(09-02-2018, 07:28 PM)Teejay Wrote: I don't follow American politics too closely, apart from the sources which support Donald Trump. May I ask how the mid term elections will shape out.
I am going to be bold here, however I am predicting the Republicans will retain control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The consensus is that the Republicans will lose their current House of Representatives despite gerrymandering that has favored Republicans since 2012. Republicans created a structural advantage for themselves in Congressional districts, but misused it by electing extremists who ignore the sensibilities of near-majorities in their districts. In a district that leans Republican, it is wiser to elect someone more like Gerald Ford than like Jesse Helms -- and Republicans have elected people more like Jesse Helms than like Gerald Ford.
It is not so clear in the Senate, where Democrats have more Senate seats at risk because of the states in which they are Senators.
If you are not an American, it is easy to understand why you think that Trump is so strong a politician. He creates excitement among his base of support. But note well -- polls suggest that most Americans are tiring of him. If Americans were uncomfortable with Barack Obama for what he was, they are uncomfortable with Donald Trump for what he does. In our system, a President whose Party (especially if the Party is an ideological monolith as the Republican Party is today) has majority control of both Houses of Congress has nearly-dictatorial power except for control of the elections. If people get uncomfortable with the President, they can turn on Congressional majorities more easily and more quickly than they can defeat the incumbent President. Thus 1994 for Clinton, 2006 for Dubya, 2010 and 2016 for Obama, and quite possibly 2018 for Trump.
Note well: the consensus can be very wrong. Most people could not believe that Donald Trump could be elected President. and that Democrats would win big in the House of Representatives. Instead Trump became President through a quirk in the Electoral College (if you do not understand the Electoral College as the means of electing the President, you have missed the equivalent of the pons asinorum in geometry, the divide between those who "get it" and those who don't), and few of us could admit that Donald Trump could tap the resentment and bigotry thinly disguised behind sanctimony and sophistication.
Now many of us know a little more about the demographics and psychological dynamics of electoral behavior. Trump supporters are as enthusiastic as ever, but he seems not to get much 'squishy' support. People who focus on one thing (effectiveness of slogans and campaign themes, demographics, regional divides, and media coverage) miss the rest. Institutional power in America has a strong right-wing bias, but objective reality during the Trump Presidency has a liberal bias.
The high level of disapproval suggests a high level of distrust that a majority of Americans now have in the president and his closest allies in Congress. This is despite any economic collapse or any military or diplomatic blunder becoming an obvious disaster.
Corruption has been rare in the Presidency. Americans have consistently shown their disapproval by voting out incumbents in allegedly safe seats in Congress and the Senate. This will probably happen to Donald Trump in 2020.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.