Will democracy save the Democrats?

Politics is not a Hemingway novel, but there is no doubt that Democrats are suddenly wondering: for whom are the bells tolling this midterm election year?  And has the earth moved?

A month ago, there was no doubt that this November would look like virtually every other midterm election:  the party that holds the White House, the President’s party, loses seats in Congress in the midterm elections. 

Given that Democrats hold the House by only four seats, and the Senate is tied 50:50 between the two parties, the expectation – until right now – was that the Republicans were a slam dunk to take control both houses of Congress.

In the past 100 years of midterm elections, only twice has the president’s party gained seats in both the House and Senate. 

The first time was in 1934, when FDR started delivering on his overwhelmingly popular New Deal. 

The second time was in 2002, when the country was united behind President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  (Prime Minister John Howard also won re-election that year in part on his stance with the US on 9/11).

The Republicans believed they had this year nailed.  Inflation exploding, gasoline prices through the roof, interest rates rising sharply with more pain ahead, crime out of control in the inner cities, the southern border out of control with immigrants pouring into the country, a Democratic party suffused with wokeness on cultural issues from what is taught in schools to transgender rights to a party dominated by radical activists and socialists. 

The Republicans were in no doubt that the Democrats, led by their branding Biden as a weak, ineffective and too-old president, meant that November would be breeze.

The winds of change were also being fed by a powerful sense that the country is deeply troubled.  Nearly 70% of Americas believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Two thirds view the economy negatively.  More than half of voters have an unfavourable view of Biden.  

Signs of America’s quality of life in decline abound

US life expectancy has fallen because of the Covid pandemic – the sharpest fall in 100 years. Today, it is 76 years – down from 79 years in 2019.  Reading and math scores for 9-year-olds dropped sharply. The drinking water system in Jackson Mississippi has collapsed.

Trump spent the first seven months of the year backing his hand-picked acolytes for the House and Senate and also for offices responsible for counting and certifying the votes in the states that denied him victory in 2020:  Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Trump is counting on their winning and “fixing” the system to ensure that he will be declared the victor in those states in 2024 – regardless of whether he actually wins a majority of votes or not.

Then the earth moved.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right of women to access abortion services. As of today, one in three American women have lost the ability to legally have an abortion, and more restrictions are coming. The Supreme Court’s ruling is exceptionally unpopular.  60% of Americans believe abortion should be legal without undue restrictions. And voters know which political party is responsible for this.

In just one month, the abortion issue exploded.  Kansas – which has not voted for a Democrat for president in nearly 60 years – voted overwhelmingly to keep abortion rights in their state constitution.  In upstate New York, a Democrat, campaigning on this issue, came from behind to beat the Republican.  In Senate races, Trump anti-abortion extremists in several states are trailing.

In July, President Biden suddenly started winning in Congress.  The biggest clean energy program ever enacted.  The biggest health care package since Obamacare.  The most significant investment in computer chips and allied technologies – ever. A bipartisan gun safety law.  Better health care for veterans. 

In August, the FBI raided Trump’s home at Mar-A-Lago to recover thousands of documents, including dozens of classified documents, which belong to the US government and the American people. Trump may be subject to criminal prosecution for not turning over the documents took out of the White House.

By September, the overall trends were clear.  Where political analysts had been expecting a swing to Republicans of 20-30 seats in the House, the projected Republican gain today is just 12 seats.  In the Senate, the growing consensus is a 1-2 seat Democratic gain.

A poll this weekend by the Wall Street Journal reported that voters were most concerned about:

So the earth has moved.

Biden wants it to move to some more. Last week he invoked the reason he entered the presidential campaign in 2019:  to assert that the extremism fomented by Trump is not what America is, and not what America should ever become.  Biden sees Trump as a direct threat to America’s democracy.

Biden has seen enough, and this is why he addressed the country last week.  

“As I stand here tonight equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise…

“There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans. And that is a threat to this country … blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy…MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy.”

BIDEN’S SPEECH ON DEMOCRACY

No president since the Civil War has given such a speech about the country’s future.

Trump exploded in his response at a rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Trump thundered that Biden’s speech was,

“You’re all enemies of the state … It was not just my home that was raided last month. It was the hopes and dreams of every citizen who I’ve been fighting for … There can be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history,”

Biden believes that this urgency of affirming America’s democracy will save the country and his fellow Democrats.  We will know the day after the midterm elections whether this is true. 

If Republicans win back the Senate, Trump backed candidates will be the margin of victory. Trump will be boosted to declare his candidacy for president in 2024.

If the Democrats hold the Senate, it will be because they defeated the extremist Trump candidates.  That would mean that the Trump movement has peaked and is in decline – that if the party sticks with Trump the party loses elections.  

If the Democrats also keep the House – which still must be considered very unlikely – that will be a shocker. 

If both occur, they will constitute a Hemingway event of Richter scale.