The electoral results of the “mid-term” elections in the USA just came out. Part of the House was renewed, as well as governors of the States. Donald Trump posed these elections as a “plebiscite” on his administration. Considering it in his terms, he suffered an electoral defeat. However, it was not an absolute, but a partial defeat.
By: Alejandro Iturbe
“Mid-term” elections (because they take place in the middle of the four year presidential mandate) are considered a test on the political strength of a president and his administration. A triumph of his party and his candidates strengthens him while a defeat weakens him. If the defeat is too strong, the administration becomes a lame duck because it “advances with many difficulties” (with diminished power) until the end of the mandate.
The tone given by Trump (and the Democrats) gives importance to these elections: there was a record in voters’ participation (113 million), turning them into the most important “mid-term” elections in the history of the country [1]. Let us remember that it is not mandatory to vote in the USA and elections take place in a business day. Workers must request permission from their employees and they have their pay reduced for the hours not worked. In this context, Democrats managed an important “mobilization” of their electoral base in the great cities.
Why do we say that these elections were a partial defeat for Trump? In the first place, if we add the results obtained by the candidates of both parties, Republicans obtained less popular votes than Democrats did. In the second place, they lost 26 seats in the House of Representatives, and with this, they lost the majority. In the third place, they lost seven State governors. On the other hand, mitigating Trump’s defeat, he held (and even broadened) his majority in the Senate.
In terms of institutional functioning, the fact that each House remains under control of different parties determines a sort of tie. The House of Representatives has the power to initiate legislative proposals or stop proposals from the Executive Power. It may also demand from the President, for example, to make public rent statements or to explain the “Russian scandal” (relations with Putin and his supposed inherence in the 2016 electoral campaign). On their part, by controlling the House of Senators, Trump may stop Democrats’ legislative initiatives and any impeachment (destitution through political trial) possibility, in case Democrats attempt to push it.
A situation of this sort may be solved through a permanent negotiation mechanism that will surely take place in unpostponable maters like the annual budget. However, there is a possibility of institutional paralysis or an impasse. Here, Trumps becomes Trump again. He stated he considered himself a “winner” and when he was asked about the new Democrat majority in the lower House, he answered, “Let them do as they want, I will do as I want” [2].
The Political Content
Until now, we have referred to institutional consequences of the result. Let us attempt to outline the political content. The Democrats showed again their prevalence and they strengthened in the great cities, more industrialized, modern and cosmopolite, like New York and Philadelphia, and they even advanced in others of Republican tradition like Houston and Oklahoma City. The Republicans remain strong. They have consolidated in the social strata of their agrarian bases, the small rural cities, and the more conservative cities. [3].
The debates in the campaign barely approached the needs of the workers and the masses. Let us remember that Democrats had stopped the uprising and the mobilizations that took place in the first months of the Trump administration. Coherent with this policy, they now focused their campaign in “retaking the Congress” [4]. In other words, “we must not fight because everything depends on us obtaining the majority”.
It is true that their candidates spoke of the “bread winner”, in other words, the economic problems of the popular sectors, but they did so completely unrelated to the reality associated to the increase of poverty. For example, minimum wage, racism, attacks on immigrants, police brutality, etc. [5]. They could not do so because the balance of the Obama administration is very negative in this aspect.
One subject related to social needs was the center of the campaign: the health system and its reform. The ACA (American Care Assistances) contains a weak public health system for an imperialist country. However, Republicans want to overthrow it, but they have been unable to do so. Democrats made campaigns to protect it and expand the fragile health systems like Medicaid and Medicare. Even their left wing proposed a “Medicare for all” (“public health for all”), a slogan that has been gaining force. Many workers voted for this party for this reason.
Without expressing the issues of the most exploited and oppressed sectors, their campaign seemed focused on disputing the minority of the white working class that had voted for Trump in 2016. On his part, Trump and his candidates supported in a favorable economic situation and intensified their hate speech, with racism and xenophobia, which had shown results in the past elections.
Next, we present some interesting data on the evolution of part of the electorate towards the left in these racism and discrimination issues. In Colorado, Jared Polis was elected governor, the first openly gay governor in the entire history of the country. Ilhan Omar (a Somali refugee who run with the Democrats in Minnesota) and Rashida Tlaib (born in the USA, with Palestinian parents, in Michigan) are the first Muslim women to reach Parliament. Also, two young women from native peoples were elected. [6]
We must highlight the election of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in New York, from Porto Rico, who is the youngest woman to enter Congress, with 29 years of age. She represents the far left sector of the Democrats (Sander’s wing), and she publicly identified herself with “Socialism”. In her campaign, she called “to abolish the ICE/Migra” (the apparatus that persecutes and represses undocumented immigrants), although she then added that she proposed to replace it with “a more humane police” [7].
The Democrats’ Dilemma
The result of this election, as we saw, was a partial defeat for Trump and a tied situation that may lead to an impasse or institutional semi-paralysis. As we see it, this fact is a new episode in the slow crisis process of the North American political regime, which we have analyzed in several previous articles. [8].
This system is based on alternation of power between two bourgeois imperialist parties (Democrats and Republicans), which are based on different social and political strata amongst voters (with an intermediate sector that oscillates between both). The Republican Party entered a deep crisis after the failure of the George W. Bush project. Currently, it is divided in three factions and it had to accept Trump’s prevalence (an outsider with his own team) over the more traditional sectors.
Democrats also expressed a coalition that includes labor sectors, social movements and minorities, under the leadership of a bourgeois imperialist sector. Their “moment of glory” was with Obama’s election. However, the failure of his administrations to solve real issues of the workers and the masses brought on strong wear expressed in the 2016 electoral defeat. Just the same, this produced electoral breaks to the left and the emergence of struggle processes outside his control. Let us remember that Obama had very hard policies in aspects such as immigration, and before the 2008 crisis, he rescued banks and great enterprises in detriment of the masses’ needs.
Its crisis is slower and less explosive than that of the Republicans. Democrats are still capable of stopping or postponing mobilization processes and co-opting leaderships. Now they have received a little electoral and institutional breath (although less than they expected), and they could even win the 2020 Presidential elections. They avoided the deepening of the crisis and managed to stop it, even if they did not solve it.
There was a great debate within: to adopt a more moderate profile and focus on economy to dispute Trump’s electoral bases, or to go farther left and take on very deep issues like male chauvinism, racism, immigration, LGBT rights, etc. Recent electoral results do not end this debate (there were triumphs and defeats for both sectors). As a reflection of this situation, the “leadership crisis” continues for next presidential elections. A political analyst joked saying “there are 7,000 Democrats that think they will be presidents [in 2020]” [9], although this same analyst says that there are six possible candidates that are highlighted, with different profiles. In this context, most of the current Democrat leadership is inclined not to radicalize the speech.
The End of the “American Dream”
This process of slow crisis of the regime has as a framework the end of the “American Dream”, the idea that anyone, independent of his or her social origin, “with hard and honest work” could gradually improve the economic conditions. This dream began to agonize since the early 1980s, and it is now definitively dead [10]. Poverty and even misery grow in the country. Millions of workers are unable to guarantee their family’s livelihood with their wage; there is a growing number of people living in the streets; the cost of health is prohibitive, and so on. This reality is even tougher for Black and Latino communities, not only in social-economic grounds. Immigrants are persecuted like criminals and police officers, without punishment, murder black youth. This is the reality of capitalism, even in the wealthiest country of the world.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats (the two parties that express different imperialist bourgeois sectors) will end this reality. Although their speeches are different (one is “popular” and “democratic”, the other reactionary), both parties will only worsen this situation (as they have already done so in the past). This is the deepest reason for this slow regime crisis and the possibility of the institutional impasse to deepen it.
Workers and masses cannot expect anything from this regime nor these two parties. It is necessary to face this economic-social reality with struggle, particularly each decision by Trump’s administration that worsens it. Just as their measures originated in male-chauvinistic hatred and against immigrants (like the threat of shooting against thousands who make up the march of Central Americans who want to enter the country). One must not follow the “siren song” of the Democrats who say, “We will return in 2020 and solve everything”. The deepest needs of the workers and the masses demand this struggle be immediately organized and strengthened.
Notes:
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/record-voter-turnout-in-2018-midterm-elections/
[2] https://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20181107/452787057260/trump-pierde-gana-elecciones-legistalivas.html
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-house-elections.html?action=click&module=Ribbon&pgtype=Article
[4] See https://litci.org/es/menu/debates/las-armadillas-del-foco-los-democratas-retomar-congreso/
[5] Ibídem.
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/us/politics/election-history-firsts-blackburn-pressley.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR3zDjfai7J3bqK2EEIgmvuvdyPovrC2orV7b81tOK-DQeEhZM9cxYrmWME
[7] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/06/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-now-the-youngest-woman-elected-to-congress.html
[8] See for example, International Courier magazine n.° 16 (January, 2017).
[9] https://www.dn.pt/mundo/interior/democratas-de-olho-em-2020-5693084.html
[10] See https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/norteamerica/estados-unidos/sueno-americano-ha-muerto/
The United States: Trump’s partial defeat
