With the midterm elections in the United States approaching, President Biden hopes to maintain the Democratic majority in at least one of the two Houses of Congress. Republicans, whose campaign has been shaped by Donald Trump, hope for at least the same success. Here’s an update on what’s at stake in the election.
“This is a choice between two very different ways of looking at the economy.” These were the words of Joe Biden during a speech to workers at a Volvo factory on October 7, a month before the November 8 midterm elections.
The US president defended his economic record and accused Republicans of standing in the way of America’s economic success. In the midterm elections, American voters will have to decide whether Democrats or Republicans will have the upper hand in Congress at the end of Biden’s term, with the shadow of Donald Trump looming.
Currently, the Democrats have a narrow majority in both Houses: they have 221 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, compared to 212 for the Republicans and 2 vacant seats. In the Senate, they have 50 members – Republicans too – but Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris can break the tie in the Senate. Within a few weeks, the House of Representatives will be completely renewed and the Senate by more than a third (35 seats out of 100).
“For Joe Biden, it is important that these elections not become a referendum on what he did or did not do during his first two years in office, and not lose too much ground by maintaining a majority in at least one of the two Houses,” he explains. Jean-Eric Branaa, professor specializing in the United States.
However, the Democratic president does not start out as a winner: despite the fact that his popularity rating has increased in recent weeks, Joe Biden could be punished, as is often the case during midterm elections for an incumbent president.
Mathieu Gallard, director of research at Ipsos, explained in ‘Le Monde’ in 2018 that “since 1860 and the establishment of the partisan duopoly between Democrats and Republicans, 37 of the 40 ‘midterms’ have resulted in a decline in the president’s party (outgoing) in the House of Representatives.” The 2018 election was no exception, as the Democrats regained control of the House.
Democrats campaign against Trump again
Joe Biden is imploring Americans to give him enough majorities to overturn parliamentary rules that currently prevent him from banning assault rifles or legalizing abortion across the country. “Americans have a choice,” the president said in a recent speech. Abortion and guns are “on the ballot,” he said.
Democrats are making both issues midterm campaign issues, including abortion rights: three months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, thousands of Americans again demonstrated Saturday for legal access to abortion, even though it was quickly banned in several Republican-led states.
But this issue should not influence the vote for the midterm elections, according to Jean-Eric Branaa “everyone is in their own lane: the right to abortion totally convinces in the Democratic camp, and on the other side the Republicans are totally impermeable to this topic.”
On the other hand, the active presence of Donald Trump in this electoral campaign has multiplied the rallies throughout the country, including one in Arizona on Sunday, and makes the November 8 election “unpredictable”, according to the specialist in the United States. .
“Donald Trump has stayed in the political game and Joe Biden has kept up his pressure from the presidential campaign that he had held an anti-Trump referendum, playing on the degraded morale of the United States. Now, for the ‘midterms’ campaign ‘, the Democratic president has returned to exactly the same theme: he has remade his 2020 campaign saying “If you vote Republican, you vote Trump”. That’s why these elections are unpredictable: we don’t know if American voters are going to be sensitive, or no, to this anti-Trump language,” says Branaa.
Three possible outcomes for Joe Biden
According to the latest opinion polls, the Republican opposition has a good chance of winning at least 10 to 20 seats in the House of Representatives, enough to obtain a majority. Democrats, for their part, would have a 67% chance of retaining a majority in the Senate, according to the FiveThirtyEight data journalism site, while Republicans were in the lead until last July, according to this statistical model. Agreement on the inflation-reducing bill and the drop in gasoline prices in recent weeks may explain this renewed optimism in the polls for Democrats.
In this scenario of a Congress in which Republicans and Democrats each control a House, “Joe Biden will govern by executive order as all presidents do when they are ‘lame ducks’ in Congress,” says Branaa. “Thus he will be able to advance especially in foreign policy, a constitutional prerogative of the president of the United States.”
If the Republicans win a majority in both Houses, Joe Biden will continue to have the prerogative of international politics. Domestically, the Republicans could pass laws “but the President of the United States has great power: he can veto,” says the US political expert. “This veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in each House, but given the current midterm setup, Republicans will never be able to muster that two-thirds. Joe Biden would then be obstructing and could roll back any legislation passed.”
The last and most glorious scenario for Joe Biden is for the Democrats to win the midterm elections with majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In that case, the US president will have the opportunity to push through important legislation, as he was able to do with the Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act in his first two years in office. “This could allow him to pass his immigration bill, the great reform of his term, but which is stalled because there is no agreement in the Senate at the moment. If he succeeds, we will talk about the great President Biden for the next 50 years.”
*This article was adapted from its French original
