America’s Democrats will now look to 2028

As politicians in the West sometimes let their nations know after every election, ‘the people have spoken.’ In the halls of power in Washington today, in all the silence which has descended on the Trump administration, that truth has revealed itself in all its brilliance. The people have spoken. The loudness and the assertiveness with which they have spoken are all out there: the long-beleaguered Democrats have regained the House of Representatives and the Senate and a good number of gubernatorial offices in a splendid landslide. A blue wave, as commentators in the West have repeatedly been pointing out, has pushed back the red wave which carried Donald Trump back to office two years ago.

So where does the United States go from here? But, yes, let us pause and respond to another necessary question first: what were the factors behind the defeat of the Republicans? Vice President J.D. Vance would like people to believe that it was the Iran war which caused the fall of his party at the midterm elections on Tuesday. He was right, but only up to a point. There have been other factors, notable among which is the cratering economy brought on by an energy crisis caused by the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

In politics, especially in circumstances where democracy is the norm, it is domestic politics which almost always influences the shaping of the electoral landscape. And what happened in the United States on Tuesday was a seismic change. Trump’s idea of America --- Make America Great Again --- simply was unable to withstand citizens’ worries about the future outside the door. As Bill Clinton famously said during his own campaign for the presidency in 1992 --- ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ --- it is people’s purchasing power which is important; in fact, it pushes all other issues aside before and all the way to an election. That is a lesson which has been coming out of Europe, from France, Germany, Italy.

In America, the methodology pertaining to political change was of course different from what has been happening in Europe. But popular sentiment was similar. And thus American voters have expressed themselves. Of course, as has been made clear in the past two years, foreign policy too has been a factor in the change that has taken place in America. Unlike earlier administrations, the Trump White House has in the opinion of diplomatic observers been conducting an erratic foreign policy. Its shifting positions on the Ukraine war are an instance; its widening chasm with NATO is another. Its closeness to Israel has lately come into question, to a point where President Trump has publicly made it known that American aid to Israel will cease at the end of the year.

Back to the question: where does the US go from here? The answer is obvious. If the past is any guide, and we speak of American Presidents who in recent years have been stymied by a lack of party majorities in Congress, the Democratic victory opens the door to a number of possibilities beginning early 2027. Barack Obama was prevented from nominating an individual for the Supreme Court when then majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to have the Senate meet for confirmation hearings for the nominee. It was partisan politics at its worst. The impediments that Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama came up against because the Republicans rather than the Democrats had control of Congress are a problem that will now assail President Trump in the two years which remain for his administration. The President might be tempted to veto bills sent to him by a Democrat-controlled Congress, which in turn would lead to legislative deadlock. While some Democrats are mulling impeachment proceedings against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth over the Iran war, little talk is there of any impeachment moves against the President.

In the region of America’s relations with the rest of the world, one would do well to recall President Joe Biden’s statement following his return from a tour of Europe in early 2021. As the former President said at the time, he told America’s allies, ‘America is back.’ They asked him, ‘for how long?’ Four years later, Trump was back in the White House. Trump’s term in office will end in January 2029, which is as much as to suggest that the triumphant Democrats will between now and the election of the next President go all out to convince the world, especially Europe, that Washington truly means to be back in the global system now that the political landscape has undergone a massive change in America. In brief, it will be for politicians across the divide in Congress to begin devising the means by which Washington will reconnect with the world in the two years of a lame-duck Trump presidency and beyond. And beyond that, for the Democrats, it is essentially a matter of seeing one of their own in the White House through the presidential election of November 2028.

Who might that be? And how do the results of the just concluded mid-term elections affect the presidential ambitions of Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio? The energised Democrats have former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom vying for the party nomination two years from now. Given the voter-pulling power of a good number of senators and governors elected on the Democratic ticket on Tuesday, it will not be unreasonable to expect some of them to make a dash for the presidential primaries in early 2028. James Talarico, who has just won Texas for the Democrats, might be a man to watch.

Yes, the people have spoken, as they have spoken down the decades in the United States. And a good segment of the credit for the way they have spoken must go to those individuals who have been tested in the fire and fury of politics. Barack Obama and Kamala Harris campaigned vigorously for their party nominees. Their work has paid off.

One recalls the sheer energy which Richard Nixon expended in campaigning for his Republicans at the mid-term elections in 1966. At the time, Nixon was a former Vice President, the 1960 presidential candidate who had lost the race for the White House to John F. Kennedy and had been defeated in his bid to be governor of California in 1962. Nixon’s 1966 campaign for his party brought him dividends. He was elected President in 1968.

Obama will not be President again, but Kamala Harris may well have a future again, provided she utilises the new Democratic majority in Congress in ways that could lead to a future for her in the White House, of the sort that galvanised Richard Nixon in 1968.