Though not intended in that manner by the founding fathers of America, midterm elections have come to represent a vote of confidence on whoever is in the White House in the US.
By Tiko Okoye
Midterm elections in the United States (US) are the general elections that are conducted near the midpoint of a president’s four-year term of office. Members of the House of Representatives are elected for two-year terms, so all 435 seats are contested for in midterm elections. On the other hand, senators are elected to staggered six-year terms, so a third of the 100 seats are up for grabs in any midterm election.
It must be remembered that the outgone Senate had a 50-50 balance of GOP and Democratic parties and that the latter became recognized as the majority party only because the constitution recognizes a sitting vice-President as the one with a tie-breaking mandate, meaning that President Joe Biden owes the good fortunes of having his major policy planks seeing the light of day only because of the vote of Kamala Harris.
Though not intended in that manner by the founding fathers of America, midterm elections have come to represent a vote of confidence on whoever is in the White House. And the conventional wisdom has always been that the party of the incumbent president suffers a massive defeat. That the Republican Party is predicted to win a relatively smaller number of seats than was initially anticipated is chiefly attributable to both Trump’s corrosive presence in the debate and recent decisions handed down by a GOP-compliant Supreme Court with an unassailable 6-3 majority.
There was a time it was as easy as reciting A-B-C to regurgitate what the Democratic and Republican parties stood for. The former was associated with big government, social welfare programmes with emphasis on the working class and the poor, expansion of civil rights, pro-immigrants, relatively high taxes, etc. On the other hand the GOP was associated with small government with more emphasis on state rights, big business, smaller taxes especially for the wealthy individuals and corporations, military spending, family values, anti-immigrants, anti-communist, etc.
To give it its due credit, the new-GOP created in Trump’s own image still espouses most of the conventional attributes of a conservative establishment. But unlike, say, its centuries-old soulmate in Great Britain, the Tory Party, it has morphed into an enabler of communist and authoritarian regimes around the world.
This is best evidenced by the fact that despots like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, North Korea’s Kim Jung-un (who Trump never tires of serenading) are praying for Trump’s MAGA-Republicans to win, while a vast majority of the democratic world are praying for the Democrats. The corpse of Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave!
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Two additional points are worth further explanation. ‘Family values’ is a concept that has seen the conservative politicians working hand-in-glove with white Christian evangelicals. And now, Trump has built an amalgam of the weirdest of conspiracy theory organisations (like QAnon) and mainstream Christian organisations. Members of these oddball, far-right organisations hitherto on the fringes of existence are being mainstreamed into top governing and law-making positions.
The second thing worth noting is that conservative parties set double standards for legal immigration. The clear aim is to prevent ‘those who don’t look like us’ from accessing the door. And this is most ironic particularly in the case of America where it is known that everyone else outside the native Indian-American is an immigrant! Not many white Americans any longer care a hoot about fellow white American biographer Stephen Vincent Benet poignant reminder: “Remember that when you say “I will have none of this exile and this stranger, for his face is not like my face and his speech is different,’ you have denied America that word.”
America isn’t really a Christian country in the real sense of the phrase. The first arrivals from Europe were white folks fleeing from religious persecution at home by supposedly fellow Christians. So they came to America not to found a Christian colony but to create a conducive environment for adherents to freely practice their faith without fear of what a king, queen or a government might do, hence the framers of the constitution felt the compelling need to statutorily draw a line between the State and religion.
Whenever I picture a white evangelical, I see one of the scribes and the Pharisees sitting in Moses’s seat that Jesus Christ roundly lambasted for their insincerity and hypocrisy – and who readily transgress commandments of God with their ecumenical traditions and opinions. White evangelicals with their own exclusive understanding of ‘family values’ are quick to vociferously support GOP efforts to deconstruct Barack Obama’s “Affordable Housing Act,” just because they believe that the entry of people of colour into their neighbourhoods would significantly reduce the values of their homes.
To white evangelicals, appreciation of material structures is far more important than appreciation in the lives of others who look differently. So much so for the genre of the Gospel they preach! They wax lyrical about being pro-life and ending all forms of abortion only to collaborate with GOP governors and legislators to pass laws blocking all forms of succour to single mothers via social welfare benefits. They obviously seem to be very much in love with the form of religion but not its substance.
Having spent a lot of time deeply studying America’s highly illustrious but virtually white-varnished history, I used to feel very angry and frustrated by colleagues who haven’t the faintest idea of what their praise-singing of politicians in Trump’s mould and his hypocritical white evangelical enablers really entails – on account of what the former says about abortion, LGBTQ and Israel. For crying out loud, Christianity is not just about these three topics.
Quite interestingly, Jesus Christ during his earthly ministry never canvassed them as his principal doctrines. Instead, as we see from Matthew 25:31-46 and Luke 10:30-37 (Parable of the Good Samaritan, with the instruction to “go and do likewise), Christ spoke about a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds founded on love. His is a message that says that we are oppressed when our fellow human beings are oppressed, hungry when they hunger and unsafe and in shackles when their freedom is taken away.
Christians won’t be asked at the Final Judgment to recite their respective denominational doctrines but whether or not we ministered to those suffering all manner of deprivations when and where needed. And no room is given for anyone to furnish answers based on race, tribe, creed or political affiliation.
So, here are what I predict will happen if, as expected, the Republicans take over one or both houses of Congress:
Since so many GOP candidates are those who regurgitate Trump’s big lie about a stolen election and who believe that the only credible elections are the ones they are declared winners, the ongoing efforts aimed at voter suppression and de-legitimization will continue. The era of the Jim Crow laws in the South are nothing compared to what blacks in particular are most likely to experience.
MAGA-Republicans are chronic climate change deniers. Not even the floods that continue to devastate large swathes of the globe would bring them to their senses. The rest of the world should consequently look forward to more climate-induced catastrophes.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has suffered a series of humiliations in Ukraine in his quest to recreate a new world order. He shouldn’t worry anymore because the new kids on the block – MAGA-Republicans – would hand it over to him on a silver platter at their country’s expense!
The only major loser I can foresee is China’s Xi Jinping who Trump has a visceral loathing for. But even so, anything is possible with a man who went from denigrating North Korea’s dictator as “Little rocket man” to embracing him as a best friend within a matter of months! The self-professed master of the Art of the Deal would most likely reach an understanding with Xi that involves using Taiwan as a pawn to build an unlimited number of Trump-themed golf courses and holiday resorts in Hong Kong and mainland China!
Trump, who practically apes Hitler in every facet of life, has authenticated a supposition in the latter’s classical treatise titled ‘Mein Kampf:’ “The great masses of the people…will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one.” If the big lie of a stolen election has created such an impact, then expect to be fed with even greater lies!
America and the rest of the world would ultimately be thrown into a political maelstrom. Western Europe is in deep trouble as the European Union would most likely implode. NATO will be history! And by the time you read this, the winners and losers of the elections conducted yesterday would be known and it would’ve become very clear whose prayer God has chosen to answer: the autocrats sprouting a new world order or freedom-loving peoples asking for self-respect and equitable treatment. I’m finally done!