The midterm elections in the United States

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By HEATHER COX RICHARDSON*

Democrats had one of the best midterm performances in recent times.

Two days after an election in which the Republican Party attacked Democrats over inflation, data from the US Consumer Price Index US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that inflation is decreasing faster than expected. It increased only 0,4% in October, making the rate for the last twelve months also lower than expected, at 7,7%.

The stock exchange had its biggest jump since 2020, with the different indexes that observers use to measure the rise of the market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1.200 points, or 3,7%; the S&P 500 jumped 5,54%; and the Nasdaq Composite rose 7,35%, its best performance since March 2020.

In a statement, President Joe Biden promised to continue working to lower prices, but stressed that his policies are having an effect. "Our economy has reopened, new jobs are being created, new businesses are booming, and we are now seeing progress in controlling inflation - with additional measures coming into effect soon."

So Joe Biden seemed to hit on Republicans interested in forging a way forward from their policies of the recent past, while also reminding them that for all their complaints about inflation, their only plan to fix the problem was to lower taxes again to the riches. Virtually no economists said the tax cut would help lower inflation, and many said such a policy would actually make it worse.

Joe Biden said, “I will work with anyone — Democrat or Republican — on ideas to give middle-class and working-class families more time to breathe. And I will oppose any effort to undo my agenda or make inflation worse. We are on the right track – we need to keep moving forward to build a bottom-up, middle-out economy.”

Joe Biden appeared to have the energy to soar, though he looks forward to the rest of his term, even with that recent vote of confidence. The 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference is currently taking place in Egypt, and the US administration today announced a new policy for dealing with climate change. Arguing that climate change and the shortages and damage to supply chains it brings create significant financial risks for the government (i.e. taxpayers), it put forward a plan to use the federal government's power as the world's largest buyer of goods and services – more than $630 billion in the last fiscal year – to address climate change.

Any federal government contractor awarded annual contracts over $7,5 million would be required to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, explain their climate-related financial risks, and set emissions reduction targets.

Climate change is a key issue for Gen Z, who came out strongly in favor of Joe Biden on Tuesday, but Joe Biden's other big initiative on their behalf ran into trouble today as the judge of a US District Court Donald Trump appointee Mark Pittman declared Biden's student loan relief program illegal. The government has already appealed.

Meanwhile, the vote count continues. What is clear is that there is a war erupting in the Republican Party. After former President Donald Trump scored a surprise victory in 2016, there seemed to be a feeling in the Republican Party that he had figured out how to mobilize voters not previously committed to winning victories for the Republican Party, and established Republicans increasingly joined in. to your standard.

But now he has led the party to defeat for the third time. In the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans lost control of the House, with Democrats holding 41 seats. In 2020, of course, he lost the election, as well as control of the Senate. And while this year's result is still unclear, the Democrats turned in one of the best midterm performances in recent times. Suddenly, Donald Trump no longer seems to have a magic formula.

White nationalist Nick Fuentes told supporters that the solution to Republicans being in the minority and continuing to lose elections is to establish "a dictatorship." "We have to take control of the media or take control of the government and force people to believe what we believe or force them to play by our rules."

Others seem to think that the answer is just to get rid of Donald Trump, however, as Congressman Adam Schiff (California) warned Republicans in his final intervention in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial: "If you think the House has proved this case and you still vote to acquit, your name will be linked with his with a steel cord – and for all of history.”

That his star is tarnished is clear today not just on cable television and Twitter, where right-wing users complained about their hand-picked candidates, and in Pennsylvania, where Republicans were buffeted by the loss of a Senate seat, but also in media owned by right-wing kingmaker Rupert Murdoch. The editorial board of Wall Street Journal highlighted Donald Trump's perfect record on electoral defeat and said, "Trump is the biggest loser in the Republican Party."

Apparently hit, Donald Trump unleashed a furious outburst on the platform Social Truth, claiming credit for DeSantis' start in politics. It included an astonishing statement: “I was all for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the election, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt electoral process in Broward County, and Ron was losing ten thousand votes a day, along with with now Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and US Attorneys, and the ballot theft ended immediately, just before they ran out of the necessary votes to win. I prevented your election from being stolen…”

This is apparently a reference to the 2018 election that placed DeSantis in the gubernatorial seat in place of his Democratic challenger Andrew Gillum. The race was very tight: only 32.463 of the 9 million votes counted, about 0,4%, separated the two candidates. Considering what we now know about Donald Trump's approach to election results, the allegation of fraud in the 2018 Florida election was quite a statement. josh marshall on Talking Points Memo noted that while Trump "is a pathological liar...this requires some explanation, if only clear and definitive confirmation that this did not happen."

Analysts are already suggesting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as Trump's replacement as the 2024 presidential candidate. This is terribly premature. If, indeed, the party is moving beyond the Trump years, it looks like it may well not turn to DeSantis, who, among other things, is still under investigation for airlifting legal migrants to Martha's Vineyard. , an act not only cruel, but possibly illegal.

There will be plenty of time to worry about 2024. Meanwhile, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at a Democratic National Committee event in Howard Theater in Washington. Harris told attendees that their work sent a message across the world: our democracy is intact… This is what it looks like… Some Democrats won and some Republicans won. That's what happens when more than 100 million Americans participate and vote in free, fair, and open elections... And the people in this room and across our country made it possible by standing up for core American values: independence, freedom, and the rule of law. law. And I believe that when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for.”

Joe Biden told attendees that the Democrats “beat the odds” in the midterms “for a reason – and this is not hyperbole – because of you… This is what I really mean… You believed in the system. You believed in the institutions. You fought bravely for this. And that is the most important thing that happened, in my opinion, in these elections. It was the first national election since January 6, and there were many concerns about whether or not democracy would pass the test.”

"She passed. She passed. She passed".

*Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of history at Boston College (USA). She is the author, among other books, of To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party (Basic Books).

Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves

Originally published in the author's newsletter [https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-10-2022?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email]

References


https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/1224430149011148800

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/10/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-the-october-consumer-price-index-report/

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/10/consumer-prices-rose-0point4percent-in-october-less-than-expected-as-inflation-eases.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/09/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-is-the-gops-biggest-loser-midterm-elections-senate-house-congress-republicans-11668034869

https://www.sustainability.gov/federalsustainabilityplan/fed-supplier-rule.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/10/statement-by-white-house-press-secretary-karine-jean-pierre-on-the-district-courts-ruling-on-the-biden-harris-administrations-student-debt-relief-program/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/10/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-proposes-plan-to-protect-federal-supply-chain-from-climate-related-risks/

https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/florida/governor/

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/umm-what-2

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pa-republicans-blame-trump-2022-losses-20221110.html

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/politics/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-struck-down/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/biden-texas-education-donald-trump-student-loans-f2e944d85e95792089fa1e2fb9858287

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nick-fuentes-says-the-results-of-the-2022-elections-prove-why-we-need-a-dictatorship/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/11/10/remarks-by-president-biden-and-vice-president-harris-at-a-democratic-national-committee-event/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/11/10/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-proposes-plan-to-protect-federal-supply-chain-from-climate-related-risks/

 

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