MIDTERMS. REPUBLICAN RED TSUNAMI A PALE PINK PIDDLE

The Donald has a terrible day, blames everyone else.

by Vijaya Chandrasoma
November 7, 2022.

I am starting this essay on the eve of the most consequential Midterm elections in the history of the nation, on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.The tradition of trusting the results of an election is the cornerstone of any democracy, and the complete antithesis of dictatorships and authoritarian systems of government. North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was recently re-elected to power with 100% of the votes cast.

This tradition was honoured twice, in recent times, in the USA. First, when Democrat Al Gore conceded the presidency to George W. Bush. The Republican majority Supreme Court overruled an order by the Florida Supreme Court to continue with recount of the votes of the state election, on grounds that the “safe harbour” deadline, set by federal law, by which states are required to resolve any disputes and announce the result, had passed. At that stage, before the recount was completed, there was a small majority in favour of George Bush. Gore accepted the decision of the Supreme Court and conceded the election.

It was also honoured in 2016, when Hillary Clinton conceded just hours after the Electoral College called the victory for Trump, despite widespread rumours, later proved by the Mueller Report, that the Russians had interfered with the election.Both Gore and Clinton won the popular vote, the former by over 500,000 votes, the latter by nearly three million.

This tradition has never been breached in the USA until 2020, when Trump refused to concede an election which he had lost by a landslide. He lost the Electoral College 306/232 and the popular vote by seven million votes, both considered to be conclusive defeats.

Trump and his minions alleged election fraud and filed over 60 cases before the courts, including three before the Republican majority Supreme Court. All were thrown out for lack of a shred of evidence. The Elections Commissioner of the United States stated that that “the presidential election of 2020 was one of the fairest in the history of the nation”. Even Trump appointed Attorney General William Barr, who had covered up for Trump on numerous occasions in the past, said that there was absolutely no evidence of any significant fraud which would have affected the outcome of the election.

The conventional wisdom over the past few weeks, is that the main issues facing the voters are the economy and inflation. The economy and inflation are global and temporary, felt everywhere in the world. Biden has done everything to ease the impact of a difficult economy caused by the increase of oil prices and the Russian invasion of a sovereign nation. However, Biden has been accused of not addressing these issues, and talking more about the threat to democracy, which is, to put it mildly, of a more permanent nature.

The polls have all but ignored the impact that will be caused by the probable destruction of democracy if the Republicans gain control of Congress. They have also lost sight of the opposition of 80% of Americans against the recent ruling of the Republican Supreme Court, overturning legislation which granted women reproductive freedom without government interference.

The Republican Party has openly promised that no Democrat will be ever elected to the presidency if they gain control of Congress. With their predicted majority in the House, Republicans have promised to rig the electoral process by ensuring that the counting of the votes in the battleground states that determine the result of the election, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Iowa, will always be controlled by Republicans. Which spells the end of USA’s Great Experiment.

I do not think that the House will go under Republican control with a majority of 30/50 seats, if at all. I feel (hope} that the Democrats will, against all odds, hold their tenuous majority in the House.So with the Senate. The current numbers are 50/50, which has given the majority to the Democrats with Vice President Harris having the casting vote. I predict the Democrats will retain control of the Senate, 50/50, or even flip a Republican Senator to bring the number to 51/49.

My third prediction is the most important: that Trump will lose his loathsome influence on the majority of the Republican Party. Trump has now become an anchor, not a crutch for the Republican Party, which will be shown by the defeat of the many candidates he has endorsed for this election. He will be seen by his own Party as a liability to be avoided at all cost.

Trump made an amazing but typical statement before the election, which makes sense only in the mind of a four-year-old. Talking about the many candidates he has endorsed in the midterms, he said, “If they win, I take the credit. But if they lose, it’s their fault!”. Heads I win, tails you lose.In any event, the Party in power in the last 36 years, led by Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump were all shellacked in their first midterm elections.The midterms serve as a bellwether of the administration in power. Their results do not usually affect the outcome of a President seeking a second term, as evinced by Clinton, Bush and Obama.

Only twice impeached Trump failed this test. He refused to accept his loss, although he knew that he had been conclusively defeated. A loss confirmed by the elections authorities, his so far sycophantic Attorney General, and unanimous rulings of the Supreme Court, which had a 6/3 Republican majority, with three Justices appointed by him.

A loss which has left him so narcissistically angry that he invented the Big Lie, that the election was stolen from him. He incited, using this Big Lie, on January 6, 2021, an insurrection to prevent the orderly, constitutional transfer of power to the legally elected president. Incredibly, this treasonous crook still walks free, retaining control of the cult which has become the Republican Party of today. Hopefully, after the current midterms, not for much longer.

I will end this section of the essay with an extract from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, of a conversation between Hobbits Samwise Gamjee and Frodo Baggins:

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened?

But, in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine the clearer…..

But, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in these stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.This passing thing, this shadow, this darkness, this threat to democracy will pass. There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

I will conclude this essay on Friday morning, when my partisan optimism would have been exposed. Though I am still hoping for an “I told you so!”

November 11, 2022

So my unlikely dreams have all but come true. Based on the latest numbers, Republicans are likely to win control of the House with a razor thin, maybe five or six, majority, though a Democratic win is still mathematically possible. The huge Red Wave predicted by the polls of Republicans flipping 30/50 House seats has proved to be a mirage. The current House score stands at 211/198 favouring Republicans, with 26 results to come. The magic winning number is 218.As for the Senate, the Republicans lead 49/48 with three elections, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, still in the balance. Nevada is a toss-up, the Democrats are strongly favoured to take Arizona. In Georgia, Democratic incumbent Rev. Ralph Warnock leads Herschell Walker by a fraction of a point.

However, according to Georgia election law, a Senator has to win by 50% plus one vote to qualify for a Senate seat. As both candidates will probably not achieve this threshold (a Libertarian candidate has claimed 2% of the vote, acting as the spoiler), there will be a run-off between these two candidates on December 6, 2021. Which is the date the fate of Senate majority will be sealed. Currently, Rev. Warnock is the clear favourite to win that run-off, because Libertarian voters will almost certainly cast their votes for the Democrat.

At the conclusion of the December 6 Georgia run-off, the Senate will likely maintain the status quo of 50/50, a Democratic majority with the casting vote of Vice President Harris.But my third, and possibly the most significant prediction is being proved right. Many of the Republican candidates endorsed by Trump lost, others won in spite of Trump. His reputation as a kingmaker is severely tarnished, and the poor showing of candidates he endorsed at the midterms has just about ended his presidential aspirations for 2024. His grasp on the Republican Party also seems to have loosened.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, after a resounding gubernatorial victory in the midterms, has emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024. Although DeSantis is also a radical right Republican, Trump’s particular brand of narcissism, mendacity, ignorance, fraud, cruelty and treason, will be impossible to emulate. Thank heaven for small mercies.

President Biden continues to state that he intends to run in 2024, when he will be 82 years of age. We all hope that he will remain healthy and live to a ripe old age, but if he runs and wins the Presidency, he will retain the toughest job in the world up to the age of 86. And I can personally vouch that mental and physical faculties of octogenarians deteriorate by the day. I am 81 years of age, and I can’t remember if I have taken my meds today. I sure as hell would not know what to do with nuclear codes!

Biden had the best midterm election results on Tuesday since the 1990s. In perspective, Obama dropped 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate in his first midterms in 2010. He has done a fine job under difficult circumstances over the last two years, which will only become more challenging in the next two years with an aggressive, hostile House. I have no doubt he will continue to display the integrity and decency he has shown in decades of public service.

But perhaps it is time the Democratic Party started grooming younger, more aggressive candidates for the 2024 presidential election. There is no shortage of such eminently eligible candidates within the ranks. The names of Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsome and California Congresswoman Katie Porter immediately come to mind.

My personal favourite, New York Congresswoman, Alexandria Occasio Cortez, would barely have reached the minimum required age of 35 by November 2024. Her ideology and her vision are far ahead of her time. American time, that is. To most white Americans, she is just a “damn Commie”.

That she is, a Commie who works tirelessly towards a socially just economy which represents the standards enjoyed by citizens of all other developed nations in the world today. This election has convincingly proved that all elections in the future will be decided by young people, who voted in droves at the midterms. Ocasio-Cortez represents that generation.

Her time will come, when Americans finally realize that they are living in the 21st century.

*** I apologize for an error made in my essay last week about the British Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak was educated at Oxford at Lincoln College, not at Worcester College, as I have written.