Even those who merely skim through the current state of politics in the United States are unanimous that the Republican Party, which President Donald Trump has recreated in his image, will lose one or both chambers of the US Congress in the mid-term polls on November 3 (November 4 in India).
Yet, throughout his adult life, Trump has bounced back from adversities like the proverbial cat of nine lives. He has changed the US, perhaps forever, and the world in our time. Like the personification of many legends, he is erratic and unconventional, resulting in the unpredictable.
The outcome of the mid-term congressional elections, therefore, can be reduced to one word: turnout. Democrats will turn out to vote on November 3 with missionary zeal. Many Republicans have soured on Trump, yet they cannot bring themselves to vote for the other party. They are very likely to sit at home on election day. So will many right-leaning independents and undecided voters who tend to cast their ballots for right-of-centre nominees at the last minute.
Candidate George W Bush had Karl Rove—nicknamed ‘the Architect’—to ensure massive turnouts of voters who made up the Republican base. Rove was to Bush Jr what Amit Shah is to Narendra Modi. Similarly, candidate Barack Obama had David Plouffe, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett to ensure the turnout.
Trump is severely handicapped in this regard. His earliest campaign managers like Corey Lewandowski and Steve Bannon are either about to go to jail for their corruption in his current administration or have done a jail term for wrongdoings in his previous presidency. Trump, as he approaches sunset at the pinnacle of his public life, is happier now in the company of his executive assistant—the 35-year-old Natalie Harp—than among hard core political operatives.
On the critical need for mobilisation, there is an example by which Indians can relate to the relevance of turnout in US elections. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Eshwer Prasad Teki, who is Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri’s chief aide in charge of development of his adopted district of Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh, went there to check on the vaccination drive. To his horror, Teki discovered that the vaccination centres were deserted. No one from the district’s villages was getting vaccinated. They did not have the means or the money for transport to the vaccination centres.
Teki also found that 30 ambulances were idly stationed at one location in the district headquarters. His request to the health authorities to ferry villagers on these ambulances to be vaccinated was turned down on the ground that the ambulances were kept for emergencies. “All 30 ambulances?” Teki exploded. “What huge emergency would be requiring 30 ambulances at the same time?” The district health authorities were unmoved.
Luckily, the young district collector was open-minded and Teki convinced the collector to use these ambulances to transport villagers for vaccination. Their turnout became impressive. Sonbhadra was soon at the top of the vaccination records in UP. This and other similar initiatives in people mobilisation catapulted Sonbhadra to one of the top five slots among the Aspirational Districts Programme of NITI Aayog for six consecutive years.
Pundits have so far focused on how much of a lame duck Trump will become if Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives with a workable majority. They have also been discussing the chances that the President will be impeached if Democrats retake the Senate as well. Trump himself has expressed such fears while motivating the Republican base to turn out to vote.
There is much more to the mid-term results than these. For example, the results will be a pointer to who will succeed Trump as his party’s candidate in 2028. Trump is in his second presidential term. The American Constitution prohibits a President from serving more than two terms.
As of now, Vice President J D Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are at the top of the list of probables. Their Senate seats, which both men resigned to join the Trump administration, are in play. Vance, as an elected politician, is allowed to campaign in this by-election from his home state of Ohio. By convention, the secretary of State, an appointed official, does not campaign in any elections. His old Senate seat is in Florida.
If these two men cannot convincingly demonstrate their continuing hold on their home states, their probability as Republican presidential hopefuls in 2028 will recede. According to the latest opinion polls, Rubio’s former seat is leaning towards Republicans. Ohio’s seat is most likely to flip to Democrats. At stake is also Ohio’s governorship, where Indian-American Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is trailing at present.
On the Democratic side, an undercurrent in the fight for the next US Congress has been the slow but steady emergence on the national scene of New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an Indian American. Several of Mamdani’s associates and progressive sympathisers are in the fray from Pennsylvania to California, including Mamdani’s base of New York state.
The first New York mayor was appointed in 1665, when it was a British colonial province. For the better part of almost four centuries, mayors of the city have been larger-than-life figures. Recent examples were Rudi Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Both men sought America’s presidency, but came up short in the gruelling primaries. Mamdani can never seek the White House, because he was born outside the US, in Uganda. His ambition, therefore, is to shape the Democratic Party’s national agenda in the coming decades as a socialist. It is a gamble worth watching.
In addition, the mid-term outcomes will decide the political future of Kamala Harris, whom Trump defeated two years ago for his historic comeback. Harris has said she may throw her hat in the presidential ring next year for 2028. If Democrats win big in Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, those victories will strengthen her potential candidature. Harris has campaigned in all these states last month in the final stretch of the current campaign. If she can turn out African-American voters in some of these states with significant black populations, other presidential aspirants from her party may find in her a powerful challenger, rising from the ashes once again.
K P Nayar | Strategic analyst
(Views are personal)
(kpnayar@gmail.com)
