The Republicans will be very successful in the elections on 8th November next. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis will be re-elected. His party will maintain its grip on the state legislature. Senator Marco Rubio will be reported back to Washington.
Posted yesterday at 6:00 p.m.
At the national level, the Republican Party will take control of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate. Republicans may win governorships in traditionally Democratic states (Oregon, New York).
The media will blame the Democratic defeat on President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, dissatisfaction with inflation and crime. Will also be taken into account the Democratic campaign which has placed too much emphasis on abortion and has not been able to talk to citizens about the issues of the moment that concern them. It’s true.
But behind these factors, there are at least two others that are worth analyzing: the weight of the past (distant and recent) and the power of storytelling in the new media system created by the networks (anti) social.
In the first is the well-known phenomenon of rejection by the electorate of the party in power during the midterms. It’s a kind of automatic reflex.
After electing a government, the Americans clip its wings at the first opportunity. It is only in exceptional circumstances that the party in the White House maintains its influence in the federal Congress.
This strange custom is facilitated by the US Constitution in that it provides for the renewal of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate every two years. The US Constitution is the first democratic constitution in the history of the modern world. It is a very old constitution that is no longer up to effective and vigorous democratic governance. In other democracies, an elected government receives a term of four or five years before having to submit a report to the voters. This allows for better continuity in governance and the presentation of tangible results, which voters can then assess when the time comes.
In a modern world marked by complexity and heaviness at all levels (institutions, public policies, economic structure, social evolution), legislative elections every two years open the door to a backlash effect (whiplash) which impedes the solution of political problems and hinders progress. Americans need an overhaul of their constitution, but don’t even think about it. It is an inescapable dogma of the political culture in this country that the Constitution is of divine inspiration and that the problems of the system result not from the institutions, but from the vice of the politicians.
The more recent past also serves to trap the Biden administration.
The United States is going through a deep crisis of cultural identity. Who is American? What does it mean to be a model American?
Is it a country of conservative, white, heterosexual Christians in a patriarchal mode? Or is it a welcoming country in its own right for women, racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, immigrants, people of different sexual orientations, and dissidents of all kinds?
The Republicans are having a blast with the culture wars. Biden’s ambition was to change the subject of the national conversation with a unifying plan for the renewal of physical infrastructure (ports, roads, public transport) and social infrastructure (expanded access to health insurance and post-secondary education, affordable child care, family benefits to combat child poverty, parental leave, fight against climate change).
The first component (physical infrastructure) was passed by Congress in 2021. But its benefits will only be visible to the electorate in the future. The second part was largely rejected thanks to the systematic filibuster of Republican lawmakers, preciously assisted by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. Its adoption would perhaps have made it possible (I say well perhaps) to change the themes of public discussion and to reshuffle the electoral coalitions.
Let’s come to the storytelling power of the Republicans.
Governor Ron DeSantis and his active social media supporters have created a moral panic over education at all levels.
Primary schools would recruit for homosexuality and for transgender people. They would also teach there the Marxist doctrines of critical race theory. In college, liberal professors would humiliate their white students with accounts of the history of racism. Someone in the industry like me understands how fabricated these criticisms are. Unfortunately, many voters are duped.
We should still speak of the indifference of undecided voters (swing voters) to the very real threats the Trumpists pose to democracy. Unduly convinced of the solidity of the institutions, these voters see no danger in showing their dissatisfaction with the Biden team by electing election deniers, even in positions responsible for the administration of elections… This does not bode well for the future.