Bad news for Joe Biden

 

 

 

THE MID-YEAR ELECTIONS IN THE USA   

Biden's tactics seemed to be working - until now 

Wolfgang Hansson

Published: Less than 50 min ago 

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

COLUMNISTS 

The Democrats have invested heavily in making the congressional election about abortion rights and the future of democracy. 

For a time it seemed to succeed. But now it seems to be business as usual. 

The wallet issues that decide. Which is bad news for Joe Biden but good news for Donald Trump. 

When the US Supreme Court struck down national abortion rights this summer, it sparked an outcry from many voters, not just within the Democratic Party. 

Joe Biden appeared to have been given an issue around which he could mobilize voters. 

Over the summer and fall, he got another, when the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol held a number of high-profile public hearings. 

A picture emerged of how President Trump knew he had lost the 2020 election but still tried to hang on to power by carrying out what was effectively an attempted coup d'état. 

During the election campaign, the Democrats have therefore been able to present the Republican candidates supported by the ex-president as a danger to democracy. Most of them push Trump's false thesis that it was cheating that gave Biden the election victory in 2020.

President Joe Biden speaks at an event during his campaign. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP 

The congressional elections, or midterms as they are called in the United States, are the first national elections held after the storming of the Capitol and therefore become a first gauge of how that event affected the political winds. 

Until a few weeks ago, it looked like the Democrats' tactics had a chance to succeed. They keyed into the polls and even looked like they could defend their majority in the House of Representatives and almost certainly in the Senate. 

Political natural law 

Which would have been a clear violation of the political law of nature that states that the incumbent president's party almost always loses in the midterm elections. With a few exceptions, it has been this way since the early 1930s. 

But then record high inflation, higher fuel prices, higher rents and more expensive mortgages began to eat into the consciousness of the average American. Aided by a carpet bombardment of Republican criticism of Biden's economic policy and his reluctance to take inflation seriously. At least outwardly. 

The incumbent president and his party had not really listened to the rails and were therefore slow to react to the changing mood. Or they simply believed that the issues of abortion rights and the survival of democracy were such strong cards that they would still get their voters to the polls.

Former President Donald Trump during a meeting in September. Photo: Chris Seward/AP 

In a way, you could say that Biden and the Democrats are unlucky in that a looming deep recession coincides with the midterm elections. High fuel prices and high inflation are hardly a unique phenomenon for the US in this situation. Rather, it is something that has affected the entire Western world. 

But it can be argued that Biden further diluted inflation by putting forward huge aid packages that stimulated the economy at a time when perhaps he should have started to tighten. At least it's easy to see in retrospect. 

Hope lives 

on Voter turnout in the US is generally very low for a Western democracy. In the mid-term elections, it is especially bad. It is usually around 50 percent. 

So a key part for both parties is to motivate their voters to actually go and vote. Whoever succeeds best there wins. 

As long as abortion rights and concerns about democracy were the big issues, many Democrats felt strongly about going to the ballot box. But now that the purse strings are in the driver's seat, Republican voters are more motivated to vote. 

The House of Representatives seems more or less lost to the Democrats. Some polls point to the Republicans being able to win 25 more seats than in the last election. Something that is well and good enough to give them a majority. 

In the Senate, hope still lives for the Democrats. It is extremely even in a number of states. So tight that we may not know for sure who controls the Senate until December. In Georgia, re-election may be necessary. 

If Biden loses the majority in both chambers, the soon-to-be 80-year-old president has two tough years ahead of him. Then it will be very difficult for him to get any of his policies through. 

At the same time, it increases the chance that Donald Trump will stand in the presidential election in two years.