Donald Trump's unchecked hold on power has come to an end
Richard Wolffe
The midterm elections just fundamentally changed the
president’s life. He may not know it yet, but he soon will
@richardwolffedc
Wed 7 Nov 2018 05.09 GMT Last modified on Wed 7 Nov 2018
08.27 GMT
‘In place of an obsession with repealing Obamacare, there
will be serious scrutiny – backed by subpoena power – of Russian interference
in the 2016 election.’ Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Deep in the darkest recesses of Donald Trump’s very, very
large brain, there is now a nagging feeling that gnaws at his braggadocious
narcissism. His own supporters are just not that into him any more.
Not all of them have abandoned him, for sure. The angry old
men are still there, screaming their insults at immigrants, the media and
anyone else who isn’t an angry old man.
But all those white women – the people he called a majority
of women (because the rest of them don’t count to him) – they just ran for the
doors that say Trexit.
The exit polls gave Democrats a massive 21-point advantage
among women, while Republicans scored just a two-point lead among men. White
women split 50-48 for the anti-Trump movement known as Democrats. The only age
group that Republicans won were 65 and older – and that was only by one point.
Just two years ago, in those same exit polls, white women
gave Trump a nine-point lead over the first woman to hold a major party’s
presidential nomination. Married women were pretty divided in 2016, but leaned
heavily towards Democrats on Tuesday.
The 2018 election was a story of suburban white female
flight away from Trump, shifting a Texas statewide race into nail-biting
territory for the first time in more than two decades. You don’t need to be a
political consultant to know what a competitive Texas means for the
presidential contest that begins almost immediately.
To be sure, this is the point where sensible pundits say
that midterms are different from presidential cycles. Obama lost heavily in the
2010 midterms and won re-election handily two years later. But he was, um, sane
and normal and cared about reaching voters in the middle. Trump isn’t and
doesn’t and shows no capacity to learn.
So let’s remember the essence of Trump as people
speculatively suggest that he could triangulate between the newly elected
Democrats controlling the House and the old-school Republicans running the
Senate. This is a man who can’t help himself whether it’s blabbing intelligence
to the Russians, trashing the woman who accused his US supreme court nominee of
sexual assault, or race-baiting Latinos who are the fastest-growing voter bloc
in the nation.
No, Trump can’t change, no matter what the voters tell him.
He just gets ever more Trumpy, grasping for the last thinning hairs of his
far-right conspiracies as they circle the bathroom sink.
Of course there’s enough decent news for Trump to fake
himself and his followers into thinking that everything is orange peachy. The
2018 midterms were not a complete tsunami wiping out every standing Republican.
The Republican party picked up a few US senate seats on a battlefield that
tilted heavily towards them, based on a six-year cycle that coincided with
Obama’s re-election year. If that qualifies as a victory, then England can
celebrate several World Cup wins since 1966.
Republicans should have sailed to victory at a time of
relative peace and prosperity, with unemployment at historic lows and wages
rising. But in the House – a truly national contest, unlike the US Senate –
voters showed there were clear electoral limits to Trump’s rabidly
anti-immigrant racism and stunningly shameless sexism.
It turns out that so-called populism isn’t all that popular.
It turns out that suburban women voters don’t much like forcing family
separations and slashing healthcare coverage. After reading all those
interviews with Trump voters in small-town diners, who knew?
In Florida, where the Democratic disappointment in the
Senate and governor’s races was profound, the changes are coming. A state that
just decided two contests by less than 100,000 votes also decided to restore
voting rights to 1.4 million former felons.
Yes, Ron DeSantis won the governorship despite his close
ties to white nationalists. He’ll need many more of the white-sheet gang once
those former felons start voting. Meanwhile, Kris Kobach in Kansas, running
with the support of similarly racist friends, failed to win the governorship in
a state that Trump won by more than 20 points.
Life just changed fundamentally for Donald Trump. He may not
know it yet, but he soon will. With his defeat in the House of Representatives,
Democrats have ended two years of the Republican party’s determined refusal to
conduct any meaningful oversight of his administration.
In place of the far-right Freedom Caucus, there will be
multiple investigations into the scandalous loss of thousands of American lives
in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Republicans have successfully blocked any
serious inquiries into the hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for
disaster relief that could have saved so many lives.
In place of an obsession with repealing Obamacare, there
will be serious scrutiny – backed by subpoena power – of Russian interference
in the 2016 election, collusion with the Trump campaign and business ties with
the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump’s unchecked hold on power has come to an abrupt
end, and if his predecessors are any guide, it won’t return any time soon.
There will be no more Trump tax cuts for big businesses, and no slashing Trump
cuts to social security or healthcare. Still, there will be more Trump judges
and possibly more US supreme court nominees.
For many senior Democrats, this is not a wonderful prospect,
but the scenario of a wholly controlled Congress wasn’t all that great either.
They feared rolling into a 2020 presidential contest with Trump running against
a Democratic Congress. That just got a lot harder with the Republican pickups
in the Senate. This year’s contests were the prelude to the real battle for
both Congress and the White House. Until Democrats win back the presidency,
they can’t hope to repair the festering wounds of Trumpism.
It is no coincidence that among the Democrats who won the
House there are significantly more women than the old Republican majority. They
will be led by the first female speaker, taking control of half of Congress for
the second time – which counts as two historic achievements.
So it will be no coincidence when the leading Democratic
contenders for the presidency in 2020 – and the right to take the fight
directly to Donald Trump – will be female candidates. The 2018 midterms weren’t
a blue wave for Democrats, but they were a landslide for women voters and women
candidates.
For a man who famously thought he could grab women by the
genitals, Donald Trump is about to experience just how painful a squeeze that
can be.
Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist
What a Democratic House means for Europe
Expect more oversight and outreach across the Atlantic.
By TYSON
BARKER 11/7/18, 7:34 AM CET Updated
11/7/18, 10:53 AM CET
BERLIN — What a difference a day makes. As the U.S. midterms
break unified Republican control in Washington and pave the way for even more
colossal acrimony between the American branches of government, watchers have
already begun to pick apart the results for health care, border security and
budgeting.
But the elections mean changes for Europe, too. A political
realignment in Washington will bring new perspectives — and new opportunities —
for relations between the U.S. and EU, NATO and core Europe, which have
suffered particularly during the past year as U.S. President Donald Trump and
Republicans in Congress toggled between indifference and hostility.
Now that the Democrats have taken the House, they will be in
a position to try to use subpoena power and oversight hearings to connect the
dots between Russian election meddling in the U.S. and Europe and investigate
allegations into Trump corruption. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s
investigation will provide opportunities to multiple committees to take up
different threads of the case.
Democrats in the oversight, intel and other committees have
been preparing for the takeover. They are ready to hit the ground running with
a series of policy ideas, many of which are reflected in the meticulously
researched, hard-hitting Senate Democratic Report on Russian hybrid warfare in
the U.S. and Europe.
The Democrats are also likely to try to use their budgetary
power to bend the administration toward the targets the U.S. agreed to with the
Paris Climate Accord and otherwise encourage use of clean energy. It will be a
dog fight, most likely headed by Nancy Pelosi as speaker, and her progressive
caucus will be determined to steer U.S. policy in the direction of greater
climate action, pleasing many in Europe.
Wrestling with Putin
Democratic control will acutely change the situation for the
Hill’s professional Euro-watchers. For the past six years, the House’s primary
body dealing with Europe has been essentially in a backwater.
Its chairman, Dana Rohrabacher lost his bid for reelection.
Known to brag about having arm wrestled with Russian President Vladimir Putin
and lost, he used his time at the helm of the European subcommittee to stymie
efforts to support European integration and scrutinize Russia. So much so that
outgoing House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was once caught speculating that
Rohrabacher was on the Kremlin’s payroll.
While Rohrabacher allowed some examination of Turkey’s
democratic backsliding, he effectively blocked House deliberation on U.S.
action in some of the biggest issues affecting the U.S.-European relationship,
including Russia’s authoritarianism, corruption and annexation of Crimea; the
simmering war in Ukraine’s Donbas region; democratic decline in Poland and
Hungary; Macedonia’s outreach to Europe; NATO enlargement to Montenegro;
Brexit; and a host of EU-U.S. issues, ranging from the eurozone crisis to the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
Returning the House to Democratic control will uncork its
Europe hearing authority, which has been bottled up since 2012. This means more
activity; more focus on core Europe; greater support for the EU and NATO; a
greater hawkishness toward corruption and authoritarianism; and attempts to
yoke Trump to some of the nastiest impulses by leaders like Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán, Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. One
could imagine, for instance, stepped up hearings and scrutiny as to the exact
circumstances behind Central European University’s move out of Hungary.
Beyond the Europe subcommittee, there will be a dramatic
uptick interest in the top House foreign affairs body on Russia and the
Balkans. Russia is obvious. But the Balkans not so much. It is not only because
of the region’s new-found geopolitical importance but also because of the
personal interest of the likely incoming chairman. New York Representative
Eliot Engel has made it a mission to be Kosovo’s man on the Hill and has been a
personal steward of U.S. relations in Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia.
Shining a light on dark influence peddling
The Democratic House will also likely bring new energy to
how members engage with European states and communities. Expect the same attention
to diaspora issues. The Greeks, Irish, Portuguese, Polish, Italians, Irish,
Armenians and others have ferocious lobbying associations who work the Hill on
everything from basing to visa waivers to funding for exchange programs. This
won’t change.
But the Republican House turned a blind eye to new brand of
ooze seeping into Congress from foreign agents, including many in Europe. A new
dark means of influence peddling runs a daisy chain of money from foreign
governments into U.S.-registered institutions through lobbying shops run by
former Congressmen and finally into the reelection coffers of sitting
politicians.
European countries that practice this sort of campaign
financing include members of the EU among their ranks. They tend to be those
with the least regard for rule of law, parliamentary independence and the
importance of norms in democratic society. In effect, they are exporting
behavior they practice at home to Washington D.C.
The Democratic majority has campaigned promising to crack
down on corruption and foreign meddling in U.S. politics. While their ability
to go after the White House and administration figures may be limited to their
subpoena, investigative powers and the budget, their ability to police their
own colleagues reaches far beyond that. The rules committee has expansive power
to investigate, censure, fine and sanction House members. One could envision
that the deterrent effect of investigations into foreign corruption on the Hill
will dry up such financial wormholes and put some institutions and under new
scrutiny.
The House unbound
Even in lawmaking, look for changes. The House — which had
been slavishly supportive of Trump’s personal proclivities under Republican
leadership — could see alignment with the more liberal internationalist Senate.
A bipartisan group of senators, for instance, has introduced
legislation that would force the administration’s hand on sanctions in the case
of cyber-operations on elections from states like Russia and China. This same
group has also looked at ways to tie the president’s hands when he threatens to
withdraw from treaty alliances like NATO.
One could imagine a situation where a Democratic House and
bipartisan Senate coalition attempt to pass legislation requiring Congressional
approval for withdrawal from treaties like the Washington Treaty that
established NATO, the INF Treaty or New START.
Ultimately, the 2018 midterms yielded a mixed mandate that
reflects political polarization in the U.S. It lacked Cinderella stories in the
form of Democratic victories in Texas, Florida and Georgia or the unexpected
Democratic Senate takeover that many in Europe had hoped for. But it did
provide a reset for Europe in Washington. The question is whether both sides of
the Atlantic seize it.
Tyson Barker, a program director and fellow at the Aspen
Institute Germany, is a former senior advisor to the assistant secretary of
state for European and Eurasian affairs at the U.S. State Department.
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