THIS MID-TERM'S CONUNDRUM

The mid-terms are upon us. 

These would be our biennial elections for members of the House of Representatives and the Senate that take place in the middle of the incumbent president's term.

For reasons that are no doubt a window on the deep state of America's psychology, these elections tend to go badly for the party that controls the presidency.   The conventional explanation for this trend is that they usually amount to report cards on -- and repudiations of -- the incumbent president.

Which raises a number of issues.

First, if true, it suggests that Americans are perpetually schizophrenic.  

I mean . . .

Why is it that a mere two years after winning the White House, often by dramatic margins, the incumbent's party takes a beating? 

In 1980, for example, Ronald Reagan won the White House with 489 electoral votes representing victory in 44 states. Two years later, his party lost 26 seats in the House, which basically amounted to a give-back of the 34 House seats it had won in the Reagan landslide.  Similarly, in 1964, Lyndon Johnson won 486 electoral votes in 44 states and two years after that his party lost 47 seats in the House, which completely eliminated their 37-seat gain in1964.

This is buyers' remorse on a grand scale.

Second, it also suggests that Americans are  . . .

Well . . .

Lazy.

Because hiding behind these numbers is another statistical reality.  

That reality is about turnout, the number of eligible voters who actually go to the polls.  

In a presidential year, turnout is usually much higher than in a mid-term year.  In fact, as a general rule, turnout in mid-term elections is anywhere from 10-20 points lower than in presidential elections. It's as if those who wrestled the White House from their opponents sit out the battle two years later on the undercard.

Critically, however, this is not always the case.

And, more importantly, this has not been the case recently.

In 2018, for example, turnout in the mid-term elections went up . . . dramatically.  54% of eligible voters showed up, which was basically the same number who showed up in 2016 and thirteen points higher than the turnout in the previous mid-term in 2014.  

In that 2018 mid-term, moreover, another piece of conventional wisdom was upended.  One would have expected a presidential year turnout to result in a presidential year type of result.  But that didn't happen.  To the contrary,  Donald Trump's Republicans lost 40 House seats in 2018.  And that loss occurred in a world where the electoral lines had been drawn by Republican legislatures to protect Republican incumbents. 

What happened?

The answer is simple.  

Trump happened.

And America rejected him.

Decisively.

In 2020, that rejection continued and was even greater.  Because in that year, turnout was astronomical. Over 62% of America went to the polls and voted. 

For the last two election cycles, therefore, Americans have been anything but lazy and anything but schizophrenic, at least by historic standards.  

Confronted by the unique dangers Donald Trump posed to democracy and our republican form of government, the citizenry rose up in great numbers and rejected him.  Critically, in 2020, even a large number of his own voters rejected him.

What will happen this year?

If you listen to Republican talking heads, the GOP is about to win a substantial victory.  People like Chris Christie think Republicans will gain north of 20 seats to take control of the House and also win back the now 50/50 Senate where only Vice President Harris gives Democrats their tie-breaking majority.  If you read the polls, these suggest a narrower Republican margin but a Republican margin nevertheless.  According to them, inflation and the economy are now the number one issues and are driving voters to the GOP.

I beg to differ.

For a number of reasons.

First, and foremost, Donald Trump has not gone away.  In fact, he is as powerful as ever.  He orchestrated the January 6 attempted coup in the waning days of his administration and has preached the lie that he won the 2020 election every day thereafter.  As a result, more than half the Republicans running for office this year are election deniers themselves, and the loudest are willing to steal any elections Trump loses in the future.  This is a ticket to fascism, pure and simple.  

So . . .

If you want to know what America will look like in 2023 if the GOP runs things with Trump as their titular head and would-be nominee heading into 2024 . . .

Just read the history of Italy in the 1920s . . .

Or Germany in the early 1930s . . .

Or Hungary today.

Second, always remember that the underside of fascism historically has been a complacent and rich corporate class willing to look the other way as minorities are vilified to justify whatever incompetence there is in government and whatever economic pain there is in either inflation, depression or just plain Gilded-age inequality.  

America's current GOP has two sets of elites today: (1)  Trump and his band of deniers hell-bent on returning him and his pathological narcissism to power (and this time wiser to the institutional realities that stood in his way last time and will be avoided next) and (2) the corporatists on K-Street who control campaign contributions and thus own a tax-cutting (for the rich) and rights-cutting (in the Senate and therefore now on the Supreme Court) cadre of office holders in Congress and the state legislators and gubernatorial mansions who regularly do their bidding.

Third, Trump's daily dishonesty, along with  the Big Lie of election denialism, has made other lies more tell-able and (probably) more tolerable as well.  We now live in a political world where incompetents like Herschel Walker can lie about paying for abortions while pretending to be pro-life, and where slogans now replace policy platforms.  

The result is that inflation, a world-wide problem today that neither Joe Biden nor the Democrats in Congress caused and that both have enacted legislation (e.g., caps on drug prices, and with no votes from the GOP) to bring down, will not go away on any GOP future-watch.  They may be there to enjoy the fruits of Biden's and the Federal Reserve Board's labors, but -- other than cutting spending, which they always promise but rarely deliver -- they won't do anything to abate the problem.  

And the spending they do cut, in Social Security and health care,  will make things worse.

Inflation is bad.  

Because you have to plan and stretch to afford stuff.

But unemployment is worse.

Because you can't afford any stuff.

So, we come to the  conundrum in this year's mid-term election.

Not  . . .

Is past prologue?

But rather . . .

Which past is prologue?

We should all pray it is the most recent one.