Everyone is obsessing about the ‘blue tsunami’. But there is remarkably little about this election that matters.
The House and Senate flipping to the Democrats could disadvantage purposes I technically share with Donald Trump: the death of DEI, an end to the poisoning, mutilation and castration of minors, at long last the enforcement of immigration law. But with majorities in both houses for nearly two years, this administration has passed minimal legislation that lastingly affects any of these issues. So why does Trump losing the midterms matter?
These losses will justly be regarded as a rebuke to Trump’s overreach and self-dealing. But the President has got around Congress and the courts on many of his fetishistic tariffs. Historically, Congress has failed to constrain the executive on the prosecution of undeclared wars; with inventive funding, attacks on Iran can carry on in any case. Besides, since when is Trump capable of thoughtfully absorbing a rebuke?
Apologies to Democratic voters hopeful that new representation will improve ‘affordability’. Even a joint resolution in Congress that successfully forced the war to end wouldn’t necessarily lower fuel prices. The ayatollahs can keep prices high with a few cheap drones.
Crucially, neither see-no-evil party will do anything about the greatest peril facing the States: our mountainous debt, which barely featured in any candidate’s campaign and whichever party controls Congress will make only bigger.
As the Democrats haven’t secured 60 senate seats, I’ll spare non–Americans a detailed explanation of the ‘filibuster’; suffice it to say that virtually all bills can only pass with the support of 60 senators. The last time either party had a senatorial supermajority capable of legislating without help from the opposition was in 2009 – a generation ago, and it lasted ten months. When the body is even close to evenly divided, it’s a miracle any laws get passed at all. Much less did Democrats rack up the 67 senators required to overturn a presidential veto. Proactively, then, even a Democratic majority in both houses can’t do much. That probably makes us lucky.
Sure, Dems might make life unpleasant for Trump with investigations into corruption and yet another impeachment. They might dispense with Democratic hate figures such as Pete Hegseth, but could they bag the big kahuna? No! Do the math! Impeachment is mere indictment, and a conviction that would remove Trump belatedly from office would require two-thirds of the Senate. Without massive Republican defection, we’d only be watching pointless, posturing theatre, and we’ve seen this show before.
Readers may recall my embarrassed announcement that in 2024 I didn’t vote. I was paralysed by competing revulsions. Believe it or not, I voted this time. As an expat, I could only vote for my Representative. For the first time ever, I plumped for a Republican. I don’t even remember the candidate’s name. Like a good American, I reasoned blindly in the negative: anyone but the Democrats’ leftwing lunatic, who in New York naturally won. I only went through the motions of posting that absentee ballot because I wanted to get back in the habit.
But shouldn’t I have at least researched the character of the candidate I feebly endorsed? Nope. I seldom disagree with Gerard Baker, but his recent Wall Street Journal plea to still consider the personal, moral qualities of political candidates as electorally determinative is yesterday’s advice.
The Dems might dispense with hate figures such as Pete Hegseth, but could they bag the big kahuna? No!
The frequency of so-called crossover voting in Congress – voting with the opposition on certain bills – was around 17 per cent for both parties in the early 1990s. In the current Congress, crossover voting is 3.6 per cent for Democrats and only 2.5 per cent for Republicans, 89 per cent of whom have voted with the Trump administration 100 per cent of the time. So despite the guy’s conspicuous deficiencies, even faintly right-of-centre Texans should have voted for the corrupt dishrag Ken Paxton. It doesn’t matter who these candidates are, whether they cheat on their spouses or water their plants. If they vote consistently along partisan lines, all that counts is which side they’re on. You vote for a lying, thieving cockatoo, so long as it’s a Republican cockatoo.
I’m sorry to report that I continue to revile both major American parties. It’s an ongoing contest which I detest more. Why did I opt for an any-name Republican on that ballot, then?
Republicans are in the grip of a fraying infatuation that’s time limited. In going along with every goofball whim of their Dear Leader, Republican legislators have revealed themselves as having no standards and no principles.
The Democrats’ problem is having principles. Those principles get only worse. Unreformed Dems are still pervertedly attached to pushing transgenderism on children. They still fancy racial preferences and repudiate immigration enforcement. The left flank is still calling the shots, and now they’re in league with a growing and overtly anti-Semitic Islamic faction. They’re socialists who spurn private property. They support confiscatory taxation, including wealth taxes. They despise Israel and seem to care more about ‘Palestine’ than the US.
Need I go on? These people are dangerous, while the Republicans, once they groggily awake from their Trumpian hangover, might be barely salvageable. No principles beat bad ones. Windsocks can adapt to circumstances. Zealots beaver on doing terrible things regardless.
Now on the far side of 3 November, Americans will have already pivoted their focus to 2028. The developing Democratic line-up for president remains dismal. Incredibly, IQ-65 Kamala Harris is still topping the party’s polls. I could never vote for the repellent, RIP-CA Gavin Newsom or the DSA ditz AOC. As for the GOP, coarsened by the Trump era, the Republican electorate may find the seemingly sensible Marco Rubio too staid. Adhering to my own aphorism, then – no principles beat bad ones – am I stuck voting for J.D. Vance? Bloody hell, I can hardly wait.
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