On November 8, the United States is called for legislative elections in which, in the words of President Joe Biden, democracy is at stake. Democrats have a very small majority in Congress, just 10 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and a tie in the Senate that Vice President Kamala Harris breaks with her quality vote. In elections, one-third of the Senate and the entire House are renewed. The loss of either of two narrow majorities held by Democrats would spell the real end of Joe Biden’s presidency, at least in his ability to fulfill the progressive agenda with which he entered the polls. The Republican Party’s current program is nothing more than a White House handicap and impeachment, if not that of democracy, in the case of some troublesome candidates.
The midterm election is the first opportunity for voters to have their say in the president elected two years ago. Presidents usually don’t do well. In this case, moreover, mistakes such as rampant inflation and a chaotic return from Afghanistan are likely to punish Biden. Their low approval rating (between 30% and 40% in major states) indicates a lack of willingness to give them a majority. However, the radicalism of Republican discourse and the presence of a figure like Donald Trump could again stir up the Democratic vote, as it did on the previous two occasions. With this, the turmoil in the political landscape of the Supreme Court has also been added. This year’s decisions on the abolition of abortion protection, as well as the fight for environmental or gun control, have placed the importance of compensating for their power at the center of political debate. As of this week, more than nine million Americans have voted in person and by mail, indicating that the final turnout will be higher.
What is at stake has overtaken Washington. The President’s party is expected to suffer a mid-term penalty. The system expects and supports cohabitation. But the extreme polarization of American politics since the appearance of Donald Trump turns the natural distribution of power in Washington into an ongoing institutional struggle. It jeopardizes the credibility of the United States on issues of global importance, such as the climate emergency or the state of war in Ukraine, if the most extreme version of republicanism prevails.
Yet, when Biden correctly warns of the danger to the country’s future, he is referring to more local issues. For the first time, America is going to experience elections in which outgoing President Donald Trump has refused to withdraw from the political scene. Conversely, it maintains suffocating control over the Republican Party, where it uses its financial capacity and position on the most fanatical grounds to make decisions in primaries that have access to a position. His only political message is basically to deny the 2020 election result and question the democratic system. Thus, in this cycle, hundreds of Trumpist candidates for local legislative posts, prosecutors or even electoral authority positions are presented across the country, ready to blow up the system from within. The importance of these polls is that they will measure whether Trumpism is sufficiently contained to turn the page. Trump’s ability to run again in 2024 also hinges on that. Given that he is the man who attempted a self-coup to remain in power, democracy is literally at stake.
