is at risk if Democrats prevail.
“Fear is the dominant issue, bar none,” said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.
That’s remarkable because the economy is strong and the nation doesn’t face an immediate foreign policy crisis, although there are trouble spots around the world. Instead of a sense of peace and prosperity, the final weeks of the campaign have been dominated by violence and conflict: the mass murder of worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the mailing of improvised explosive devices to more than a dozen leading Democrats, a caravan of Central American asylum seekers making their way across southern Mexico.
The campaign has crystallized clashing visions of what defines the nation: America First or an increasingly diverse melting pot?
“The character of our country is on the ballot,” declared former President Barack Obama, back on the stump in Miami.
“If you don’t want America to be
overrun by masses of illegal aliens and giant caravans,” President Donald Trump warned at a rally in Missouri, “you’d better vote Republican.”
Since his inauguration two years ago, the president has united his party and inflamed the opposing one. Though he isn’t on the ballot, he is at the center of both the conflict and its consequences. The midterm results will shape the second two years of his term and set the landscape for the re-election campaign that already has begin.
The (political) heat is on
One sign of this year’s high passions is the rise in early voting in states from Arizona to Wisconsin. By early Sunday, political scientist Michael McDonald of the University of Florida had counted a record 34.3 million people who had voted by absentee or mail ballot or at early voting stations. In the previous midterm election, in 2014, 20.5 million voted early; this year’s total may be close to double that.
The election returns will direct but not dissipate the nation’s political heat. If Democrats win a majority in the House, as nonpartisan analysts and strategists predict, they will gain the authority to launch vigorous congressional oversight of the Trump administration in general and the president in particular.
Democrats hope to win governorships held by Republicans in Rust Belt states that were key in electing Trump – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A half-dozen other states that have GOP governors have competitive contests, from swing states such as Florida and Iowa to traditional Republican strongholds in Georgia and Kansas.
Victories in state capitols will have repercussions for congressional redistricting after the 2020 Census and during the 2020 campaign, when presidential nominees could benefit from friendly governors’ statewide standing and their political organizations. One thing at stake in this election, then, is the next one.
A difference in battlegrounds
Trump and other Republicans are increasingly optimistic that the GOP will maintain control of the Senate, perhaps even bolstering its 51-seat majority. “I know we’re doing well in the Senate,” Trump boasted, though on Friday, he acknowledged for the first time that Republicans could lose the House. “It could happen,” he said at a rally in Huntington, West Virginia.
Ten Democratic-held Senate seats on the ballot are in states that Trump carried in 2016, some by double-digit margins. That has put Democrats on the defensive in Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Dakota, and it has made winning Senate control an uphill struggle.
In contrast, many of the most crucial House battlegrounds are in suburban districts where many college-educated voters, especially women, have been repelled by Trump’s disruptive rhetoric and his hard-line policies toward immigrants and others. Democrats need a net gain of at least 23 seats to take control.
The split decision – if Democrats flip the House while Republicans hold the Senate – would give each side bragging rights. GOP partisans would focus on the Senate outcome as “a huge validation” of Trump, Charlie Cook of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicted, and Democratic partisans would argue that the House takeover was “a huge repudiation” of him.
“Everybody wakes up the next morning happy because they heard what they wanted to hear,” Cook said.
Up for election Tuesday are all 435 House seats and 35 of the 100 Senate seats. Governors will be elected in 36 states and three territories, as will state legislators across the country. Mayoral contests will be held in 27 of the nation’s 100 biggest cities, among them Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Newark, New Jersey; Phoenix; Reno, Nevada; San Francisco; and Washington.
What’s at stake for both parties?
❚ The power to probe. Democrats will get more than a gavel if they win control of the House. They’d gain the ability to set the agenda and the authority to convene hearings, call witnesses and issue subpoenas. Many of the prospective new chairmen already are making plans. At the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said he would investigate corruption accusations against Trump and allegations of sexual misconduct and perjury against newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he would pursue alleged fraud and abuse at the White House and in agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in line to chair the Intelligence Committee, said he would revive the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who interfered in the 2016 election.
❚ A Senate safety net. Maintaining Republican control of the Senate would make it easier for the White House to win confirmation of judicial nominees and officials in the Cabinet, where turnover is likely. It would make it harder for Democrats, even if they ruled the House, to pass legislation that Republicans didn’t support or that put the White House on the spot.
In the most cataclysmic scenario for Trump, if the House considered articles of impeachment against the president, a GOP-controlled Senate could be a backstop in a trial over whether to remove him from office. ❚ The demography of democracy. The midterms have broken ground in the gender, race, religion and sexual orientation of candidates, mostly Democrats. Among the competitive races, Georgia could become the first state to elect an African-American woman as governor. Kansas and New Mexico could send the first Native American women to serve in Congress. Michigan and Minnesota are poised to elect the first Muslim women to Congress.
An unprecedented number of women have been nominated by the major parties for office this year, in part spurred by opposition to Trump and by the #MeToo movement. Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics reported records at every level: 23 female nominees for the Senate, 237 for the House, 16 for governor. Though women are partisans, to be sure, some academic studies found that female officeholders tend to govern differently than male ones. If the number of women in office significantly increases, they could change the issues that get traction and the way some political coalitions are forged.