Midterm elections in the US
How Donald Trump’s dominance with the Republicans could still take revenge
Donald Trump supporter Kari Lake: Won the preliminary vote with an election lie.
© Brandon Bell/Getty Images / AFP
Republicans have Donald Trump in their grip. 92 percent of the candidates he supported won the primaries. But are they also eligible outside the party? For some Democrats, the competition can’t be extreme enough.
Looking at the bare numbers, the last remaining old-school Republicans should get scared: a fairly overwhelming majority of voters would like to see Donald Trump back in the White House. And 92 percent of the ex-president-backed midterm election candidates won their preliminary votes. Republicans are Trump party. The “midterms” in November will show whether the USA is also Trump country. Quite a few believe (and hope) that the conservatives known as the Grand Old Party (GOP) have become entangled in a parallel universe that most Americans don’t relate to.
Midterm elections – time of opposition
Traditionally, the midterm elections are a safe bet for the opposition. Two years after and two years before the US presidential election, parts of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are re-elected. Usually, the party that does not provide the president wins. This year it’s Republicans. Accordingly, they are also ahead in the polls, at least in those for the House of Representatives. But that’s where the race gets closer. The other chamber of Congress, the Senate, is likely to go to the Democrats. At the GOP, the first top players are slowly getting nervous.
Perhaps it is the conservative-dominated Constitutional Court that is making life difficult for the Republicans. In the summer, the judges abolished the right to abortion, and Republican politicians like Senator Lindsey Graham are now demanding that abortions be banned after the 15th week. In doing so, however, the party alienates the majority of women, regardless of which political side they are on. So the topic is a godsend for the Democrats. And Trump’s GOP still has a lot of people whose ideas, to put it mildly, are also polarizing.
217 Trump candidates passed
The ex-president had supported 236 Republicans in the primary campaign. 217 of them were able to prevail. These include former Miss Ohio and Washington Times columnist Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, 30, Hillbilly Elegy author JD Vance, 38, open racists like Blake Masters, who blames rampant gun violence on “black people,” and almost 160 so-called “election deniers”. In other words, candidates who tirelessly vent Trump’s lie about the “stolen election”. In Arizona, the local candidate for the governorship, Kari Lake to win the primary with a demonstrably false claim.
What that means for American democracy and the rule of law when election deniers, conspiracy theorists and openly anti-state politicians move into parliament or even take over government seats in states is not foreseeable. But probably nothing good.
For example, if Kari Lake becomes Governor of Arizona, will she honor a presidential election result if she doesn’t like it? Theoretically, it would have the ability to prevent the verification of an election result. In the past two years, Republicans in the states they govern have replaced elected officials with loyal partisans in droves. Something like in Georgia should not be repeated. In 2020, the head of the electoral authority responsible there refused to comply with Donald Trump’s request to “get” him missing votes. The state played a key role in his defeat.
Democrats want Trump competition
But the Trump minions are not a cause for concern everywhere. In New Hampshire, for example, a relatively liberal state in the north-east of the USA, the Democrats even openly supported right-wing winger Bob Burns in the primary campaign. Her calculus: the man is so ultra-conservative and therefore unelectable for the vast majority of citizens that he would have no chance in the “Midterms”. Moderate Republicans and Democrats are likely to hope for the same from Michigan Interior Secretary candidate Kristina Karamo. She not only supports Trump’s election lies, but also attracts attention with bizarre theses: She considers yoga and rapper Cardi B. to be tools of the devil. Even if many Americans often have a heart for unconventional candidates, according to the polls, the 36-year-old currently has no chance against her democratic opponent.
One thing is already certain: opinions will differ in the midterm elections on November 8th. By then at the latest, the Trump camp will know whether they can also win a majority in the country, or only among the Republicans, who have already shifted to the right. And then at the very latest, kingmaker Trump himself will announce his candidacy, presumably even if his protégés don’t do quite as well. However, some internal Trump critics hope that the ex-president will throw his hat in the ring beforehand. Because then the “midterms” will be used to vote on Donald Trump, with a possibly unfavorable outcome.
Sources: DPA, AFP, Reuters, Opensecrets.orgFiveThirtyEight, “New York Times“, Bloomberg“Washington Examiners”, FoxNews“TheAtlantic“