Alwaght- The US is holding its midterm elections today. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate will be contested. In addition, 39 state and territorial governorships as well as numerous other state and local elections will also be contested. These elections are of significance to the country’s future politics.
According to the polls, the Democrats have a greater chance of winning the House. But the Republicans very likely will keep their majority at the Senate. The Democrats need 23 seats to get the 218-seat majority.
The midterm elections at the present time can be labeled among the most sensitive in the US history. Trump’s radicalism and his unpredictability in home and foreign policy have left the American society deeply divided and polarized. The Democratic Party strives to secure a win in the midterms to contain the hardline president.
US society divided in pro- and anti-Trump camps
What makes the 2018 elections different is the state of division that breaks the society into the supporters and opponents of President Donald Trump. The competition of the two main parties is not the case. Rather, the struggle is now over who should take the president’s side and who opposes him. This trend conceals the party-vs-party competition and highlights the fight between who criticizes Trump and who backs his policies.
For example, the former President Barack Obama, who stayed silent for two years while Trump was questioning his presidency achievements, in a pro-Democratic campaign directly attacked the president by publishing a set of videos.
Obama said that the US witnesses unprecedented behavior at the White House breaking with the traditions observed by both the Democrats and the Republicans. He addressed the young voters, telling them that if they were anxious about what was going on over the past two years, they should vote for a House members that can curb Trump’s behavior.
The polarity inside the US pushes some analysts to even talk about an internal conflict in the country. Niall Ferguson, a British scholar and former professor at Harvard University, has already predicted intensification of the US home disputes. This, according to him, gives rise to cultural conflicts. On the web, it has been long since a cultural conflict started in the US. It gets warmer as the midterms come closer. He said that the explosive packages sent for Obama and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a month ago provide backgrounds to make predictions about a civil conflict in the US.
Emily Willen, the professor of history at the University of Texas in an article compares the US civil war to that of Lebanon. She says that there is a great similarity between Lebanon of 1975 and the US of 2018. She adds that the US has powerful but unreliable allies now, each with its own interests and looking like an “ineffective cartoon state”. At the same time, she goes on, the GOP reminds of the conservative Lebanese forces on the eve of the civil war. She continues that the Democrats look unconcentrated and scattered like the progressive Lebanese parties of that time.
November 6 elections are decisive
The Democratic campaigners as well as some of the celebrities in their campaigns insist that the midterm elections are decisive and invite people to take part. They call November 6 the day they can return wisdom to the country through their controlling of the House.
The midterm elections are significant to the Democrats because once they win, the second two years of Trump will be critical and nightmarish to him. In 2014, when the Republicans won the midterm elections, high-level tensions broke between Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled House. The escalation went so high that led to the federal government’s shutdown for 16 days.
For three reasons winning the midterms is crucial to the Democratic Party. First, it can block many of Trump’s executive orders which they find harmful to the national interests. Second, a Democratic-led House will gain the power to curb Trump by raising some cases such as secret relations with Russia and sexual scandals, and lying. And third, victory in the midterms will allow them to take long steps towards creating a psychological atmosphere for winning the 2020 presidential elections. The past experiences indicate that winning the midterms will effectively reflects on the presidential race.
Congress election benchmark of Trump popularity
In the meantime, what is drawing attention is Trump’s early disavowal of himself from the Republicans in preparation of a highly likely loss. Based on the polls, the GOP will lose the majority in the House.
Trump will be at the center of the blame as he is considered a top representative of the Republicans. So, the Tuesday's elections are a benchmark of the popularity of the president after two years at the White House.
But why are Trump and the GOP disappointed about holding the House control? Answering this question takes a view into the domestic and foreign policy of Trump.
Domestically, Trump is personally troubled. His personal and business scandals as well as alleged relations with the Russians rocked the popular trust in him. On the other side, his home policies are racist and even, as some analysts put it “fascist.” His policy put him face to face with the colored Americans. Add to this his anti-immigration policy as well as his killing of Obamacare, a public insurance program. All draw public aversion to his measures.
In foreign policy, his performance is extremely troublesome. He distanced himself from the traditional allies of the US and tried to move closer to Russia. This pathway triggered fierce criticism against him.
Also, he waged a trade war against the global powers and close trade partners and adopted an isolationist policy, to the American voters’ frustration.
Additionally, he supported the Saudi-led war on Yemen that so far killed thousands of innocent Yemeni children and women and displaced millions.
And the latest black point in his two-year track record is his support for the Saudi crown prince in Jamal Khashoggi case, the vocal critic of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who was killed by Saudi state agents in his country’s consulate in Istanbul.
So, Trump’s two-year performance in home and foreign policy appears to work like the Republicans’ Achilles heel in the midterm elections.
