US midterms reveal an America even more bitterly divided than before

The results of America’s mid-term elections were not the tremendous success Donald Trump claimed on Twitter, but they were not the “shellacking” Barack Obama ruefully acknowledged in 2010.

The Democrat net gain of 27 seats (so far) is slightly below par for an opposition party two years into a President’s first term. But it has a consequential effect. Trump and the Republicans no longer have things their way across all the branches of government – executive, judiciary and legislature. Winning the majority in the House of Representatives puts the Democrats in the driving seat of the lower house of Congress.

The House Democrats now have the power to obstruct or enable the President’s agenda. Even more importantly given this highly controversial President, from January the Democrats will hold the committee chairmanships and with them the power to investigate and subpoena witnesses and evidence.

That’s why the morning after election night was taken up with a prickly pas de deux between Trump and Nancy Pelosi, the seventy-eight year old Californian millionairess who both expect to be confirmed as Speaker or leader of the majority Democrats.

Trump and Pelosi each talked about working together and bi-partisanship especially on rebuilding America’s infrastructure and cutting the cost of prescription medicines but that is unlikely to last long. Pelosi was clear that investigating the President’s affairs will be part of the Democrats’ job. At a freewheeling news conference Trump made it clear that he would retaliate against any such scrutiny by ordering investigations of the investigators. A threat some described as unconstitutional.

Trump also insisted that the investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is a witch hunt because there is ‘nothing’ to find. Hours later he betrayed the true extent of his concern about it by immediately firing the Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions was one of the first senior Republicans to endorse Trump for his party’s nomination. He resigned as Senator for Alabama to serve in the administration but subsequently infuriated Trump by recusing himself and refusing to interfere with the Mueller probe. The new acting Attorney General Matt Whittaker has been a vocal critic of the investigation calling for it to be closed down.

In a bitterly polarized Washington DC, Trump’s critics are already claiming there is a constitutional crisis ignited by both the President’s behaviour now and his past record.  America is bitterly divided and the mid-term outcomes show that neither side has the upper hand.

The modest increase in the number of Republican senators was a bitter disappointment for Democrats. It consolidates Trump’s first line of defence and offence: the Republican majority in the Senate. This pretty much guarantees that any appointments Trump makes to the Supreme Court or to his administration will be voted through and that he would survive an impeachment trial.

Analysis of voting patterns shows that support for the Republicans is weaker than it was two years ago. As in 2016 the Democrats were comfortably first in the popular vote. The Republican advantage lies in the federal system whereby each state has two senators whether its population is enormous like Democratic California or relatively small like many of the rural “red” states.

This year though there was a swing against the Republicans in the Pennsylvania and the other key states which took Trump over the top in the electoral college. Wisconsin and Michigan both opted for Democratic governors. In Florida the Democrats prevailed very narrowly in the senatorial and gubernatorial contests. But a referendum question on the ballot in the Sunshine State has restored the right to vote to 1.4 million non-violent convicted felons. In political preferences they split three to one for the Democrats.

At the state level the Democrats made gains which means the party should at last have parity with the Republicans when it comes to gerrymandering new districts after the 2020 census. This is the American equivalent of redrawing constituency boundaries.

Trump has the advantages of incumbency and a viable standing in opinion polls which makes him the favourite to be re-elected in the 2020 election – if Mueller and others investigations let him get there. He has consolidated his grip on the Republican party by campaigning in the senate races. The Republicans won in nine of the ten states where he staged rallies in the past week, he says.

But he is not unassailable, particularly if the Democrats can find a viable candidate and unite around him or her in the race for the White House in 2020, a race which began today. The midterms have not helped in this process. The most high profile favourites of the new generation of progressives all failed in their bids for office – Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacy Abrams in Georgia. But the old stagers of the left Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were each re-elected overwhelmingly. So the argument between radicals and those who cleave to the Clintonite centre has not been put to rest.

In casting their votes in these mid-term elections the people did not point towards a way out for their politicians to escape the present turmoil.