Substitute Civil War

“The American Civil War is already here,” noted MSNBC host Tiffany Cross recently, commenting on public sentiment following an unprecedented and apparently illegal search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

African-American Cross was not bothered by the BLM riots, she did not sound the alarm when mobs of angry leftists besieged the Supreme Court and threatened to kill judges.

And now she blames the “civil war” not on the FBI or the Biden administration, but on the “extremist network” of conservative media, “from the OAN to Newsmax,” and “the millions of people who connect to the propaganda network every night.”

Cross, of course, exaggerates.

The civil war in the United States has not yet begun - and it is not a fact that it will begin: if somewhere in the conservative American outback, detachments of minutemen begin to gather, watching not CNN, but Newsmax, then the FBI will deal with them before they reach the Capitol of their state.

But the secret of the stability of the American political system lies in the fact that a citizen dissatisfied with the authorities does not have to pick up a rifle and storm the White House.

As a rule, discontent is successfully channeled through the polls: the two main parties of the country, the Republicans and Democrats, harshly criticize each other, so those who want to change power in Washington simply vote for the opposition.

The wise founding fathers included in the Constitution the opportunity to vote not only in presidential elections, but also in the middle of his term - these are the so-called midterm elections, a kind of referendum on the approval of the government that was elected two years before.

Almost always in midterm elections, Americans vote against the incumbent's party.

There have been 19 midterm elections in the United States since the end of World War II, and in 16 of them, the president's party lost five or more seats in the House of Representatives.

The system failed twice: in 1998, the Democrats won five seats in the House of Representatives, and in 2002, the Republicans succeeded in a similar trick (plus eight seats).

In both cases, a factor that could not be predicted in advance played a role: in 1998, the failed impeachment of Clinton, which many considered the revenge of the Republicans, and in 2002, the events that followed the attack on the twin towers, and Bush Jr. campaign against terrorism.

Thus, in terms of history (and statistics), the chances that the current ruling Democratic Party of the United States will relinquish the House of Representatives in the upcoming elections in November is 84% ​​- for this it needs to lose only five seats.

In the Senate, their advantage is even more shaky: there, in order to get a majority, the Republicans only need to win one (!) seat.

And then - goodbye, hopes for an eternal paradise for LGBT and transgender people, the proclamation of the District of Columbia as the fifty-first - of course, Democratic - state, vesting voting rights for migrants, expanding the Supreme Court at the expense of "progressive" lawyers and other left-liberal Wishlist, for which the inadequate and weak Biden, even with a carcass, even with a scarecrow, was pushed into the White House.

Until recently, the defeat of the Democrats in November was perceived as inevitable - although the mainstream media pretended that everything was not so bad, but the mood in the ranks of the "donkeys" was the most decadent.

As suddenly something has changed.

“After months of gaffes, setbacks and misfortunes, President Biden and his fellow Democrats are finally enjoying a string of good news,” writes Yahoo News columnist Andrew Romano.

The “good news” refers to a lower inflation bill, falling gas prices, Donald Trump’s “increasing legal problems” and, most importantly, new polls that show Democratic candidates are gaining popularity across the country.

About Trump - a little later.

As for the law on reducing inflation, it can hardly be called a victory.

The initial draft of the law assumed the allocation of $3 trillion, and what was eventually agreed upon "lost" to $430 billion. Also, of course, not a penny - especially considering that $369 billion will be allocated to "combat the climate crisis and strengthen the economic and energy security."

In other words, the development of the same green energy, which this year has already shown its unfriendly face to US motorists.

Gasoline did indeed cost a little less than it did at the beginning of the summer, due to the opening of the strategic oil reserve, but still about a dollar a gallon more expensive than a year ago.

And the country's economy has fallen into recession - not individual experts already agree with this, as was the case in July, but 97% of the heads of American companies.

In other words, passing off tiny shifts on the economic front as “good news” for the Democrats is only possible if you feel deep sympathy for these same Democrats.

Selfless or not is another question.

But with surveys, things are not so clear.

Biden's average disapproval rating has dropped two points over the past month, while the president's average approval rating has risen almost three points, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

"It's not overwhelming," writes Andrew Romano, "the president's net anti-rating is still more than 16 points, but that's not a trifle either."

There must be some explanation for this.

And since there are no serious changes in the policy of the administration in Washington, there are only two options.

The first is that exactly a month ago, Joe Biden fell ill with covid very “on time” and stopped appearing in front of journalists and in public.

It is enough to look at the FiveThirtyEight chart to see that from that day on, the disapproval curve of his activities began to decline, while the approval curve, on the contrary, increased.

For the Democratic Party, this may be good news, but not so much for Biden himself: it turns out that Americans love him much more when they don’t see or hear (on the principle “you’re good when you sleep with your teeth against the wall”).

The second option, which, however, does not exclude the first, is the significantly increased activity of Donald Trump.

I already wrote that Democratic Party strategists had high hopes that Trump would announce his participation in the presidential race before the midterm congressional elections - then, they say, the voter's fear of the "red monster" will force Americans to turn a blind eye to the "cute quirks" of the current President and Biden's rating will go up again.

Trump never announced his participation, but his speech at the Conservative Conference in Texas and, most importantly, the series of victories of the candidates he supported in the Republican primaries made all the media talk about him again as a real candidate for the presidency in 2024.

If the theory of the strategists of the Democratic Party is correct, then the reduction in Biden's anti-rating by as much as five points was a reaction to the wave raised by Trump - only the donkey experts greatly exaggerated the scale of the triumph.

However, the gap between the parties is indeed shrinking.

Since November 2021, Democrats have been consistently behind Republicans in national polls: on average, by one or two points, and not at all by Biden's 16. Moreover, in August, polls appeared, according to which Democrats are ahead of Republicans: by three points (Monmouth University poll), four points (poll by Morning Consult) and even a record six points (poll by The Economist/YouGov).

This rise in the popularity of donkeys also has an explanation - the overturning of the decision in the case of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court (not prohibiting women from having abortions, as the leftists scare, but only returning the issue of abortion to the jurisdiction of the states - but who wants to understand details).

“Many (Democrats. -

) feel that their basic rights are under threat, which usually does not bother the voters of the party when it controls both the office of the president and the Congress,” said FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver.

He believes that it is the indignation of a significant part of society by the decision of the Supreme Court that can compensate for the usual "lack of enthusiasm" of the ruling party's voters and again give victory to the Democrats.

And here we come to the most mysterious - so far - factor that is likely to have a significant impact on the results of the midterm elections in November.

To the scandalous search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, which, according to Tiffany Cross, launched the "civil war" in the United States.

Despite the liberal media going out of its way to argue that "Trump's legal problems" will do his party a disservice in the November election, the opposite opinion prevails in the camp of his supporters.

“It is likely that the FBI raid … will restore the advantage of the Republicans,” say the strategists of the “elephants”.

Polls conducted from August 13 to 16 showed that voter enthusiasm rose by six points after the FBI raid on Trump's home.

And the overall picture is not in favor of the Democrats: only 55.2% of them said that the FBI's actions will increase their motivation to vote in the midterm elections, while among Republicans this percentage reaches 83.3%.

More importantly, seven out of ten independent voters (who can vote for both "donkeys" and "elephants") said,

“This unprecedented action is likely to galvanize GOP voters and drown any growth in Democratic enthusiasm under a red tsunami,” said American Spectator columnist David Catron (red is the color of the Republicans).

And if you consider that in the Republican media after the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the FBI is not called otherwise than the “Gestapo” (another conservative publicist, Jeffrey Lord, who, by the way, worked as an assistant to Ronald Reagan, deciphered the FBI abbreviation as “Fascist Bureau of Investigation” ), you can congratulate the Democrats on successfully shooting themselves in the foot.

Moreover, Mar-a-Lago Gate promises to bring many more surprises - starting with the fact that the same people who fabricated the fake "Russian case" against Trump took part in it, and ending with CCTV footage, which, as turned out not to have been turned off during the search.

If Trump decides to publish them - and he, apparently, will not stop before this - then all of America will have the opportunity to watch how the brave FBI people rummage through Melania's wardrobe, looking for terrible threats to US national security in her underwear.

So the Democrats' current enthusiasm for the November election may be a little premature.

And the wisdom of the proverb “Do not dig a hole for another - you will fall into it yourself” has not yet been refuted by anyone.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.