US midterms: Republicans on the rise

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘US midterms: Republicans on the rise’

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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s edition is about the mid-term elections in the United States. My guest is Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, co-author of an excellent recent history of the Trump Presidency called The Divider. The Republicans are expected to win back control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate in the upcoming elections. So, is American politics about to take a sharp turn right? And what would that mean for the future of Joe Biden and Donald Trump?

There are close races for the Senate and House right across America. One of the most important will take place in Pennsylvania, a state that voted for Joe Biden in the last presidential election. But the Democrats’ hopes of winning the crucial Senate seat there have been hurt by the fact that their candidate, John Fetterman, recently had a stroke. And in a television debate, he sometimes seemed to struggle for words. Here he is when challenged over his apparent change of heart on fracking.

Interviewer
You’re saying tonight that you support fracking, that you’ve always supported fracking. But there is that 2018 interview that you said, quote, “I don’t support fracking at all”. So how do you square the two?

John Fetterman
Oh, I do support fracking and I don’t, I don’t, I support fracking. And I stand and I do support fracking.

Gideon Rachman
But beyond the local picture, the figure looming in the background of this race is the former president, Donald Trump. He’s also been on the campaign trail where he’s been mocking the congressional investigation into his role in the storming of the Capitol building on January the 6th, 2021.

Donald Trump
So, like the January 6th committee of unselect, unselect political thugs. You know, you know, January’s the unselects. I never got any credit. I think that was one of the great names: unselects. They’re unselect; is supposed to be, you know, there’s a . . . The select committee of political you know . . . 

Gideon Rachman
Susan Glasser and I went to the same conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC last week. After the meetings were over, we sat down to talk about the midterms. I started our conversation by suggesting that the momentum of the elections has switched and that the Republicans are coming back.

Susan Glasser
Well that’s right, coming back because they were always, in many ways, the favourites in this election, both history and the weight of current evidence suggests that they were likely to do well in this midterm contest. Right now, I would say you would really stun and shock Washington if Republicans didn’t win the House. At this point the prospects for the U.S. Senate have always been a little bit less clear. The map is relatively speaking more favourable for Democrats this cycle, and it was still sort of more of a toss-up maybe. But the burden of proof at this point is on Democrats. I would say that Republicans remain favoured to do well. The question is, will it be a huge red wave, as they’re calling it, or will it be a little bit more of a mixed decision?

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. I mean, a couple of months ago when the Supreme Court made its decision essentially overturning Roe v Wade on abortion, there was a sense that maybe the Democrats could use that or that people would come towards the Democrats. But my impression is that now it’s economic issues that are dominating and inflation, that’s really a problem for the Democrats.

Susan Glasser
Well, absolutely. And of course, that was the case then as well. It may certainly be that abortion and the issue of Roe vs Wade and protecting women’s reproductive rights is a net positive for Democrats, but the map would depend where and in what specific races it might make a difference as opposed to nationally changing the picture. One of the reasons why it’s not as much of a national issue is because now that the Supreme Court has kicked it back to the states, there’s somewhat less urgency in many heavily pro-choice states that are dominated already by Democrats because in fact, their rights are going to be guaranteed. They already are guaranteed in states such as New York or California. So the very places where abortion is now a battleground may be in places where there are less pro-choice voters to come out in the first place.

Gideon Rachman
Mmm, and what are the key races? I mean, the one that suddenly attracted my eye is this extraordinary Senate race in Pennsylvania, which is a very important swing state. And the Democrats are fielding a candidate who’s had a stroke and seems to have difficulty speaking.

Susan Glasser
Well, that’s right. Then again, the candidate who’s had a stroke is up against a television quack doctor who has embraced false treatments for Covid and is supported by Donald Trump and is an election denier. So, it’s not exactly, as we say, the best and the brightest on the ballot in either case here. And unfortunately, that’s true across the board. Now, the Pennsylvania race is important because the Senate really is that close. It really could be 50-50 again. And this was a prime opportunity for Democrats in a state that did go for Joe Biden in 2020 to pick up a Senate seat. Democrats are also on the defensive in some places they didn’t expect to be, such as in Nevada, where that has increasingly cropped up as a very crucial race because Democrats might actually lose a seat there. There are some other opportunities for Democrats to pick up seats, but they are longer shots right now. And then there’s Georgia, where, again, Democrats are on the defensive. And remember, it was Georgia in 2020 that determined the outcome of the US Senate in a post-election runoff. Because if one candidate doesn’t get over 50 per cent of the vote in Georgia, they have a rule that you have to have a runoff election, and that could happen after the fact. The entire control of the Senate might not be known on election night or in the few days afterwards, and that’s exactly what happened in 2020.

Gideon Rachman
You mentioned the Nevada race. I mean, it seems to be there’s these so many interesting themes in this election, but also that the Democrats, they’ve got a candidate — the senator who is Hispanic — but the Democrats are still losing their grip on the Hispanic vote, aren’t they?

Susan Glasser
Well, I think, you know, Democrats will still very likely have a majority of Hispanic support. But remember that in recent years as the two parties have evolved, Democrats have come to count more and more on not just winning a majority of the African-American and the Hispanic vote, but winning huge majorities of it. And so, right now, what you’re looking at is those huge majorities aren’t quite so huge in especially in border states and heavily Hispanic states. Nevada is one example. Texas is another really kind of pointed — and for the Democrats, urgent — example. They look like they might even lose some House seats that have historically been held by Hispanic Democrats this cycle.

Gideon Rachman
And there are some candidates who’ve been closely associated with Donald Trump. JD Vance in Ohio is one example of that, but he seems to be in an unexpectedly tight race.

Susan Glasser
Well, that’s right. Ohio has strongly trended Republican in recent years after having been for many years kind of America’s bellwether state. But in recent election cycles, it’s been more and more red and very Trumpy, a strong bastion of support. Even in 2020, when some of the other Midwestern states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania actually went back to the Democrats, Ohio stayed very firmly in Trump’s column. JD Vance is the author of The Hillbilly Elegy, educated at Yale Law School, once a huge critic of Donald Trump, then a fervent disciple. Trump endorsed him, but he’s also mocked him, saying that, you know, JD Vance basically is so desperate to win his approval that he’ll, you know, kiss his arse, forgive the expression. But even with all of that, you know, sort of desperate Trumpiness on the part of Vance, there’s a very strong Democratic candidate, Congressman Ryan. He’s a longtime House member, very successful, kind of centrist Democrat who is good at speaking the language that used to be the Democratic party’s language, which was speaking with and connecting with white working-class voters. But increasingly, that’s the kind of Democratic congressman who doesn’t exist anymore. And so the question is whether someone who’s very skilled at that can overcome the headwinds of a party that is no longer supported by many of those voters anymore at a time. There’s also a quite popular Republican governor, Mike DeWine, up for re-election who seems to be running very strongly as well. So the expectation is that partisan votes will come home to roost and that JD Vance will win anyways. But he is not winning the campaign, even if he does ultimately win the race.

Gideon Rachman
Alright. So stepping back to the bigger picture again, let’s say, what most people are expecting happens. Republicans win the House, maybe the Senate. What does that mean for the Biden presidency? Is he then, he can’t get anything through?

Susan Glasser
Well, look, it’s not good. (Laughter) You know, now, Democrats, what they will do is they will point and say, well, there are many examples in American recent political history where the president’s party suffers a defeat in the midterm elections. And in some ways that divided government proves to be politically useful for the president, who uses this as an opportunity to retool his message and comes out stronger in the next presidential election. That arguably is the story of Bill Clinton and how the Newt Gingrich 1994 revolution did not lead to Bill Clinton’s defeat in 1996 for quite the opposite. So that’s the example Democrats would like you to think about. However, this is now the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and QAnon. And I think those kind of examples might be a little bit of self-soothing on the part of Democrats. (Laughter)

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, and I mean the Republicans, you know as an outsider I would guess that they’ll obviously blocking Biden’s domestic legislation. They will probably start all sorts of investigations into Hunter Biden or whatever their current obsession is. And what would they do on Ukraine? Because there have been some hints that they would not be that keen in maintaining the strong bipartisan support for Ukraine.

Susan Glasser
Yeah, I think that that is something to watch. Absolutely, Gideon. You will hear private reassurances here in Washington from Republicans. No, no, it’s just rhetoric. Don’t worry, it’s gonna be fine. Mitch McConnell has said that publicly. But you know, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican minority leader for now, who could potentially become the House speaker very soon. He recently gave an interview to my old colleagues from Politico who founded this very good, congressionally focused news organisation called Punchbowl News, in which he said, “If Republicans win the House and I’m their leader, don’t expect a ‘blank check’ anymore”. That’s because of the loud, vocal and growing pro-Trump and I might say pro-Putin wing of the Republican party in Congress. And they are certainly still a minority. And so the votes would still be there for support for Ukraine between Democratic votes for Ukraine, as well as still a large chunk, if not all, of the Republican conference. But I do think that the momentum is in the other direction. And Biden, by the way, can’t even count on the guaranteed certain support of all of his Democratic party either. There was this kerfuffle when the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter signed by 30 of its members to President Biden basically saying, “The time is now to negotiate with Putin,” which caused a huge outcry. It seemed to be undercutting the president’s policy. It seemed unbelievably poorly timed, both between the Ukrainian successes on the ground with their counteroffensive. And also, you know, is this rewarding Vladimir Putin for essentially nuclear blackmail? So after a couple of days of complaints, the progressives then embarrassed themselves even further by withdrawing their own letter to the president. But I think the point is made, and the point, of course, is that at the extremes in our politics, on both the left and the right, there is not going to be continued support for billions and billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine without any kind of sense of a time limit.

Gideon Rachman
And in the background of all this is the figure of Donald Trump, this man. You’ve written this splendid history of his presidency. What do you think his thinking is right now? Do you think he’s biding his time and will be jumping in quite soon?

Susan Glasser
Well, let’s just say the expectation is undoubtedly that Trump is going to run again for president and that if he does announce for president that he is a strong, strong favourite and frontrunner to win the Republican nomination again. And of course, that means that there’s a quite decent possibility that he could win the presidency . . . again.

Gideon Rachman
One would think...

Susan Glasser
Yeah, absolutely!

Gideon Rachman
Biden will be 82. The economy will be in trouble.

Susan Glasser
Correct.

Gideon Rachman
And the other thing that lots of people are concerned about is that in this midterm election, the down-ticket races for state positions will go to what you called election deniers, people who agree with Trump that the election was stolen and he might do his bidding in the next election if it’s closed and refused to ratify Democrat victories in states.

Susan Glasser
Yeah, absolutely! You know, both The Washington Post and The New York Times have tried to pin down exactly how many of these election deniers — the Post came up with about 300 and The New York Times has even more Republican nominees — some large percentage of whom are in safe Republican seats, who they’re guaranteed, in fact, to serve in the House or the Senate or in key statewide positions next year. So that is a very realistic possibility. Republicans have sought more or less successfully to weaponise the nonpartisan machinery of election counting on their own behalf. And Trump two years ago set out not only to do something totally unprecedented, which was to seek to overturn a legitimate American election result and to refuse to concede. And that really is I know people like to sling around the term “unprecedented” a lot. I just want to be clear with people, this has never happened before in American history — that an American president has refused to accept the outcome of a presidential election. So that in and of itself put us in completely uncharted political territory. But what’s so remarkable is that generally speaking, American political losers don’t fare well with their parties. You know, they kind of get purged, especially if they’re seen as unsuccessful, divisive one-term presidents. Jimmy Carter, one example of that; George HW Bush — maybe not divisive, but not successful. It was seen in that in terms of domestic politics. Both of them were basically expunged from the day-to-day politics because their party wanted to move on and show that they were no longer embracing losing politics. Donald Trump — by many measures — is one of the losing-est presidents we’ve had. In fact, he’s the first American president since Herbert Hoover to lose the White House, the House and the Senate in just four years. And yet Republicans have not only stuck with him, but he actually succeeded in turning denial of Biden’s election victory into the Republican party’s ideology two years later. And so I do think we’ve gotten so used to this idea that maybe we’ve forgotten a little bit how stunning it is. And it’s a very significant turn away from what might be termed rational politics.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, I mean, I was talking to a figure in the Biden administration, actually mainly about foreign policy, and then he suddenly just chucked into me, “Yeah! You know, we could be living in the American equivalent of Weimar Germany, the last years of American democracy”. And it’s extraordinary statement. But do you think that’s an overstatement?

Susan Glasser
You know, the observation is that we don’t know and if anything that the last few years should have taught us, it’s to be relatively humble about projecting the future when you’re dealing with leaders, whether it be domestically here in the US, like Donald Trump or internationally like Vladimir Putin, who are willing to go beyond the bounds of what we have seen as possible. It was always hard to predict politics, but I think it’s really made it harder and harder because we’re dealing with a category now of political figures for whom doing the unthinkable and doing the unexpected is part of their brand as politicians and as leaders.

Gideon Rachman
One would have thought in the past you talk about this new era that most Americans would not accept a candidate who attempted to overturn the election. Why has that not been a killer for Trump?

Susan Glasser
Yeah, well, again, most Americans do not accept Donald Trump. And it is part of his, you know, sort of genius marketing skills, in fact, that we almost accept his paradigm of, you know, how big and popular and successful he is. He is a loser. He is a two-time loser of the US presidential vote. He talks again and again and again such that everybody can repeat his talking points about the 74 million votes he won in 2020. And somehow people have almost forgotten that he lost the election and that Joe Biden won 7 million more votes than those 74 million votes. Donald Trump is the only president of the United States since scientific polling began who never was supported by a majority of the American public for even a single day, according to the Gallup poll. The highest poll rating he ever had in his entire presidency was 49 per cent, which was in the immediate aftermath of his first impeachment in February of 2020. That was his high watermark as a politician. A majority of Americans, Americans do not, broadly speaking, support Donald Trump. But because of some of the weaknesses of our system, the undemocratic aspects of our system, which is that we have this electoral college, that it weights the votes and the support from small-population western states much greater than the votes and the support in big states like California and New York. This has meant a distorting of our perceptions about Donald Trump, even in the Republican party. In 2016, we forget this now, but that was such a divided field. Donald Trump was not the choice of a majority, even of Republicans in the 2016 Republican primaries. It’s just that the field was so divided and his opponent would not drop out and unite against him. And that’s the reason why Trump became president, is because he had the committed support of a minority of Republicans, but it was a large enough chunk. He’s a minoritarian figure. He’s not a majoritarian figure. And unfortunately, history shows that there are many examples of would-be strong men who use and are able to leverage a committed minority of support into taking over a country.

Gideon Rachman
And as you say, the American system is just, when you look at it, ramshackle. (Laughter) I mean, you know, it’s extraordinary what the electoral college, but also, if they challenge the vote, it can end up in the House voting on a state-by-state basis. You know, these rules are bizarre.

Susan Glasser
You know, the reason we wrote The Divider, our history of Trump in the White House, was to try to understand this even better, especially considering that it’s kind of a live-action crisis and not just a matter for history. But, you know, Trump was basically a four-year stress test and crisis for American institutions — revealing weaknesses, expectations that didn’t prove to be the case and repeatedly seeking, sometimes quite successfully, to weaponize those weaknesses on his own behalf. I think January 6th is quite a remarkable example of that. He actually took a procedural — call it an “uncertainty” or not, just an expectation — and turned it into a potential weapon where, you know, January 6th was basically thought of as an empty ceremonial . . . 

Gideon Rachman
When the vice president certifies the election.

Susan Glasser
 . . . moment. Absolutely. If you had asked us a year before that election, we would say, “Well, the election’s actually over, even according to the electoral count act on December 14th, because that’s the date by law under which the electoral college must meet and certify the results of the elections in all the states”. And so for many people in, you know, the establishment in Washington, including many lawyers who had seen this happen before, including Bill Barr, who was then Donald Trump’s appointed attorney general, December 14th was the date at which the election was over and done with. And, you know, the bottom line was Trump and his wacky, kind of rent-a-law-professor-type advisors came up with this crazy theory. Well, it’s not really over yet because we can still challenge those electoral college results on January 6th in Congress.

Gideon Rachman
Okay. So last question. As you’ve been suggesting, after the midterms, over the next two years American politics will all be about the return of Trump. Let’s say he does come back in. You’ve studied the man very, very closely. Would it be the same old show or would this be actually an even more radicalised Trump, given, you know, his experience of the first term and the bitterness he’s accumulated over what he claims was a stolen election?

Susan Glasser
Yeah. Gideon, I think that is the right question to be asking. And the prospects are certainly that if Trump were to come back to the White House, that it would be a much more disruptive and potentially dangerous Trump presidency in a second term than it was in the first. In part, simply because he has had much more experience and understanding how to move the levers of government. There’s this really chilling scene in the book. I was speaking with a former very senior national security official who spent a lot of time observing Trump firsthand in the Oval Office, who compared him at the end of his first term to the velociraptors in the movie Jurassic Park, the original. Remember when the children run in to the industrial kitchen and they think they’re safe and then click! The handle turns and you realise that the velociraptors have learned how to open the door. And the point of this national security official was that, you know, Donald Trump has learned how to open the door. This was a guy who came into office with less experience and less knowledge than perhaps any president ever, certainly of the modern era. Donald Trump is the only president, in fact, in all of US history who never served a single day in government or in the military before coming into the White House.

Just as importantly, he was disdainful. He didn’t care, you know, that he didn’t have this information, but he blundered around to a certain extent. He didn’t have a cadre of time-tested officials who were loyalists, and that resulted in him appointing many people with whom he ultimately clashed or who came to define their jobs as basically constraining him. Well, he’s not gonna be appointing anyone like John Kelly, the former Marine general who was his chief of staff for much of his tenure and really saw his role as stopping Trump. There’s nothing gonna be like John Kelly in a second Trump term. It’ll be much more like Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the former far-right congressman from the Freedom Caucus, who was his final chief of staff and was really the enabler not only of the election big lie, but also of the Covid denialism and the politicisation of mask-wearing here in the United States. And one of the people we spoke with for the book said, you know, Mark Meadows was like the matador of the Trump White House in his final days, just waving the red flag and shooing into the Oval Office any crazy person who wanted to go in there and spin a theory for Donald Trump. That’s very, very different than some of what went on in the first term.

Gideon Rachman
And so, you know, we talked about this is a big test of American institutions last time around. It sounds like they’ll be a direct assault on them next time.

Susan Glasser
Well, I think that seems to be what they’re already planning. You know, you look at some of the reporting that Jonathan Swan, for example, has done in the news organisation Axios, suggesting that they are planning already to write a new executive order that would basically change the civil service definition in order to throw thousands of people out of jobs and make those jobs political and therefore install a cadre of Trump loyalists across the federal government.

Gideon Rachman
Okay, give me some hope. (Laughter)

Susan Glasser
You know, that’s always the toughest question right? (Laughter) You know it is. Again, remember, Donald Trump was never supported by a majority of Americans, even many Republicans. There are some modest indications that even those who might have stuck with him or might have voted for him would prefer to have someone else. And, you know, there are plenty of other Republican politicians who are interested in running for president in 2024. So it’s not a foreordained conclusion at this point that Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate in 2024. But it’s just something to keep aware of.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Susan Glasser of the New Yorker ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for joining me, and please listen again next week.

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