As US primaries wrap up, what does it mean for SA?

In the US, attention is focused on a nearly completed primary election process that selects the actual candidates for the November midterm (ie non-presidential year) election cycle.

But to be absolutely honest, the entire nation is far from consumed by this series of elections, despite their very real importance. 

Instead of the turnout in actual general or midterm elections, voter turnout in primary elections is consistently lower. This is because primary elections generally draw in the committed, the activists, and dyed-in-the-wool party loyalists, rather than the broader sweep of eligible voters who show up for the election but remain less engaged in the intricacies of primaries or ongoing party activities.

By now, however, even if the primary cycle is not yet over, trends are emerging, likely setting the table for the upcoming November election. Crucially, President Donald Trump’s popularity among all voters nationally has settled into the 30%+ range, reflecting the electorate’s significant discomfort – or much worse – the administration’s handling of the economy.

The ‘affordability’ question

This is the so-called affordability question. But there is also the poorly explained, seemingly endless, fruitless and un-winnable conflict with Iran, and its impact on petrol prices. 

Increasingly, these discontents are not limited to Democrats and independents. The president’s obdurate obsessions over his grandiose Washington building, rebuilding and gilding edifice complex is doing little to convince voters about the president’s interest or ability to focus on the real challenges of governance. 

Among the competitors to become the Republican candidates in the swing districts and seats (ie, constituencies where incumbents have won with winning margins of under 5% of the vote), few are uttering full-throated endorsements of the president’s policies.

Instead, their rhetoric increasingly is focusing on how their respective elections are really about supporting honest Republican values; that they are candidates for their respective districts and the values of their citizens; how they would work on behalf of those honest, hard-pressed citizens; and they are trying to speak about the Iran conflict, but without actually speaking about it beyond expressing support for the military. 

Most recently, without saying so explicitly, some are drawing upon the president’s new over-the-top rhetoric about how those hard-left socialists and communists could take legislative control – if those dastardly Democrats and their lunatic fringe gain a majority in Congress.

Different Democrat play

Among Democrats, their play is a bit different. No, actually, it is vastly different. With regard to the Iran conflict, it would be hard to find any Democratic candidates supporting the Iran conflict and virtually every one of them, regardless of being establishment or DSA-style (Democratic Socialists of America) candidates, is criticising its futility and waste. For some, but not all, they are criticising how the president has throttled support for Ukraine and his embrace of Russia and its leader in the process. 

What is now being labelled “progressive populism” among Democrats is being bolstered by the success of a still relatively small number of primary victories by candidates who claim membership in or offer an allegiance to the values and proposals of the Democratic Socialist movement.

Democratic Socialist candidates have gained visible support from movement celebrity stars Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Describing this movement, The New York Times commented, for example: “Since Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win last year, the New York City DSA chapter, active since the 1980s, said it has added more than 7,000 members. Its current membership of roughly 15,000 is spread across the city, often concentrated in gentrified pockets of Brooklyn and Queens (the so-called Commie Corridor), along with Upper Manhattan.”

As the organisation matures, it is confronting how to chart its path forward. Some members are laser-focused on drafting their most prominent political ally – Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – to run for president in 2028, sometimes putting them at odds with their national brethren. Others are pushing for a more expansive policy agenda, including a renewed focus on public safety, condemning Israel’s military actions through legislation and considering a public takeover of its largest utility company [in New York].”

Many commentators are increasingly describing the DSA movement as a kind of rough analogue to the eruption of the Tea Party among Republicans a decade and a half ago, and its subsequent morphing into the Maga movement from when Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016. 

Among Democrats, the outcomes of many of the primary races has been viewed as a movement against the party’s “establishment” of its long-time leaders (and implicitly of their ineffectiveness in challenging the president) and the electorate’s desire for new faces, new leaders – and, most especially, vigorous, charismatic, younger leaders.

Most Democratic primary candidates – establishment or DSA – have embraced versions of generally popular proposals like Medicare for all, higher taxes on the rich, strong government measures to assuage the growing crisis in low-cost housing, and sharply limiting those out-of-control, violent ICE patrols and border control officers and their depredations on citizens and aliens alike.

However, some successful DSA candidates have also been outspoken on rather less rational ideas such as shutting down prisons, cutting back on police, and opening the country’s borders to all comers. Such policies may not be voter-friendly in the general election in November, for sure, and Republican candidates are absolutely certain to use those ideas to tar every Democratic opponent with the same brush.

Israel’s role

Meanwhile, an animating issue for many DSA candidates such as Michigan Senate seat candidate Abdul El-Sayed and their more fervent supporters has been America’s engagement (or entanglement) with Israel, and the role and financial impact of campaign contributions from AIPAC – the interest and lobbying group strongly supportive of Israel. (On the other hand, voter attitude surveys rank AIPAC and Israel’s role in the Iran conflict at a much lower level of importance among general voters compared to party activists, placing them well behind top-tier concerns like the cost of living, employment, and healthcare.)

Nevertheless, concern over Israel and AIPAC has been driven by a revulsion over the extraordinarily harsh and deadly Israeli military actions in Gaza that came in response to that 7 October Hamas raid inside Israel. Added to this has been the way the US and Israel seem to be joined at the hip in the Iran conflict. 

A further impetus is a feeling that the Trump administration was largely drawn into this conflict by the urgings of the Israeli government and its insistence that the Iranians were on the cusp of developing (and deploying, perhaps) nuclear warheads. (Of course a deep antipathy towards Iran on the part of Donald Trump is decades in the making and so Israeli encouragement just added fuel to the fire for the US president.)

But taken together, this translated into a growing feeling that the Trump administration is doing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bidding in the Middle East, thus subordinating America’s larger interests in the region. 

A subtext of all this is a growing feeling that US military support for Israel is making things that much worse. There is also – although this should not be overstated – a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the US.

These can be interpreted as a protest against what is an imaginary through line from the entirety of American Jewry on to that community’s supposed support for the excesses of the Netanyahu government.  One clear outcome from all this is that Israel has decisively lost significant support on the part of Americans as a whole, among many Democrats, and even among Jewish-American Democrats.   

Emblematic of this phase shift among Democratic Party supporters has been the razor-thin victory of Abdul El-Sayed over Congresswoman Haley Stevens to become the Democratic candidate for Senate from Michigan.

El-Sayed is a charismatic, public health physician whose campaign significantly mobilised many younger Democrats, although there are concerns that his single-minded pursuit of AIPAC in his campaign may have underplayed all those other kitchen table issues important to many voters. 

While El-Sayed says he is not a member of the DSA, and in his initial statements after his apparent victory he says he wants to embrace all Democrats, and indeed all voters, many of his policy pronouncements – especially his views on the Middle East – echo DSA ideas. 

The real question, though, is whether El-Sayed will be able to best the Republican candidate, the former Congressman Mike Rogers, in the November election.

If El-Sayed cannot, Democrats will have lost a crucial Senate seat that will probably present a major stumbling block to their ideas that they can win a majority of the Senate. They must flip at least four seats to their side of the aisle to gain control of that body. Losing a current Democratic seat thus would be devastating. 

Implications for SA

So what might trends in the primary cycle mean for South Africa (SA)? To be clear, SA, and Africa generally, have barely been mentioned in the primaries.

Even the incumbent president’s decisions on foreign assistance, the Pepfar programme and other programmes on international public health, and military activities to confront a rising tide of Jihadist uprisings in various Sahel nations, have rarely featured as topics of conversation. 

What is clear is that if Republicans continue to hold both houses of the Congress, even at the level of their current minuscule majorities, there will be little pressure to rebuild the foreign assistance architecture destroyed by the Trump administration. 

Similarly, there will be little pressure from a Republican-controlled Congress to push back against the newest tariff regimen imposed by the Trump administration.

Little energy will be expended to push for a long-term extension of Agoa – and especially SA’s longterm inclusion in the measure – and there will be little interest in pursuing global climate initiatives. The Democrats will make noise but they won’t have the power to make things happen.

There will, however, be continuing efforts to carry out “pinprick” anti-terrorism efforts in various nations – such as those undertaken in Nigeria and elsewhere – but not escalating into yet another Iran conflict. 

Overall, however, the likely results of the upcoming midterm election – especially if Republicans maintain control of Congress – is that there will be little interest in re-establishing the kind of American diplomatic presence in Africa (and elsewhere) that had been a high-water moment in American diplomacy a decade or so earlier.

In short, the prognosis should be a seriously guarded one for any kind of renewal of an activist role for the US in key global affairs and in Africa – beyond opposition to regimes disliked by the incumbent president. DM