THE FEVER HAS BROKEN

On the eve of Election Day, November 8, 2022, I tweeted “This moment feels like an episode of Will the Real America please Stand Up?” There was, and had been, so much talk, including from me, about the threat that the mid-term election of 2022 could spell the end of our democracy as we knew it, but all the doomsaying had come from the partisans and the pundits; we had not heard from the voters and that was about to change. The debate in the media had reached a fever pitch with so much at stake and the realization that we are a divided country and that a few votes here or there could make a huge difference in the tug of war between full democracy and the autocratic tendencies that had crept up in our political discourse.

The threat to full republican democracy emanated from the refusal of our 45^th President to accept the legitimacy of the vote in the 2020 Presidential election that he had lost by a wide margin and the support his election denial had gained in wide swaths of the Republican Party (141 House Republicans and 6 Republican Senators voted against certification of Biden’s victory). Further fueled by the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and the discovery of the use of election denial as a tool to win in primary elections, election denial had infected the whole body politic and threatened to kill democracy as we had known it for centuries. Just like, before the discovery of antibiotics, a bacterial infection would keep the patient in a death struggle until the fever broke (or not and the patient died), the fever the nation was suffering from would have to be broken by the voters or democracy in America might have to be declared dead.

Even though not all results of the November 8 election are in, the real America has stood up and revealed that it stands, as before, with democracy. The country is as divided as ever (just look at a near evenly split Senate and House of Representatives), but in virtually all the headline races in competitive States and Districts, voters have dismissed the blatant election deniers, Q-Anon conspirators, and would-be autocrats. But, as many others have already pointed out, the threat has not completely been removed. We need to realize that a large majority of voting districts are non-competitive, some because of traditional political preference, many because of jerrymandered district configuration. The Cook Political Report identified 345 of the 435 voting districts ‘non-competitive’, 159 solid Democratic and 186 solid Republican. That is 79% of the House seats. In these districts election deniers had a free run and many of them got elected to public office. This built-in feature of ‘safe’ districts is a clear limitation of functioning democracy, which cannot be removed without adjusting the number of House seats in tune with the population growth and by political and judicial rejection of jerrymandering.

What we can derive from this reality is that a battle was won, but the war isn’t over. It will take several more election cycles, and defeats of extreme anti-democratic contenders before we can say for sure that republican democracy is safe in America. The 2024 Presidential election will be the next determinant.

Although Donald Trump took a severe indirect beating in the mid-term election by seeing most of his endorsed candidates go down in defeat, he will figure large in the next big showdown. He will announce his candidacy tonight and regardless of whether he will get the Republican nomination or not, he will have a huge influence on the outcome of the election. The future of the GOP and the future of the two-party system in America are in his hands. As Charlie Sykes, an American political commentator and editor-in-chief of the website ‘The Bulwark,’ has pointed out: “Trump can destroy the party whenever he wants, yet the party can’t destroy him without also risking its own crack-up”. The vote for the leadership position in the now Republican controlled House of Representatives will give us a first glimpse of the struggle within the GOP between Trump backers and those who want to move on from the stranglehold Trump has held over the party since 2016. If the GOP unity survives that struggle, it will have to contend with the primary elections for 2024 and particularly the looming confrontation between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. If in the end the GOP denies Donald Trump the nomination, I see him running as an Independent against the Republican nominee, which will split the party for good and hand the White House to the Democrats on a silver platter.

Oh, how would the Republican establishment wish that it had backed away from Donald Trump when it had an open chance with the second Trump impeachment! It would have neutered Trumpism and election denial and it would have given the Republican Party a resounding victory in the polls this November; it would have delivered them complete control of the Senate and the House of Representatives (as it is, Republican candidates for the House of Representatives garnered 4.5% more votes that their Democratic opponents). The only thing that stood in the way of a red wave was Donald Trump and the acolytes he pushed forward for elected office. The same phantom will be standing in the way of a Republican recapture of the White House in 2024, even if between now and then he ends up being indicted for the crimes he has committed while in office. Which is a shame, because in my opinion the GOP has a much more qualified bench with people like Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, Chris Sununu, or Charlie Baker than the Democrats. And, with all due respect, Joe Biden will be too age limited to serve a full and productive second term in his eighties. He may be their strongest candidate to win the election, but he should consider getting elected and stepping out of the way in favor of the person he would pick as his running mate.

Yes, the fever has broken, but the source of the infection has yet to be removed.

A few more takeaways from the mid-term election held precisely a week ago:

·        Florida and Ohio are no longer swing States, they are bright red.

·        Democrats lost control of the House because of poor performance in California and New York.

·        Democrats failed to break through in Texas.

·        New England is reliably blue.

·        Incumbency has been a marked advantage even for seriously challenged candidates like Ron Johnson in WI; Chuck Grassley in Iowa; Greg Abbot in TX; Marco Rubio in FL; Michael Bennet in CO; Rand Paul in KY; and Brian Kemp in GA.

·        If the Democrats win one more Senate seat in the December 6 run-off election in Georgia, the power of the Democratic hold-outs Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema will be greatly diminished.

·        The report of the January 6 Committee, who’s work will now be finished during the 117^th Congress, and DOJ action on the various Trump investigations, will greatly determine how the political picture will change between now and November of 2024.

·        In addition to getting help from the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe vs Wade and from Trump’s grip on the GOP, Joe Biden has staved off a devastating defeat for the Democrats by being effective in garnering bipartisan support for some important legislative initiatives and by resisting any temptation to change the rules of the game by eliminating the filibuster rule, packing the Supreme Court, or granting Statehood to the District of Columbia or Puerto Rico.

·        Gen Z has had an impact on the election result by voting overwhelmingly Democratic even if its turnout has been pegged at only 27%.