The midterm elections are upon us. In mere days the composition of the Congress as well as numerous governorships and state legislatures will be decided. It is often said that elections have consequences, but that is generally said within a partisan context that assumes that the Democrats and Republicans, between them, roughly represent the country as it exists. The "consequences" discussed are accordingly focused around the parties themselves, rather than the people who make up the country they claim to represent. What I would like to do here is discuss briefly both parties, what either is likely to do if they win, and what that actually means for the vast majority of Americans who don't live and die with the fortunes of their political parties, but do live and die with the consequences of public policy.
I will begin for obvious reasons with the Republican Party. They are frankly the most important party to discuss at the moment because they now control all three branches of the federal government and most of the state governorships and legislatures. One thing that cannot be said of them is that since last year they have been passive with their majorities. They passed a very large tax cut targeted at corporate rates and rates for wealthy individuals. They have confirmed two Supreme Court justices, one in the teeth of credible accusations of sexual assault, and a slew of lower court judges who will influence American jurisprudence for decades.
Meanwhile, the GOP has thrown a number of bones to its evangelical base, the centerpiece of which has been a sustained attack on legal protections for LGBT individuals. The administration, in a reversal of an Obama-era regulation, is fighting in court to remove gender identity as a protected class under federal anti-discrimination rules. The administration has also proposed legally redefining gender to be based on genitalia at birth - a transparent attempt to use a legal definition to legislate trans people out of existence. It would be optimistic to the point of foolishness to think that such a proposal would be the last indignity trans people will be expected to suffer - historically, pretending that people don't exist is a precursor to more intense oppression and violence, not less.
On the other hand, the GOP has had some difficulty with their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. As a result they, and the health insurance system, have been stuck between their insistence on repealing something and their inability to repeal the act's most popular provisions. They claim that they will continue to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but it's difficult to see how that's possible when provisions like the individual mandate, which were designed to compensate insurance companies for additional expenses incurred by covering people with pre-existing conditions, no longer exist.
The Republicans have told us what they intend to do if they retain control of the government. They will pass immigration laws designed not only to crack down on people without documentation, but reduce the number of people who can acquire it. The president recently proposed sending the regular military to prevent political asylum seekers from entering the country. I would remind the reader that these asylum seekers generally are fleeing political instabilities that can be traced directly to US military interventions in their home countries.
They will pass additional tax cuts, and when the budgetary pressures of slashing taxes appear they will gut domestic spending as well as Social Security and Medicare while increasing the military budget indefinitely. They will also continue to make it difficult for people to vote, which has been done explicitly as a way to reduce voter turnout among nonwhites and the poor. It should be said directly what this program amounts to; a transfer of wealth from the most vulnerable people in our country to the rich, to corporations, and to military contractors, all the while securing a disproportionately white and wealthy electorate to continue to support these policies.
The Democrats for their part have been surprisingly ineffectual in spite of their formal opposition to an outrageous presidency and the series of public outcries corresponding to its unpopularity. Despite a number of close misses, they failed to stop any of the above initiatives aside from the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act. They have alternated between pretending they are dealing with a ruling party that accepts their legitimacy and offering tepid opposition to its most harmful acts with the air of one delivering a manifesto. They have attempted to cynically exploit public opposition to the president while at the same time kneecapping campaigns that channelled popular anger by refusing to be beholden to corporate money. They have continued to support an absurd degree of military spending and an endless, fruitless war across the middle east.
The Democratic Party has a strong interest in upholding itself as the vanguard of progress and modernity while maintaining its strong ties to corporate, financial, and military-industrial interests, rewarded with campaign contributions. Its measures will be uniformly low risk and plain-vanilla. We shouldn't expect great things from a party that actively discourages its candidates from even discussing universal healthcare as a campaign issue. They will be content with opposing Trump's presidency on account of his Republicanism and advocating for modest reforms that offend as few people as possible.
Whoever ends up winning in these elections, I do not expect the result to be good policy. That is not to say I do not think it matters who wins. The political and media elite may be extremely concerned with the harm the president is doing to their security and credibility, but I am far more concerned with the contempt the Republican Party clearly has for marginalized people of all kinds. It has not and will not hesitate to use any given opportunity to enrich the ruling class at their expense, and has stood idly by while Trump and others representing it have used authoritarian and pre-genocial language to describe them.
If the Democrats win Congress and accomplish nothing at all aside from preventing Trump and his party from having their way, I think that qualifies as a substantial good well worth turning out to vote for. A Republican win would only serve to embolden a president who has already expressed utter disregard for any authority other than his own whim.
That being said, we should not confuse the Democratic Party for a friend of common people. Until that party is severed from its corporate funding apparatus, it will do right by average Americans only when it is made to. But a Democratic victory followed by a sustained pressure campaign on that party to take its stated principles seriously could do some genuine good. It is for that reason that I hope for Democratic victories, even if I am less convinced than others about their inevitability. Voting is an extremely useful tool for activism, but it isnt the only or even the most important one. The organizing fight post campaign will determine the fate of the issues in front of the next Congress. I think that job will be significantly easier and the result less harmful if the Congress in question is controlled by Democrats.
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