Critics Feign Trump’s ‘Defeat’

Right or wrong, an overwhelming majority of supporters of the Republican Party in the United States have not been able to erase their conviction that the presidential election victory in 2020 was stolen from Donald Trump. Americans fear deep division and a serious threat to their democracy. The November 8 midterm polls reconfirmed it, though Trump’s long-time critics deny it. While the Republicans have won the majority in the 435-member House of Representatives, President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party has a razor thin margin in the 100-seat senate.  

Most American mainstream news outlets, which had been chronicling “piles” of lies that Trump engaged in during his four years at the White House and called him “liar-in-chief”, are now engaged in false celebration of Trump’s “defeat” in the polls they termed a “referendum” on Trump. As things stand, most of the committed Republican voters continue to believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. This means more than one-third of eligible voters. Moreover, the “liar-in-chief” was the star campaigner for his party’s candidates just as Biden addressed rallies organised by the Democrats.

It is true that Trump had boasted of easy control of the Congress chambers. It didn’t happen that way. Leaders making reckless rhetoric during election campaigns are common. For that matter, Biden, too, boasted a lot but landed up losing his party’s majority in the House while Trump’s party performed better than in the previous House. At the end of the day, the fact remains: Trump continues to have hold on grand old party. Except for a handful few, most Republicans in the Congress were not prepared to denounce him. 

Seeds of doubt

Trump might have yearned for his party to control both the chambers of the Congress but the fact is that, in spite of the six years of media attacks on the former president, the Republicans unseated the Democrats as the majority party in the House. Americans vote for the House of Representatives each alternate year whereas about a third of the 100-member senate is elected every two years. “Midterm” polls are an oblique reference to the quadrennial presidential election. 

The US is vertically divided over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election that declared Biden the winner. Opinion polls persistently indicate that 50 million people continue to believe that irregularities deprived Trump of a second term in office. Prior to last fortnight’s elections, the Democrats had the narrowest possible majority in the senate, split dead heat, broken only when invoking the tie-breaking vote Vice President Kamala Harris carried. Biden’s public approval rating was just above 40 per cent. 

A scandal of influence peddling for monetary profit, disclosed by a damaging report a week before elections, is believed to have enabled the Republicans to earn extra points. The investigation involved Robert Hunter Biden, an attorney and second son of the president. Public voices pointed out that Hunter Biden, 52, fell for engagements like drugs, striptease shows, prostitutes, girlfriends and ostentatious spending in high speed in an easy-come-money-easy-spending manner. 

A Yale University graduate, Hunter Biden and his firm are reported to have pocketed $11 million from “dubious” business deals made with Chinese firms and Ukrainian business establishments from 2013 and 2018. The actual work to be done was vague and it only looked that it was bribe money. More documents are being sought for investigations, which could reveal yet more. Republicans and independent voices questioned as to what would have happened if a Trump family member, and not Hunter Biden, had been involved in such transactions.

President Biden’s campaigning for his party probably proved to be a burden in some states, and enabled the Republicans to get hold of the House majority. Lampooned as forgetful and getting his facts embarrassingly wrong, he mentioned “54” states” of the United States only a week before the election date, much to the chagrin of Democrats. It did not help Democrats when Biden described Afghanistan as “god forsaken” place and attacked protestors as “idiots”. Previously, too, his supporters groaned when he addressed Vice President Kamala Harris as “president” at least twice. 

Goal 2024

Elections are essential; so are political parties. But they alone do not complete democratic functioning sound and proper. Everyone — the mighty and the humble — needs to be covered by the rule of law. When found on the wrong side of the law, none should escape exemplary punishment. In what is known as Koreagate of the 1980s, South Korea’s Chun Doo Hwan regime created academic fronts for enticing US Congress representatives and senators, ostensibly to their lecture circuit, and lavished them with fat fees and luxurious sightseeing trips.

What all this boils down to is that Trump’s persistent devil-may-care approach has had an enduring influence on Republicans and voters. That is precisely the reason why there is so much speculation on the chances of the former president joining the 2024 presidential race for the White House. Trump’s critics in the intelligentsia and the leading US news media are right now licking their wounds but feigning celebrations of his “defeat”. It is to ridiculous to describe Democrats’ retention of senate majority as a “miraculous triumph” while suggesting Republicans winning house majority as the loss of face for Trump.  

Although the much of the big media and sections of the American elite relentlessly attacked Trump as a denier and liar for six successive years, a sizeable section of voters sided with him on this score, whatever the truth. In the course of conducting the exit polls, more than 60 per cent of voters feared that American democracy was at risk. Biden in all probability will not contest in 2024, whatever claim he might make now in a bid to show that he is no lame duck executive head. Trump, on the other hand, has announced his decision to go for a fresh fight — win or lose — in a bid for a return to the White House.    The political landscape of democracy-at-risk United States is in for interesting — and potentially, intriguing — times before the current decade concludes not necessarily because its foreign detractors nurse such bleak assessment but because American leaders say so.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)