United States mid term Fallout…

Did we witness a split decision?

In the United States every two years you have major elections that in many ways have an indirect affect in Canada and significantly impacts the rest of the world. The US holds its midterm elections in November and the outcome will have a major impact on the remaining two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, and beyond.

These elections are for Congress, which is made up of two parts – the House of Representatives and the Senate. These votes are held every two years and when they fall in the middle of the president’s four-year term of office, they are called the midterms. Congress makes nationwide laws. The House decides which laws are voted on while the Senate can block or approve them, confirm appointments made by the president and, more rarely, conduct any investigations against him.

Each sate has two senators, who sit for six-year terms. Representatives serve for two years and represent smaller districts. All the seats in the House of Representatives were up for election this past week, alongside one-third of the Senate. Several major states also have elections for their governor and local officials.

The Democratic Party has held the majority in both the House and the Senate for the past two years. That’s been helpful for President Biden to pass the laws he wanted. But the Democrats held that power over the Republicans by very narrow margins, which makes for a tight contest. Of the 435 seats in the House, most are safely held by either party, with just 30 were a toss-up between the two.

Many pundits predicted a republican landslide which did not happen, but one could say that there was a small ripple move for the republicans. They have so far failed to deliver an anticipated wave election at the midway point of Biden’s term. As of the writing of this story the republicans are leading in the race for the House as control of it remains up in the air. The contest for the Senate is also evenly split, with a few races still to close to call.

To win the House you need to get 218 seats to form a majority and as of now the republicans lead with 200 seats and the democrats are at 172 seats. When it comes to the Senate, you need to get 51 seats for a majority with the count dead locked at 48 seats each to both the republicans and the democrats.

The big question that everyone is asking this morning is will Donald Trump be the nominee for the republicans over Ron DeSantis the newly minted governor of Florida? Trump and the GOP had attempted to frame the elections as a referendum on Biden, crime and inflation, while Biden sought to make the midterms about the dangers of Trump’s election denialism – arguing that democracy itself is on the ballot.

In one of the highly profiled races in Pennsylvania the famous Dr. Oz lost to Fetterman for the race of one of those senate seats in that state. This was one of the areas that the republicans were hoping to pick up but lost out to which this was a very strategically state to pick up for the republicans having any chance to form a majority in the senate. And many of the other senate races in Arizona, Nevada and others are still not decided. But the one thing that comes out very clearly to me is that this race has a divide down the middle with the population of the United States.

My take on this midterm election is that the voters of this country are split down the middle with none of the names resonating with most of the population. In fact, l believe that both Biden and Trump are both bad for the country and the future movement globally. This divide will lead to more friction and fighting where civil war type movements are kept alive and moving forward. The only outside possible candidate would be DeSantis and interesting to note that Trump has turned on him and his popularity for his own good. Trump is still the dominant figure in the republican party, and he’ll be the favorite to win the GOP nomination for president if, as expected, he runs again. But Trump’s place in the party is far weaker after these midterms in my opinion and if he would have stayed away the republicans would have done much better.

Although there is a close split, the math is still on the side of Republicans taking the House and possibly the Senate, but the resounding message to everyone is that the voters do not want anyone party in a major position. The other interesting area for me was that the polling was so far out on calling a republican majority landslide which never happened.

A split decision……. with no real winners and all of us as losers with no one able to make decisions and lead a vulnerable country.

Vincent Black/MS