USA: Final hours of midterm elections reveal troubled political environment

A despondent nation, worn down by economic crises and anxieties, votes on Tuesday in an election that is likely to consolidate divisions rather than unity.

Elections are often times of cleansing that set the country on a new path, driven by people who freely choose their leaders – and those leaders accept the results.

But the final hours of this midterm campaign have revealed the polarized electoral environment, the specter of political violence and the possibility of racial disputes — situations that have upped the ante for the first national vote since former President Donald Trump tried to overturn the election. 2020 and augured two years of bitterness.

Republicans predict they will win the House of Representatives on Tuesday — a victory that, if it comes to fruition, would give them the power to strangle President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda and tighten an investigative vise in his White House. Meanwhile, the Senate is on a razor’s edge with a handful of races in states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania that are likely to decide who wins the most.

Most of all, the midterm campaign has revolved around the cost-of-living crisis, with polls showing the economy by far the most important issue for voters, who are still waiting for normalcy to be restored after a unique pandemic, which Biden had promised in 2020.

A flurry of news about job losses just before voting opens, including in the tech sector, has added to the jitters about a slowdown that could destroy one of the bright spots in Biden’s economy — historically low unemployment.

Americans are already struggling with higher food and gasoline prices and now have to deal with Federal Reserve interest rate hikes that not only make credit card debt, home ownership and rent more expensive, but they can drive the economy into a recession.

The economic situation threatens to create a classic midterm electoral rebuke for a first-term president – ​​and, in a way, that would be a sign that democracy is working. Elections have been, for generations, a safety valve for the public to express their disagreement with the direction of the country.

If they lose on Tuesday, Democrats will have to accept the result, regroup and try again in two years to convince the nation that their policies will pave the way out of the crisis. And Republicans, if they win a majority in Congress, could argue that voters gave them a mandate to fix things where Biden failed. But after repeated elections in which disaffected voters punished the party with more power, the GOP could find its own polling performance in two years.

While this continuum is the essence of democracy, the period leading up to these elections also highlighted the depth of the nation’s self-alienation in a political era where both sides seem to think that winning the other is tantamount to losing their country.

In recent days, it has been impossible to ignore the reality of a weakened presidency, a perversity in political debate and the threat to free and fair elections posed by dozens of Republican candidates running on a platform of Trump’s lies in the 2020 election.

Former president who was impeached twice sees return to power

Tuesday looks like a tough day for Biden. The president did not spend the final hours of the campaign fighting to get vulnerable Democrats to cross the line into a critical state of swing. Instead, he was in the liberal bastion of Maryland — a safe haven where his low approval ratings are unlikely to hurt Democrats running for office. Though he played for Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman over the weekend, the venue of his final event summed up his drained political juice as he contemplates a 2024 re-election campaign.

“I think it’s going to be difficult,” Biden told reporters. “I think we’re going to win the Senate and I think the House is tougher,” he said, admitting that life would become “harder” for him if the GOP took control of Congress.

On the eve of an election in which he is not at the polls, Trump has gone all out on himself – even when he said he didn’t want to overshadow the Republican candidates. At a rally ostensibly for Republican Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio, Trump unleashed a dystopian, self-indulgent rant of speech filled with demagoguery, exaggerated claims that the United States was in terminal decline, and outright falsehoods about the 2020 election. And he has laid the groundwork for proclaiming that he is a victim of state-style totalitarian persecution if he is indicted in multiple criminal investigations into his conduct.

Trump also promised to make “a big announcement” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Nov. The fact that a twice impeached president, who left office in disgrace after legitimizing violence as a form of political expression, has a good chance of winning underscores the turmoil of our time.

The false reality that Trump presented his baseless claims about a stolen election and the dozens of election deniers carrying the Republican flag only validated Biden’s midterm campaign warnings that democracy is at the polls — even if most voters voters seem more concerned about the rising cost of feeding their families than the somewhat esoteric debates about the state of the nation’s founding values.

the shadow of violence

The shadow of violence that has loomed over American politics since Trump incited the insurrection on Capitol Hill was exacerbated when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled the traumatic moment when police told her her husband Paul had been attacked with a hammer. In an exclusive interview with Anderson Cooper of CNN she also condemned certain Republicans for toying with it.

“In our democracy, there is a party that is doubting the outcome of the election, fanning that flame and mocking any violence that happens. This has to stop,” Pelosi said.

Trump only added to that political fury when he referred to Pelosi as “an animal” at his Ohio rally.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to be the next speaker if Republicans get the five seats needed for a House majority, blamed Democrats for the heated political rhetoric by presenting an aggressive agenda, targeting border security and investigations. relentless in an exclusive interview with CNN 🇧🇷 He has not ruled out impeaching Biden, a step that radical members of his conference are already demanding.

“We will never use impeachment for political ends,” McCarthy told Melanie Zanona of the CNN 🇧🇷 “That doesn’t mean that if something came up for the occasion, it wouldn’t be used at any other time.”

And Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who says he is in line to be chairman of the permanent investigations subcommittee if he wins re-election and the Republicans take the Senate, said he would use the power bestowed upon him in what is likely to be an election. very restricted, to further increase partisan heat in Washington.

“I would be like a mosquito in a nudist colony. It would be a target-rich environment,” Johnson said.

There is something magical about democratic elections, when differences are exposed in fierce debates and campaigns. But mostly, until now, there was an expectation that both sides would carry out the people’s verdict.

That can no longer be taken for granted and there is a sense of foreboding hanging over the vote this Tuesday.