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To give my readers fair warning, I am writing before the final midterm results. But even without the benefit of electoral hindsight, the importance of the elections can be ascertained. Certainly, any shift reflects that the government is in deadlock largely because of the dysfunctional nature of Donald Trump’s presidency and the continuous destruction wrought by the culture wars. Like the Religious Wars in Europe in the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries, they represent a monotony of chaos: a never-ending discussion over already established changes.
Complicating the matter is the persistence of a childish moralism, permeated by the new Mugwumps within the Democratic Party. The New York Times had a conniption fit over the Alaska senatorial election. They win the James Comey prize for aiding Trump by exposing non-crimes. They resemble the Republican reformers who backed Grover Cleveland in 1884 against James G. Blaine. These reformers, aka Mugwumps, managed to elect a Democrat who promptly ended all Reconstruction efforts in the South and eventually paved the way for Jim Crow. But Blaine’s minor infractions were nothing compared to what was to come; the tsk-tsking reformers pushed nonetheless with disastrous results.
This gives pause when one reflects on the present Democratic Party, which resembles more the 1884 Republican Party. Will they bring any real changes in American domestic and foreign policy? Particularly with the latter, Democrats disagreed with the Israeli-American war only when it went wrong. Now will they simply revert to complicated human-rights arguments that stretch conflicts even further? As far as Ukraine is concerned, will they push for escalation or conciliation?
These problems faced Lyndon B. Johnson and Democrats in 1964 after they posed as “peacemakers” and buried Barry Goldwater in a landslide. Instead of bringing peace, they escalated the war in Vietnam and, in April 1965, intervened in the Dominican Republic. If it was peace, it was that of the graveyard. Trump’s mistakes are for all to see, but what of Democratic future responses? Remember, Joe Biden sat by and saw Gaza blown to bits, while he issued weak demands that Benjamin Netanyahu happily ignored.
Likewise, will Trump, faced with Democratic opposition, lose control? Republicans never were comfortable with the Witkoff-Kushner approach and would be happy to return to their hawkish ways. Will Trump try to attack Brazil as Johnson did the Dominican Republic because someone won an election they did not want to see win? When it comes to foreign policy, contrary to John Quincy Adams’ warning, they definitely go abroad “seeking dragons to slay.”
As far as domestic policy, push me, pull you will be the practices of the day. Trump will revert to executive orders and vetoes. Bluster and brag vs. Democratic moral indignation. Given the new plutocracy and the mammoth power of the Elon Musks of this world, Americans will not receive relief from the affordability crisis.
For Democrats, they need to show that this chaos is not business as usual. If they simply return to their cautious ways and red-faced indignation, they will lose. Perhaps the whole system will be the loser, struck down and embarrassed by its own ineptness and puerile ways. Good sense may prevail, but current evidence suggests it will not.