Instability and the Midterms

Bozen – Several important elections across the world have sparked curiosity about the political direction we’re heading. While Australia’s federal election in May yielded a change from the heavily conservative liberals that have been in power since 2013 to the more progressive labour party other countries have gone in a different direction.

The recent election in Italy is a prime example with Italians voting for the right leaning populist Georgia Meloni who’s being very vocal on a range of topics from abortions to immigration and despite winning 48 percent of the vote in the Brazilian election Lula da Silva will still have to face a run off against Jair Bolsonaro, a man who has shown the world exactly not what to do in a crisis with his handling of the Corona virus pandemic. The U.S. can often give us a guide for the political landscape in the next few years. The midterm elections are going ahead in November with a lot of uncertainty in the air.

This year’s election is different

Americans will go to the polls to elect 435 members to congress for a term of two years and over a third of the 100 senators will also be up for grabs for six years. Normally during midterm elections the political party who does not have power in the white house (in this case the Republicans) regain power to a certain extent by taking seats in the house and Senate.

This year however it’s a little different, a little more complicated in fact due in no small part to the Trump factor. Donald Trump has long been a beacon of conservative hope for his supporters to follow and he has a lot of them but as we saw in the last election, he has lost the neutrals. Many who voted for him over Hillary Clinton in 2016 jumped ship in 2020 due to a variety of reasons, none stronger than his poor handling of the Corona virus.

Since then, Donald trump and his loyal members of the republican party have rallied to the cry of “It was stolen”, claiming that through nefarious means Joe Biden won the election, but in reality Donald Trump was the true winner and should be accepted as such. While this has empowered his most ardent supporters, those who are less dedicated to him have become disillusioned with him not only for his distorted and often questionable spiel but also his seemingly never ending legal trouble, the republican party and the direction it’s going and for the first time in a while the republicans are not united.

There are factions littered through­out the party who have different ideas on agenda, and it’s been pretty difficult trying to see a clear party direction through all of the haze of political tomfoolery. While the general consensus is to go after Biden and stake their claim to a majority on his ailing presidency, how they do that and with what points continue to remain unclear.

An easy victory of the democrats?

Considering all of this, surely the democratic path to victory should be pretty easy right? The short answer is no, not at all, the longer answer is a little more complicated. When considering the recent presidential election and how Biden got in we must consider how or why, it was the first time since George Bush senior in 1992 that a president was ousted after one term, and when one considers the bizarre and at times catastrophic handling of the pandemic we can start to see why Biden got in with the most votes in history, and while Biden won, many democrats didn’t, particularly in the house where the republicans managed to win back eleven seats including ten from the democrats.

The reason why is not exclusive to the United States, with many left leaning or progressive parties around the world having the same issues. Many issues that the democrats ran on just didn’t impact the working class of America, the green new deal being a prime example. Why would a miner from Wyoming care about zero emission energy sources? Especially when it might cost that miner a job. The real issues facing Americans are the rising cost of living, and Gas. While the republicans have hailed that change needs to happen the democrats have not been able to really clarify how their time in the sun so far since taking all three major branches of government has made significant change to the American way of life.

Roe v. Wade

They do however have one talking point in their favour. Since the supreme court struck down the Roe v. Wade ruling, a lot of the public have turned out in protest and given the Democrats a strong platform to argue on. The ruling was originally made in 1973 by the sitting supreme court at the time and stated all Americans have a constitutional right to an abortion (see “An Attack on Women’s Reproductive Rights” in SWZ 34/22).

Striking it down now like the supreme court did, gave power of giving the right to abortion back to the states and many more conservative, bible belt states have jumped on it with glee. Abortion is now banned in 13 states while in Georgia you cannot have access to an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. The dangers here are clear, residents of these 13 states will either have to travel to another state to have abortion or attempt to find a more drastic solution.

While some see the new restrictions on abortion as a good thing, most Americans don’t. In fact, more than 60 percent of Americans across both aisles of the political spectrum believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The democrats, having realised this have made it a focal point to rally against their more conservative counter parts.

While many on the left hold out hope that the democrats could pull off a miracle and keep both branches of government, it is more than likely they’ll lose control of the house. While this doesn’t spell disaster it also doesn’t bode well for their desire to hold on to the white house in two years time. Joe Biden has never had a positive approval rating, and he has at times struggled to handle the criticism thrown at him from the Republicans, and the only thing that keeps the Democrats from certain failure not only now but also in two years time is the Donald Trump shadow that still hovers over those on the right.

Lindsay Berrett

THE AUTHOR is an Australian who has lived in Kaltern for several years, he is a teacher by profession. Lindsay writes for the SWZ at irregular intervals on topics from a wide range of areas.