‘Sick and tired of being sick and tired’ — US limbers up for midterms

The US midterm elections are just around the corner. Officially, they will take place on 3 November, but already, by Sunday, 25 October, nearly 27 million Americans had voted, either by early voting at locations across the country, or by casting their choices through the use of “vote by mail” procedures.  

In the next several days, this figure will continue to rise, and importantly, for such voters, their choices have already been baked into what will be the ultimate results. This is the case even though we obviously don’t know how those millions voted – and we won’t, until the actual tabulations start on election day. 

The US elections almost coincide with the South African local government elections that take place the following day. Then there is the Israeli parliamentary election on 27 October, and the Brazilian presidential election that took place on Sunday, 25 October. (Of course, there was also a recent Russian parliamentary election, but those results were pretty much known in advance.)

The US elections are called midterm elections because they come at the midpoint of a presidential term of office. Every one of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the Senate seats on the various state ballots, along with many governorships, state legislative seats and local offices, are up for grabs. 

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The incumbent US president has insisted the choices voters are making should be seen as a referendum on the actions of his presidency, but he seems oblivious to the data from all of the opinion polling pointing to his growing unpopularity. He continues to insist that his approval rating is more than double what that polling says.

Given the national unease – or worse – on the part of many US voters regarding the state of the nation, this points towards the real possibility the Democrats will gain a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, clawing back some seats that have not been in Democratic Party hands for years. There is also a growing sense they may achieve a net gain of at least four senatorial seats, giving them control of the upper chamber of Congress as well.

The cost of living

The key issue in many – perhaps most – voters’ minds is economics or what is termed “affordability”. That encompasses the general cost of living and rising interest rate charges, but most especially the rapid rise in the cost of petrol and diesel fuels. Petrol powers the family automobile, but diesel is the fuel for virtually every truck and freight train hauling produce, manufactured goods and raw materials alike across the nation. Pollster Nate Silver observed the other day, “Every time somebody drives past a gas station [petrol station for you citizens of Mzansi], it’s an advertisement for the Democrats.”

But there are also deep concerns about Donald Trump’s inchoate war of choice against Iran and clear evidence the administration has no plan to bring the conflict to an end, let alone to a win, whatever that might mean. Most people are now making the link between this war, the restrictions on the flow of oil out of the Middle East, and thus the hits on the price of fuel at the pump. 

Beyond this, there is also a growing unease about the depredations of excessive force and fatal violence by federal immigration officers, as well as a more general sense the Trump administration is making use of barely legal or entirely inappropriate efforts to restrict the exercise of voting rights by citizens.     

During the penultimate weekend before election day, Trump was giving speeches on behalf of potentially faltering Republican candidates in states and districts usually seen as safe – such as Mississippi! – for Republicans. His speeches do not seem likely to be recruiting new voters to the Republicans’ cause, however.

Democrats deploy big gun

Meanwhile, Democrats deployed their uber-big gun, former president Barack Obama, for a series of rallies in key battleground states such as Michigan and Ohio. Other Democratic Party figures like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Minority Leader in the House Hakeem Jeffries, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been out and about for candidates as well.

Watching his Cleveland, Ohio, speech, it was clear Obama was fired up, as he bounded onto the stage, flanked by his party’s candidates for governor, Amy Acton, and for senator, Sherrod Brown. He showed yet again why he is the US’s most inspiring public speaker. 

Tapping into voter anger and frustration, Obama quoted civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer’s famous 1964 address to the Democratic credentials committee: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” It was a direct swipe at the president and his administration’s deeply flawed governance.

Meanwhile, several controversies are now dogging the Republicans. The most embarrassing and disgusting is the effort by Vivek Ramaswamy to slander his gubernatorial race opponent in Ohio, Amy Acton. The Republican’s team had tracked down Acton’s mother who recorded a video message calling Acton a fabulist and liar. It should be noted Acton’s mother had stayed with the stepfather who had been charged with raping Acton when she was 12. The two adults then fled out of the state to avoid the consequences of the charges. Acton has not spoken with her mother in decades.

Inept rhetoric

In a less ugly but still embarrassing, ham-handed way, Trump and Republican candidate Mike Rogers, who is contesting Abdul El-Sayed for Michigan’s senate seat, have taken to calling the Democrat everything from a loyal supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood to a communist and a fascist. The quality of campaign rhetoric is taking a battering in Michigan.

More amusingly, in Alaska, the national Justice Department is trying, pre-emptively, to put the brakes on the senatorial race in that state even before election day. The slate of candidates, on the basis of ranked choice voting in the earlier primary election, gave citizens the choice of Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan, along with Democrat Mary Peltola. 

As PBS News reported, “President Donald Trump’s administration has taken its first step to block the results of a midterm election, and it’s all about the fact that there are two Dan Sullivans on the Alaska Senate ballot [along with Peltola. Based on the most recent polling, it is a close race but the Democrat is seen as ahead, slightly.] 

“One of the Sullivans is a Republican senator and ally of the president. The other is a retired schoolteacher whom Republicans accuse of being a Democratic plant to siphon away votes. Trump said Friday that he directed the Justice Department to file its lawsuit.

“The campaign is likely to be decided by only a few thousand votes, and it could determine which party controls the Senate. So the stakes are high, and Republicans worry that voters will get confused and accidentally vote for the wrong Sullivan. That’s why Republicans have been trying to get the second Dan Sullivan – hereafter known as Daniel J. Sullivan – thrown off the ballot for months. The lawsuit went all the way to the Alaska Supreme Court, but Republicans lost. Republicans think the presence of Daniel J. Sullivan is a Democratic dirty trick. But Daniel J. Sullivan, who lives in the tiny fishing community of Petersburg, says he is running of his own accord.”

That should be fun to watch. DM

Daily Maverick will be following the results of these midterm elections carefully. Readers are invited to join us for a live webinar on 5 November, where J. Brooks Spector will convene a panel of veteran US journalists and political analysts with extensive African experience to make sense of the election outcomes.