Unless polls, pundits and precedents are wildly wrong, Democrats will crash and burn in this week’s US midterm elections. Given the problems he inherited, Joe Biden’s presidency was always likely to end in tears. Expected Republican gains on Tuesday herald a descent into bareknuckle political fisticuffs and legislative gridlock before the 2024 White House race.
The Democrats appear odds-on to lose control of the House of Representatives. They could possibly cling on in the Senate but that, too, looks increasingly uncertain. Biden has had less than two years to implement his policies. Now his domestic agenda may be stymied at every turn. Internal party recriminations have already begun.
Inflation, recession worries and pessimism about the nation’s prospects appear to be the key, unsurprising factors influencing voters. When Biden insists recovery is under way, he sounds like the similarly unpopular George HW Bush in 1992. The fact Bush was right did not save him from Bill “It’s the economy, stupid” Clinton.
Deepening instability in Washington, exacerbated by the looming return to the fray of the ever-divisive, ever-destructive Donald Trump, is bad news for the US. It’s bad news for the world, too, unless you are Russia’s Vladimir Putin. If the GOP gains the whip hand, war aid to Ukraine may take a beating.
Republican Kevin McCarthy, in line to replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, warns there will be no “blank cheque” for Kyiv. Other Republicans complain, with some justice, that US military and financial aid to Ukraine exceeds that of all the European allies combined.
JD Vance, Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, typifies this view. “I think we’re at the point where we’ve given enough money in Ukraine, I really do … The Europeans need to step up,” he said.
Misguided Democratic “progressives” recently urged Biden, in effect, to cut a deal with Putin – and focus on problems at home. Meanwhile, the cold-blooded strategic case for reneging on US commitments is debated with growing intensity within the foreign policy establishment, irrespective of right-left standpoints.
“Nearly all wars end in negotiations,” wrote Georgetown University professor Emma Ashford. “Moscow’s escalation this fall raises the twin spectres of a broader war with Nato and of the use of nuclear weapons. The global economic costs of the conflict are already enormous and will almost certainly increase …
“Even if a negotiated end to the war seems impossible today, the Biden administration should begin to raise … the difficult questions such an approach would entail. It must think through the right timing to push for negotiations and at what point the costs of continuing to fight will outweigh the benefits.”
A Republican takeover of Congress has alarming implications for other foreign policy issues, especially in the highly charged context of a confirmed Trump attempt to unseat Biden. Stepped-up congressional action by Republicans to punish China and arm Taiwan is on the cards – and potentially confrontational. A freshly emboldened denialist right can be expected to renew attacks on the Paris climate agreement and the UN-run Cop process, which Trump egregiously abandoned. They will oppose any renewed nuclear deal with Iran, urged on by their electorally rehabilitated Israeli confrèere Benjamin Netanyahu.
But consensus is not entirely dead. The Saudis’ ridiculously politicised decision to cut oil production has achieved the seemingly impossible, turning everyone against them. Mohammed bin Salman: master strategist.
More broadly, defeat for the Democrats would be interpreted, not entirely fairly, as a personal rejection of Biden and a blow to his second-term prospects. By damaging his international standing, such a perceived vote of no confidence could undercut his grandest ambition: championing democracy worldwide against aggressive, Putin-style authoritarianism. Denouncing political violence and far-right lies, Biden admitted last week that America’s own democratic traditions were at existential risk.
The crucial importance of US global leadership becomes truly evident only when it is lacking. After a brief respite when Biden revived Washington’s leading role, the western democracies may soon find themselves heading back down a dark tunnel, lacking coherent, unified positions. Ukraine strains, EU-US trade friction and German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s kowtowing to Xi Jinping’s Chinese imperium are the latest fault lines.
US Democrats do not suffer alone. Their woes echo an across-the-board failure by centre-left parties to articulate a persuasive alternative vision to the fearmongering, racism and jingoistic pseudo-patriotism of increasingly extreme and intolerant rightwing forces.
To their infinite shame, Israeli voters have just empowered a Jewish supremacist party. This disgrace was facilitated by the implosion of Labor and Meretz on the left. “Israel is now on the verge of a rightwing, religious, authoritarian revolution, whose goal is to decimate the democratic infrastructure on which the country was built,” the Haaretz newspaper warned.
In Italy, France and Hungary, too, far-right parties dominated recent election debate, exploiting irrational fears about security, national identity and immigration. The traditional left collapsed. In Britain, third-rate demagogues use the language of war to deplore a migrant “invasion”. Yet Labour’s opposing narrative fails to convince.
Relief at last week’s defeat of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the “Trump of the tropics”, cannot disguise the fact that, almost everywhere, parties of the liberal, progressive, moderate or social democratic centre-left – pick a label – are losing ground to the pernicious simplifications, fabrications and distortions of the hard right. Everywhere, or so it seems, fear is winning – to the advantage of the terrible twins, Putin and Xi, those malign global fearmongers-in-chief.
Like others on the left, Biden’s squabbling, disorganised Democrats urgently need to raise their game, sort out their ideas and hone their message before 2024. For, truth be told, rightwing ranters and ravers tell a better, more compelling, more visceral story – even though it’s mostly lies.
