Democrats Effectively Won Midterms

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The American midterm elections did not turn out as Republicans had expected nor as many polls had predicted. Instead of a “red tide,” the electorate delivered a ripple and a very small majority in the House of Representatives for the GOP. Democrats retain control of the Senate even with a December runoff in Georgia still pending. The two chambers of Congress will be divided.

I won’t go into the minutiae of individual wins and losses, or longwinded analyses of races in individual states. Enough has already been written since the Nov. 8 contests to fill several bookshelves.

BLAME TRUMP

A lot of the fault lies with Donald Trump, that’s for sure, and most high-profile candidates he endorsed went down to defeat. It’s possible the Republicans otherwise could have won the Senate and a bigger majority in the House. Already many of his erstwhile supporters have now turned on him, as the party grapples with an underwhelming performance. They now look to Ron Desantis, who won re-election as governor of Florida by a landslide, as their great hope for 2024.

Trump seems to be one of those people who think they are indispensable. They’d rather lose as a candidate than have some other Republican – even one with similar views – become president. A solid and devoted core of his supporters appears ready to follow Trump wherever he leads again, even if into defeat.

But even if Trump retires to Mar-alago, it still feels like the United States is moving in the same direction as Canada: a left-of-centre country with the right-wing party a permanent minority, winning power occasionally nationwide while remaining very popular only in certain regions. In Canada, that would be the prairies, in the United States, the south and far western Rocky Mountain states.

RURAL DIVIDE

The big cities in both countries, are now a world apart, culturally, demographically, economically, and geographically, from the rural and small towns in what has become the political hinterlands – “flyover country.” And they vote solidly against the Republicans in the U.S. and the Conservatives in Canada.

The political left-of-centre has a hammerlock on them, and in American presidential and statewide Senate contests, where it’s “winner take all,” urban populations in vote-rich states typically outnumber rural residents. The result is Democratic victories.

Apparently younger voters in the U.S. came out in greater numbers than predicted, or in previous elections, and voted solidly Democratic. The results should give Republicans cause to worry. The cultural, educational, and media institutions in the United States all tilt “progressive,” and, as many writers have noted, politics is downstream from culture.

“Give me a child till he is seven years old,” remarked Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order, “and I will show you the man.”

PERMANENT MAJORITY

The economy alone should have beaten the Democrats by a red wave, but the Democrats effectively painted the Republican Party as a danger to democracy and human rights, perhaps even “semi-fascist,” in President Joe Biden’s words. The Supreme Court decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which made abortion legal across the country was a particularly decisive issue that worked against the GOP.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau will take heart and think that, despite his many foibles, he can beat Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the next federal election. In the U.S., the real test will come in 2024, if Trump is no longer dragging Republicans down.

If a Desantis sort of nominee loses to a Biden-type Democrat, assuming Biden is gone, the onward march of demography — younger and more diverse ethnic populations in urban centres — will prove unbeatable, and the Democrats will be a permanent majority, with Republicans retaining House seats in mainly rural areas of diminishing population.

“We’ve won seven of the last eight elections in the popular vote, we’ve got more registered, we have a new crop of young people every year, plus the fact that 70 per cent of eligible voters are either women, people of colour, or 18 to 25 year olds, or a combination of the three,” left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore told London’s Guardian. “That’s the Democratic party’s base.”

To overcome this, Republicans would need, in the words of a Polish Communist in the 1970s exasperated that his fellow citizens hated Communism, “a new population.”