the Biden-Trump duel as a backdrop

First modification: 10/24/2022 – 02:54

There is an indication of 2020 in 2022. On November 8, the mid-term elections are held in the United States: legislative elections and local elections that usually allow the review of the first half of the presidential term. However, the American press talks about Donald Trump as much as Joe Biden, if not more.

Traditionally, once out of the Oval Office, former heads of state are relatively silent, preferring sunny vacations, well-paid lectures or the construction of a presidential library to the tumult of Washington. Not so for Donald Trump.

Since his defeat in 2020 -which he has never acknowledged-, the billionaire, silenced on Twitter and Facebook, continues to mobilize his followers through press releases and his own Truth Social network. Donald Trump leaves the door open to a White House bid in 2024. He has been holding rally after rally, often stealing the show from the congressional hopefuls he is supposed to have come to support. For these midterm elections, he has supported candidates with relative success, such as best-selling author JD Vance in Ohio, who supported his conspiracy theory of a stolen election. In contrast, some of those who refused to play along, like Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, lost their primaries.

goings-on

And even when he prefers not to be talked about, it doesn’t work. Since this summer, the cases have accumulated. The spectacular FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, home led to the seizure of boxes of classified White House files. Since then, the legal battle between Donald Trump and the Justice Department has intensified.

Your legal problems do not end there. On September 21, New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced a civil proceeding against Donald Trump and some of his children as part of the investigation into the tax practices of the Trump Organization.

Lastly, the Congressional Commission of Inquiry into the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, which held its last live hearing on October 13, continually reminds Americans of their former president’s coup intentions. But the latter persists and points. The next day, Donald Trump responded with a scathing statement. “With hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a farce and a witch hunt … you have not spent even a small amount of time examining the massive voter fraud that took place during the presidential election of 2020 (…).”

Democrats rub their hands. As the spotlight turns to Donald Trump, his shenanigans and his unsubstantiated accusations, critical examination of Joe Biden’s record takes a backseat. “The midterms are often talked about as a referendum on the incumbent president. Logically, this should hurt Democrats because Joe Biden is not a popular president,” says J. Miles Coleman, political cartographer and co-editor of Sabato’s Crystal newsletter. Ball, the University of Virginia’s election prediction tool. The president’s approval rating is only hovering around 42.5%, after plummeting to 37% this summer. But according to J. Miles Coleman, Donald Trump’s extreme visibility could “save” Democrats: “The more he inserts himself into this election, the more he reminds undecided voters why they voted for Biden.”

A not-so-great Republican wave?

So much so that these midterm elections are shaping up to be a double Biden-Trump referendum. Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, confirms that this is quite unusual for a midterm election. “Traditionally, the result would look like a judgment call on Joe Biden’s performance and his party. But this is becoming an election, because many voters also have Donald Trump on their minds.” He added: “Six months ago, most political observers expected a big Republican wave of the kind we saw two years after Donald Trump or Barack Obama took office. Today, they believe the wave may not be as big, if is that it is.” Ultimately, analysts believe that the Democrats have a chance to maintain their narrow majority in the Senate.

The Trump effect in this midterm election may also have an impact on the 2024 Republican primary, according to J. Miles Coleman: “Looking at the January 6 hearings, Republicans are tempted to think, ‘We could nominate someone who looks like Trump but don’t have his record.”

Democracy at the polls

Joe Biden and his teams have seized this opportunity. As Republicans try to blame him for spectacular inflation – dubbed “Bidenflation”– which has affected the country and the rest of the world, he fights back by campaigning on the theme of saving democracy. “There is no place for political violence,” he said September 1 in a speech in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were adopted.

The truth is that the issue of democracy is a double-edged sword. First of all, because it is not the priority of the voters at the moment. “Inflation and abortion are probably bigger issues,” says Miles Coleman. But also, he points out, because everyone can see what they want in the phrase “save democracy”: “A polling company asked voters if threats to democracy were an important issue. Two-thirds said yes, in all parties. But actually the wording was quite broad. If you’re a Democrat, you think of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill or Trump and his authoritarian impulses. If you’re a Republican, you think of voter fraud.”

Democrats know they won’t be able to win over Donald Trump’s staunch supporters anyway. But to keep a chance in the Senate, they target independent voters, moderates who switch from one party to another depending on the elections, and those who the mention of the figure of Donald Trump gives them a hard time. If the latter are very unhappy with the policies of Joe Biden and rampant inflation, perhaps a memory of the January 6 attack could prevent them from placing a Republican ballot in the ballot box. Democrats will have their answer on November 8.

*This is an article adapted from its original French version