Nightmare scenarios for Democrats and Republicans at the midterms

Halloween. To the pagans, it was “Samhain” and marked the end of the harvest. To the early Christians, it marked the eve of All Hallows’ Day, a festival of the Saints. These days it’s less spiritual and, you might say, more spiteful. This is the night for tricks and treats, a time to scare others with our uniquely modern take on horror. This year, it also falls just six days shy of the U.S. midterms and, perhaps, gives us pause to wonder what would make a truly scary Halloween for the two sides fighting it out for America’s soul.

The question is more than fanciful, as it would not be too difficult to imagine some truly outlandish outcome next week. It might emerge that Hillary was indeed the shapeshifting lizard that some alt-right conspiracy nuts feared she was or that Donald Trump might yet mimic President Greg Stillson, played by Martin Sheen in the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s Dead Ringers, declaring “The missiles are flying. Hallelujah, Hallelujah!” Yet as any admirer of horror knows, events are more frightening when they have at least some basis in the real. It’s why the most frightening part of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist occurs beneath a hospital CAT scanner.

For the Republicans, it is not hard to imagine how their nightmare begins. Midterms give electorates a chance to punish the governing party. The Republicans could lose the House of Representatives. Thirty six state governor seats are also up for re-election. These gubernatorial races don’t always attract as many column inches as races for the Senate but, in many respects, they’re equally as important. Republicans currently hold 26 of the seats up for re-election compared to the 9 held by Democrats and one held by the independent in Alaska, who this past week dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat candidate.

The Republicans, therefore, have a lot to lose in a climate when states are facing calls to clean up their elections by getting rid of gerrymandered districts and the ominous spectre of voter suppression. Why does that fill Republicans with the creeps? It’s the governors who oversee state elections. A significant turn towards Democrats might not mean much in the short term but 2021 will see the next round of redistricting and before that it’s the 2020 general election where it will prove hugely meaningful if Republicans have lost control of the instruments of the ballot.

The Senate is eminently losable for the Republicans. Nate Silver puts the odds of Democrats gaining the upper chamber at one in six, which might not seem like enough to have Mitch McConnell trembling beneath his bedclothes tonight but those are odds that, if you were betting something significant, you probably would not bet on.

With a week to go, the electorate is still fluid and, in recent days, the tide of opinion again seems to be favouring the Democrats. Beto O’Rourke has closed the gap with Ted Cruz and even if it’s still unlikely that he can take ultra-Red Texas, these are slim margins and Cruz is something of a stationary target. If O’Rourke can motivate the Hispanic vote, then Cruz’s lead narrows and the election heads into that area where polling statistics become a poor indicator of what happens next.

For the Democrats a disaster is less likely but not beyond the realms of possibility. The scale of Donald Trump’s unpopularity is largely untested. In a week when he declared himself a nationalist, his favourability numbers took a worryingly small hit. It shows how the Blue Wave is still a creature of the black magic of psephology. The fear for the Democrats is that their base isn’t as motivated as they hope. This is the problem with so many protest movements that put people on the streets but don’t necessarily translate it into votes.

Want to frighten Democrats even more? Suggest to them that Donald Trump will continue to pile on the rhetoric of the past few days and “The Caravan” begins to dominate the national debate. Soon the horror of the bombs and shootings will begin to fade and the media attention will move on to the troops Trump has sent to the southern border. In this blue nightmare, Trump controls the agenda. He uses the bully pulpit in order to continue to talk about birth rights, hitting a nerve among quiet voters, even if they would never admit as much to pollsters.

This is the stuff of the Democrats’ worst fears, where, to coin a phrase, Beto is beato and where the Blue Wave is diminished to the point where it’s no more than a Slight Splash. The Republicans, against all odds, retain both the Senate and the House. It gives Trump a mandate to carry on and impose his will on the Justice Department. He removes both Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, thereby ensuring that he and not his opponents oversee the completion of the Mueller investigation because he will know there will only be friendly Congressional oversight. It leaves him two more years to impose an even more radical right-wing agenda, with perhaps one or even two new places opening up on the Supreme Court.

It’s a staple of horror that in the light of day the worst fears look as ridiculous as anything we attribute to the supernatural. But then, like the best ghost stories, there’s always usually a twist at the end. For both parties, the twist will come with the arrival of the Special Counsel’s report. It remains the unopened trunk in the attic. It could contain any conceivable horror. If it clears Trump of wrongdoing, that would be the worst imaginable outcome for Democrats, while any kind of heavy indictment of the President will change the political landscape of the next two years and will make it hard for the Republicans to emerge with any great hopes for their future.

Red or blue, there’s a lot to keep American politicians awake tonight.