The midterms in the U.S. give a chance for a vote on the effectiveness of the President and the leading party. Both the House of Congress and the Senate are open to shifts in control depending on how the voters feel.
Clearly, the voters felt very strongly that the Republican party was not serving their needs. The Democrats won majorities in the House and the Senate, and also won several races for governor.
House of Congress
The races for the House of Congress were overwhelmingly won by Democratic representatives. This was expected based on polling, but polls are notoriously inaccurate in recent times.
The Congress by itself cannot control Trump’s excesses but, along with the fact that the House Speaker being selected from the Democratic party, some significant slowdowns will be possible. In theory the House controls the budget and the ability of the President to declare war so long as it exercises its authority. Hopefully under the Democrats it will do both of these things.
Senate
The Democrats also won a solid majority in the Senate which was not really predicted. The majority they have is sufficient to block a lot of legislation but isn’t the super majority (60 votes necessary to invoke something called “cloture”) required to actually pass anything. But the large majority the Democrats have won sends a strong message. Some key seats were won in Texas and Michigan in traditionally Republican held areas: a bit more on that later.
Key races
Texas
Talarico winning in Texas was a huge thing- the first Democrat to win at the state level in Texas since the mid 1990s. He’s young and energetic, but most importantly lacks the stink of corruption that Ken Paxton carried with him. Best of all, his win is by a large margin: far beyond any question or doubt. This is despite the hundreds of millions of dollars Elon Musk threw into the Texas campaign.
I suspect James Talarico will hold strong opinions in the U.S. Senate for the next six years as he holds his position there. It will be interesting to watch his progress in the coming years.
Michigan
Another U.S. Senate candidate, El-Sayed won by a healthy margin. The campaign against him was hate filled and racist, and yet still he won: this speaks well of the American citizens who voted. Abdul will be the first practicing Muslim in the Senate in history, a significant milestone.
Ohio
Sharrod Brown flipped the Senate seat in Ohio back to democrat and won by a healthy margin. But I’ll be honest- the main reason this particular race got my attention is Jon Husted. Husted is the guy whose ass Trump kept praising as a “pile of muscle” during campaigning. It makes me chuckle to see old muscle-piles lose his race.
Maine
Another Senate race, another bad republican loses. Susan Collins stood for nothing other than apologizing for the behaviour of her president and her party. She was there during the January 6th insurrection and never truly stood up to Trump over his post-incident support of the rioters. She deserved to lose, and I hope she finds time for reflection in her retirement years.
Summary
The Democrats won the midterms in what could be described as a landslide. Both the House and the Senate are now under their control, a situation that should curtail if not cripple Trump’s more egregious actions.
But it is important to note that Trump has been largely ignoring the other two branches of government. He has the support of the Judicial branch through the Supreme Court. The court justices have effectively said that the Executive branch (the President) has supreme and untrammelled authority regardless of the other supposedly co-equal branches. It remains to be seen if an empowered legislative branch can actually put any controls on his power or not.
I am happy that the Democrats won. It says one thing if nothing else: the American voters have at least some sense and, if they are abused enough, will stand up for their own rights. It doesn’t necessarily speak well about the races where Republicans still won, but at least in the majority common sense and some degree of self-consideration prevailed.
It is unclear if the electorate voted purely for their own financial benefits e.g. against the Iran War and increasing prices, or if they were also making a clear statement about cruelty, bigotry, and sexism. I’d like to imagine it is the latter and that we may be moving into a new period of hope and good will in the coming years once the Executive branch is hopefully flipped in the next Presidential election.
The header image for this article was AI generated by ChatGPT. The election results map graphics were AI presented by Google Search AI