You don't need to be Nostradamus to predict - 2022 will be a year of intense party struggle for the United States, when the ruling Democrats and the defensive Republicans come together in a brutal battle.
This development of events is predetermined by the American political calendar.
The most important year of this calendar is, of course, the presidential election year.
But here is the second most important - the interim election year, which divides the four years of each presidency in half.
This year includes elections to both houses of Congress and, in most states, elections of governors.
A lot depends on their results, and sometimes almost everything.
The last time the midterm elections were held in November 2018, then the Democrats achieved an advantage over the Republicans in the House of Representatives, but lost a little to them in the Senate.
The Democratic Party managed to correct this situation only in January 2021, after the second round of elections in Georgia.
With a majority in the lower house of Congress, the Democrats not only thwarted Trump's reforms, but also initiated two impeachments, both of which failed.
But since Biden's inauguration on January 19, 2021, the Democrats have in their hands both Congress and the White House.
It would seem that the steering wheels go wherever you want!
The reality turned out to be more severe: the winners were able to steer only in a relatively narrow corridor of opportunities.
Why the Democrats failed to achieve their goal of dominating the entire political field and the adoption of several important bills, including the BBB (Build Back Better) program, was discussed in the previous column.
Now let's talk about their chances of retaining their leadership and what the Republicans can oppose to them.
According to forecasts of the analytical center RacetotheWH, Democrats and Republicans are literally head to head with a minimal advantage for the "elephants" - 43.3% versus 42.6% for Democrats with 14% undecided.
But as for the Senate, analysts from RacetotheWH are inclined to believe that Democrats are more likely to maintain dominance (for this they just need to keep their 50 seats) than Republicans - to win it back (although for this the "elephants" need only one new armchair).
However, not everyone agrees with this forecast.
"This election will be something between good and great for Republicans," said Nathan Gonzalez, an electoral analyst and editor for Inside Elections.
Inside Elections' predictions have generally been very accurate for at least the last 20 years, so it makes sense to listen to what Gonzalez says.
As a rule, in the midterm elections, the party whose representative is sitting in the White House is in a vulnerable position - it has to take the rap for all the claims that voters have accumulated against the head of state by that time.
And the Democrats managed to break a lot of firewood in less than a year of Sleepy Joe Biden's presidency, and one can hardly expect that voters will forget about unfulfilled promises to defeat COVID-19, about galloping inflation, the shameful flight from Afghanistan and millions of migrants entering the United States across the border with Mexico.
And yet, the Donald Trump factor remains decisive in the fate of the 2022 elections.
Despite a number of important victories over Trumpism, Democrats have failed to fulfill their cherished dream of ending Trump forever.
The 45th President of the United States not only did not leave the political scene, but, on the contrary, strengthened his role there in the role of the leader and banner of the Republicans. In the last months of 2021, his approval / disapproval rating was better than that of the current president of the country: 41.3% approved of Trump's activities, 53% disapproved (Biden - 41% and 55%, respectively). And this despite the fact that in the overwhelming majority of American media there is not only an unspoken ban on criticism of Biden, but also strict censorship, which does not allow numerous oversights and embarrassments of an elderly politician on the air and on the pages of newspapers, and Trump has been in a kind of information ghetto for a year. - His famous Twitter account was frozen immediately after the events of January 6, and then Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, etc. joined the "shut the president's mouth" campaign.After Amazon killed the alternative Twitter service Parler, the only platform where Trump could speak on a regular basis was Telegram, developed by Russian IT genius Pavel Durov.
For America, where the First Amendment, which guarantees everyone freedom of speech, is still a sacred value uniting citizens, such a demonstrative deprivation of the right to vote one of the most prominent politicians of our time was a formidable foreshadowing of totalitarianism approaching the country.
Ronald Reagan once said: "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come under the name of liberalism."
Reagan's prophecy is coming true before our eyes, and it looks frightening.
But it was precisely the iron tread of liberal totalitarianism that made the "elephants" mobilize their organizational resources, rallying around Donald Trump.
Trump - even if he lost his supreme power, who replaced the White House with the Florida estate of Mar-o-Lago, but even with a digital gag in his mouth, remaining the most influential Republican in America.
A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll found that Trump is still ahead of all his party's candidates in the 2024 presidential race that hasn't even started (usually after midterm elections). Lagging behind Trump are heavyweights such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. According to this poll, 70% of Republicans would like Trump to take part in the fight for the White House. Other polls raise this bar to 78%.
Most experts believe that Trump will not participate in the midterm elections in 2022. It is potentially more profitable for him to save his strength to participate in the race in 2024, and although he has not yet made an official statement of his intention to join the fight for the White House, the words that sounded in his conversation with British politician Nigel Farage: “there is no other choice ”leave no doubt about the intentions of the ex-president.
But this does not mean that the midterm elections will be held without Trump's participation.
On the contrary, everything goes to the fact that it is Trump who will coordinate the efforts of the Republicans in the election campaign of 2022.
It is assumed that the public political committee he created will become the main strategic headquarters of the "elephants".
“Since his inauguration, former President Donald Trump has been the king of the Republican Party,” write Mackenzie Wilkes and Nathaniel Rakich.
"In both the 2018 and 2020 elections, Trump-endorsed candidates won nearly every primaries they entered."
Let's be fair: Even Trump's support did not help Georgia's Republican candidates defeat the Democrats in January 2021.
But the 2020/2021 defeat taught Trump a lot
In future elections, the party will rely on an extensive network of local activists (the so-called grassroots), primarily electoral commissioners and observers, which will make it much more difficult for Democrats to practice ballot stuffing for the right candidates. An interesting fact: realizing that this time it is unlikely to steal victory, the Democrats have already begun to internally prepare for defeat.
Far from sympathetic to Trump, Politico magazine quoted high-ranking Democratic leaders as they gathered for a party event at the posh Charleston Marriott Hotel in South Carolina.
One of them called the party's medium-term prospects "dire."
Another said, "I see no way to keep the House of Representatives."
The third added: "If we lose 10 to 20 seats in the lower house of Congress, it will be better than we thought."
And the deputy chairman of the Democratic Party in New Jersey, Peg Shaffer, frankly admitted: "I'm scared."
"House of Representatives?
Most likely lost.
Senate?
Lottery ", - sums up the magazine.
When commanders begin to prepare for defeat even before the start of the battle, do not expect victory.
It is not surprising that the liberal media began to play out the scenario of another "attempt on democracy" in advance.
“Trump's next coup has already begun!
- The Atlantic journalist Barton Gelman scares the reader.
- On January 6, there was a training session.
Donald Trump's GOP has a much better chance of disrupting the next election. "
The fear of conspiracies, however, is not the only thing that makes Democrats nervous.
Even if we leave out the bracketed midterm elections that frighten them, the problems faced by America in the outgoing year will not go away. Economic turmoil, intensifying amid the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus - the harmful omicron - threatens to degenerate into a full-fledged economic crisis comparable to the events of 2008. Unemployment continues to grow, although not as rapidly as in the first year of the pandemic, inflation, which has already broken a 30-year record, is also not going to stop: in the first months of Biden's rule it was predicted that it would drop to 2% by the end of the year, in reality now it is almost 7%. And with all this, the White House will have to somehow sort it out. And judging by what is happening now in Washington, they are going to put out the fire with gasoline.
In the previous column, I already wrote about an ambitious infrastructure bill, which in reality only one third is devoted to infrastructure - roads, bridges, 5G networks and other useful things.
The remaining two-thirds (about $ 2 trillion) are devoted to investments in green energy dearly loved by the Democrats and all kinds of social programs, including free medical care for migrants and the poor.
There is no doubt that the goals are noble ... but, considering that these two trillion will collapse like a heavy stone on the already coughing and sneezing US economy, once again you are convinced of the justice of the old truth - the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In the coming weeks, just after Congressmen return from Christmas break, the Biden administration will have to fight for the second part of the bill, and not only with the Republicans.
On the one hand, it is necessary to squeeze the uncompromising Senator from West Virginia Joe Manchin, who flatly refused to vote for the expansion of free medical programs and especially for the development of green energy (here he can be understood, Manchin is elected to the Senate from the state, one of the main pillars of the economy of which is coal industry).
On the other hand, it is necessary to calm down “progressives” like Ilkhan Omar and Ocasia-Cortes, who are outraged by Manchin’s “betrayal”. In general, the bill from the very beginning was a compromise: the left-wing progressives, reluctantly agreed to vote for its "real" part in exchange for the adoption of the 3.7 trillion "social" and "green" part. But the infrastructure part was adopted by the Congress quite easily, but the social part was first cut by almost half (to $ 1.9 trillion), otherwise the Republicans refused to vote for it, and then Joe Manchin finished it off altogether. While not in the least sympathetic to the congressional leftists, one must admit that they have every right to feel cheated!
And no matter how the fate of the BBB plan develops in the future, it is obvious that there will be no trust and cooperation between moderate centrists and left-wing progressives in the Democratic Party from now on.
This means that the war of clans in the "Washington Regional Committee" not only will not subside, but will also acquire an even more fierce character.
That in a midterm election year is, of course, completely undesirable.
To summarize: in 2022, the United States expects further consolidation of the Republicans around the powerful figure of Donald Trump, and the Democrats - internal conflicts, aggravated by the inability to cope with the accumulating problems within the country.
Both those and other processes will inevitably be projected onto Washington's policy in the international arena, but more about that next time.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.