Nowadays, you go to bed on election night with a sort of dread of what you will wake up to in the morning. First Brexit, then Trump, followed by the Tories losing their overall majority in the 2017 General Election, giving the whip-hand to the hard Brexiteers.
So it was with a sigh of relief that I woke up this morning to the news that the Democrats had taken the House of Representatives in the US midterm elections. But it wasn’t good enough. The Democrats should have wiped the floor with this most divisive of presidents. The fact they didn’t just confirms deep frustrations with the quality of opposition to Trump.
In the Senate the Republicans gained Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota. There was evidence they would lose Florida but seem not to have done – it has gone to a recount. What is it about Florida?
My recent trip to the US brought home to me the dominance of the Trump agenda. It is about Him, economic nationalism and external threats such as immigration and unfair trade practices. He is everywhere and the Democrats are nowhere. Protest politics from the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not enough when the economy is booming, there is a sense of injustice amongst many sections of the electorate, and race and immigration issues are demonised.
The Democrats need a new centre-ground agenda, a fresh faced leader and real fight. Sadly it won’t be the defeated Senate candidate for Texas, Beto O’Rourke, at least not yet…
So what happens now? Dangers lurk just as much for the Democrats as for the Republicans. Legislative gridlock beckons now the Democrats have seized the House of Representatives but this provides an easy target for Trump and could provide a launch pad for a 2020 victory. Plenty of other presidential incumbents using this tactic come to mind… Clinton and Obama to name just two…Meanwhile Trump can continue his controversial appointments including a slew of conservative judicial ones through the Senate unheeded.
The future of this divided nation is more uncertain than ever and the vicious level of debate takes place in the most benign of economic circumstances. Just imagine when the economy turns as it surely will under a burden of debt, rising interest rates and lack of much need legislative reform?
The US stock market is up so far today. Quite why I don’t know. It is clearly not an accurate predictor of the political risks ahead.
Inside Right Politics 