What’s at stake in the midterm elections

“YOU SEE the propagandists, the media back there. They keep calling us the most dangerous candidates running in America. What they really mean is that we are a danger to them and to their power,” says Abe Hamadeh, the Republican running to be Arizona’s attorney-general, at one stop on the “Arizona First” bus tour in the closing days of the campaign. He is part of a trio of hard-line Republican candidates seeking state office—a Stop the Steal triumvirate within spitting distance of elected power.

Mark Finchem, a state legislator who has advocated “decertifying” Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state in 2020 and was photographed at the Capitol on January 6th 2021, is running to be secretary of state, the overseer of state elections. Kari Lake, the nominee for governor, is perhaps the most significant politician to emerge from the midterms cycle. Her raison d’être in the primary contest was rejecting the “shoddy, shady, corrupt election”. She talks less about that now, and more about the need “to get these groomers out of the classroom” and rebuild Donald Trump’s wall. “What happens in Arizona is either going to save this country, or we’re going to go into ruins,” she offers as her closing argument. Democrats, who now look favoured to lose the state , might agree with at least that sentiment.

The populist turn in American politics is hard to summarise in a single word. But one adjective, “surreal”, might do a better job than the others: the jumbling of the ordinary and extraordinary. André Breton, the French founder of the surrealist movement, once defined the surrealist method as relinquishing control to “automatic thought not only removed from all control exercised by the reason but also disengaged from all aesthetic or moral preoccupations”—which could be repurposed as a definition for Trumpist populism. The story of these midterms , too, is a surreal one: there is an otherwise ordinary event, the party of a president losing seats in Congress for the 20th time of the past 22 midterms. And then there is the extraordinary: it could also thrust men and women proudly campaigning on their intent to defy election outcomes they find disagreeable into elected office, not even two years after the same logic led to the storming of the Capitol.

Start with the democratic stakes. Ms Lake’s fawning over Mr Trump exceeds normal standards of obsequiousness. “My husband’s my second-favourite man,” she said by way of explanation at a campaign event. She made sure to be photographed vacuuming the red carpet that Mr Trump would stand on. If pressed to certify a narrow election loss for Mr Trump in her state in 2024, there is little question that fealty would triumph over duty.

That scenario is not merely hypothetical. The former president remains at the helm of the party. He has all but declared his intention to stand for the next election—quite possibly with Ms Lake as his running-mate. Federal judges, even those appointed by Republican presidents, remain bulwarks for democratic order. But they are one of the few remaining lines of defence as the Trump era continues to revolutionise the party: an increasing share of senators, congressmen, state attorneys-general and secretaries of state are emerging in an age where fealty to Mr Trump’s election lies are an essential litmus test in primary contests, and not a disqualifying stance in general elections.

Kevin McCarthy, the would-be speaker of the house if Republicans win, had a brief flicker of conscience after the attack on January 6th 2021 when he suggested his party break with Mr Trump. It took only a few weeks for him to reverse his mind and ally himself ever more closely with him. That about-face will probably be rewarded by the power that he seeks—and the calcification of a dangerous strain of thinking within the heart of the party.

Democrats had certainly hoped for better. They began the year despondent, when polls and the prospects of successful legislation looked grim. They found some hope in the summer months, after Congress came unstuck and the Supreme Court made the unpopular decision to overturn Roe v Wade. But then they returned to mirthless reality in October. The threat of future electoral subversion and a return to Trumpism has mattered less than voters’ discontent over covid lockdowns, crime, inflation and immigration—issues for which Democratic candidates have struggled to develop a convincing response. The party is now anxious of losing the governorships of safely liberal states like Oregon and New York. Mr Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice-president, are conspicuously absent from some of the most important battleground states, because their presence would do more harm than good.

Even Sean Patrick Maloney, the Democratic congressman who chairs the party apparatus responsible for ensuring a majority in the House of Representatives, is fighting for his own political survival in a close election. “This new fire-breathing MAGA brand, which is willing to steamroll over common sense and democratic values and constitutional freedoms to get what it wants—no part of the country is immune from this, including New York,” he explains. But he says that the plans that Republicans have put forward to tackle crime and inflation would do little. “They have a bunch of fear and a ploy to exploit these problems for political gain.” His parting thought, just before a campaign event in Westchester County, is not exactly one of complete confidence. “To be Irish is to know that sooner or later the world’s gonna break your heart,” says Mr Maloney, invoking his ancestral luck. “All you can do is go out and work your heart out and make your case. And the rest is in the hands of God.”

Loss of unified control of Congress is a much more ordinary political oscillation, if not a pleasant one. It would immediately crush the Biden agenda that remains unfulfilled—mainly the campaign pledges to vastly expand social spending, partially offset by increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. If the House flips, legislation would probably have to pass through three almost mutually exclusive sets of preferences: that of Mr Biden, that of Mr McCarthy and the Republican majority and that of the Freedom Caucus, the hard-right contingent of Republican congressmen who are preparing to muscle in. Much legislation would probably be possible only at certain chokepoints (the need to keep the federal government open, or to increase the debt ceiling). American businesses would no longer need to worry about a Democratic Congress raising their marginal tax rates, and focus instead on the possibility of new regulations, which the administration would pivot to as most of its legislative priorities fell off the table.

At present, the battle for the Senate looks like a coin-toss . Its outcome may again be decided by a run-off in Georgia held in a few weeks’ time. But if Democrats were to lose it, too, that would rub salt into their wounds. Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky who leads the party in the Senate, would have little compunction in preventing Mr Biden from seating another Supreme Court justice if a vacancy were to arise—repeating a stunt performed when Barack Obama was president. The pace of other nominations to the federal judiciary and executive positions would probably slow. Investigative scrutiny on the administration would increase, expanding the opportunity for embarrassment. And the White House could no longer rely on the Senate to cull the most unpalatable proposals before they reached the president’s desk.

Lastly, the results will set the stage for the election to be held in 2024. Mr Trump is reportedly mulling a launch date for his candidacy of November 14th, which would fire a starting gun not even one week after the midterms. An unexpectedly bad result for his party may delay him—but only temporarily. The Democratic recriminations have already begun . They might stir the insurrectionists in the party concerned that Mr Biden, whose age is more apparent, is no longer the best man to defeat Mr Trump. As stuck in stasis as Congress may be in the next two years, American politics will be anything but.■