The tsunami didn't happen

Although the counting of votes in many states has not yet been completed and is unlikely to be completed before the end of the week, the American media is already discussing with might and main who won and who lost in the midterm congressional elections.

Depending on the political preferences of this or that author and the orientation of the publication, the winners and losers may change, but the common thing is the recognition of the fact: the all-destroying “red wave”, the “republican tsunami”, which the “elephants” hoped for, America did not see on Tuesday.

“Despite what you may have read or seen, last night was not a good night for Democrats in Congress.

They lost their majority in the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.

However, the bleeding was not as heavy as expected, writes Michael McKenna in Election Day Winners and Losers.

"It wasn't a good night for the Republicans either, as expectations were beaten and what should have been a triumph in the midterms inexplicably turned out to be a disappointment."

At the moment (and the results can change significantly in the course of counting mail-in ballots, as they did in the 2020 presidential election), Republicans have a small majority in the House of Representatives (there needs 218 votes for a majority, now the Republicans have exactly 210, and , judging by the dynamics, they will gain another 10 easily, but then problems arise, so they most likely will not achieve an overwhelming advantage over the Democrats).

In the Senate, so far, 48 to 49 in favor of the Republicans, but at the same time, the “donkeys” took one state from the “elephants”, which they seriously counted on - Pennsylvania.

In this state, which largely ensured Trump's victory in 2016, the Republicans nominated Mehmet Oz, a media personality and very popular for his TV show and health books, as their candidate.

He enjoyed the personal support of Donald Trump, who spent a lot of time and energy urging Pennsylvanians to vote for "Dr. Oz."

The Democrats were represented by the former mayor of the city of Braddock, John Fetterman, who became famous for demanding the legalization of marijuana throughout the United States.

Fetterman suffered a severe stroke in the spring, after which, according to liberal journalists who sympathize with him, he recovered very quickly, and according to the conservative media, he became physically and mentally handicapped.

It seemed that the choice between the doctor and the patient was obvious - but no, the invalid won, walking around in the same sweatshirt and shorts in winter and summer and living in the building of a former car dealership.

Whether this was a fair victory—with dozens of Pennsylvania polling stations suddenly running out of ballots and telling voters in line to “go home”—one can only guess.

But the fact is the fact: the Republicans have lost their seat in the Senate from the state of Pennsylvania, and it's embarrassingly stupid.

(“The most John Fetterman can do is go to the Senate in his hoodie and vote yes or no on the orders of his handlers,” Roger Kimball quipped in The Spectator.)

Now everything goes to the fact that the balance of power in the Senate will again be 50 to 50, and therefore, the majority will remain with the Democrats, for whom the vice president can cast his decisive, 51st vote.

The fate of the upper house will once again be decided in Georgia, where former Baptist pastor Raphael Warnock (Democrat) and American football star Herschel Walker (Republican) are literally head to head.

None of them won 50% of the vote, which means that in Georgia, like two years ago, a second round of elections will be scheduled.

Who wins it will largely depend on the voters who now voted for the third candidate, the libertarian Chase Oliver.

Warnock's victory does not look 100% guaranteed, and this causes real hysteria among liberal journalists and commentators.

The famous radio host Howard Allen Stern, on the air of his show, called those who are going to vote for the Republican "fucking fools" and suggested that if Walker won, a new Civil War would break out in the country.

His co-host Robin Quivers readily agreed with him and stated that Walker was "worse than mentally deranged".

"I don't know what the hell he is," Quivers added.

"I was going to say 'this is a mental case', but I don't even know if that's fair for mentally ill people."

Curiously, both Democrat Warnock and Republican Walker are African American.

One would assume that Stern and Quivers would be accused of racism after such words, but no.

After all, Baptist pastor Warnock is for freedom of abortion, for LGBT rights and against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and football player Walker is against transgender athletes at women's sports events ("Let's take men out of women's sports") and against gender reassignment of children ("They they tell little kids at school that tomorrow you might be a boy even if you're a girl... But I want little kids to know that when you go to heaven, Jesus might not recognize you").

This means that he is a “wrong” black, not one of those whose lives matter - at least from the point of view of liberal journalists.

But even if a miracle happens and the Republicans get 51 seats in the Senate, it will not look like a triumph and defeat of the Democrats on all fronts.

And this despite the fact that the problems that have tormented America for the entire two years of Joe Biden's rule have not gone away: rising inflation, gasoline prices, an unprecedented surge in crime caused by the wide open southern gates of the United States.

Everything that the Republicans were talking about and that they constantly blamed the Democrats.

No one would be surprised if, after two years of social and economic experimentation by a democratic administration, there was a Republican revenge in the country.

But this did not happen, and now it is time to be surprised.

Liberals, of course, see the root of evil where they have seen it for the past six years - in the person of former US President Donald Trump.

“There appear to be two likely culprits for the Republicans’ relatively weak performance: the Supreme Court decision … overturning federal protection for abortion rights, and former President Donald Trump,” argues The Vox columnist Andrew Prokop in Why the Red Wave Didn’t Rise.

According to Prokop, the midterm elections are a referendum on the ruling party.

The losing party blames the current presidents for all the country's problems, calls on the electorate to vote "not for these guys" and wins a decisive victory.

But that didn't happen this year, as "the 2022 midterm elections appeared to be seen as a choice between President Joe Biden and Trump rather than a Democratic-only referendum — and voters in many states appear to have made the same choice." as in 2020."

Journalist David Frum, who recently demanded the nationalization of Elon Musk's SpaceX for refusing to provide free Starlink services to the Ukrainian army, lashed out at Trump with all the rage of a renegade Republican.

“ Trump is largely to blame for

their (Republicans. - 

Trump foisted bad candidates and bad topics on them: his own dissatisfaction with the 2020 election...Trump led his party from defeat to defeat...Trump had another night of defeats last night, perhaps the most spectacular.

He pushed his party to nominate eccentrics and psychos... Last night, voters got a chance to reach a verdict.

And… they made it clear that they were fed up with Trump and his antics.

With few exceptions from New Hampshire to Arizona, Trump-backed candidates have lost dramatically,” he writes in The Atlantic.

This, of course, is not true.

Even Andrew Prokop, quoted above, who considers the "Trump factor" one of the main reasons for the failure of the "red wave", admits that many of the "Trump candidates" were not rejected by the vast majority of voters - "instead, they lost only by a small margin", and , I will add on my own, in some states, such as Arizona or Pennsylvania, this "small gap" could well be explained by fraud at the polls.

Moreover, those states where Trump won in 2020, such as Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, remained Republican in this election.

Particularly important in this case is Florida, which, due to its large population of color, was considered a swing state, and after the 2022 elections, it confidently moves into the category of "red" states.

There, Republican Marco Baby Rubio won a landslide victory in the Senate elections, and Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the Republican Party, who is being pushed hard by the establishment and moderates to replace the “unruly” Trump, again won the race for governor with a crushing score.

The same David Fram believes that DeSantis should challenge the ex-president and save the party, which has already "paid a high price for extremism, for disgusting personal behavior, for denying elections, for undermining democracy" and will continue to pay as long as it is headed there is such a monster as Donald Trump.

DeSantis is indeed rapidly gaining popularity in the Republican Party.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released ahead of the midterm elections found that 72% of registered Republicans said DeSantis should be more in charge of the party's future, with only 64% for Trump.

Of course, this is not an answer to the question “Who would you like to see as president in 2024?”, and it is logical that the future is associated with a young (Desantis is 44 years old) politician, and not with an old one, and yet, nevertheless ...

Within the Republican Party itself, there are voices—so far lonely and timid—calling for Trump to drop his candidacy for president in 2024.

A certain lawyer from Pennsylvania, Jim Greenfield, published on the website of the political news aggregator RealClearPolitic “An open letter to Donald Trump”, in which, lavishing compliments on everything the ex-president has done for America, he convinces him nevertheless to give up further struggle and “make way for the young” - DeSantis, Glenn Yankin (Governor of Virginia), Nikki Haley (former US Ambassador to the UN).

“Your selfless decision to withdraw from the 2024 race would be the manifestation of a statesman, a truly historic America First moment.

Think about the endorphins your ad will release.

Can you leave the political scene with such goodwill and positive energy?

If you really understand what is best for the country, you can and will do it,” writes Greenfield.

But if we consider that the midterm congressional elections largely became a referendum not in relation to the parties of "elephants" and "donkeys", but on the issue of supporting Trump or Biden, then no matter how much Trump's opponents would like to portray their results as the defeat of the ex-president , the situation is exactly the opposite: those Republican congressmen who made it to the House of Representatives in this election belong to the majority of the Trumpist wing of the party.

“In addition, Mr. McCarthy (the head of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. - 

) will now have to deal with a smaller faction than expected, which is much to the right of him and much closer to Trump.

It will be a difficult two years,” writes Mike McKenna.

And if so, then in the next two years, the Congress - like the entire American society - will be divided almost exactly in half, and there will be no bipartisan consensus that the Democratic establishment dreamed of.

In this sense, the results of the 2022 midterm elections look extremely successful, if not for the United States, then for their geopolitical opponents.

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