Joe Biden hoped for a warning shot, and that’s what he got.
With only 100 days until the midterm elections, Kansas voters, a bastion of conservatism that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump for president, voted resoundingly in favour of preserving reproductive rights in their state on Tuesday.
In the first political test following the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, Kansans turned out in historic numbers to cast their votes in a referendum that shocked both Democrats and Republicans and shook the political landscape of the country.
Voters of all stripes perceived the ballot question, which sought to repeal abortion protections from the Kansas constitution, as an assault on freedom and individual rights, and this perception cut across partisan and geographic lines to deliver the victory. When it comes to abortion, as US President Joe Biden stated on Tuesday, “the fight is not finished.”
But a much bigger battle is expected on November 8. Biden and his party are in danger of losing their political advantage two years after Trump was defeated in the presidential election and the Democrats won a slim Congressional majority.
The midterm elections will provide the majority of Americans with their first electoral opportunity to support or oppose the president of the day.
While Biden won’t be a candidate until the 2024 presidential election, his performance will be important given that there will be contests for 34 of the 100 Senate seats and all 435 House seats.
It was previously believed that the Democrats were doomed to defeat, which would make it even more difficult for Biden to carry out his first-term plan.
The president’s party consistently loses the midterm elections, as history demonstrates, and Biden’s favour rating has plummeted amid widespread discontent over everything from skyrocketing gas costs and inflation rates to his immigration policies and his suitability for the post.
Almost seventy-five per cent of Americans, according to polls, think that the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
According to a survey done by the New York Times and Siena University last month, over two-thirds of Democrats oppose the 79-year-old president seeking reelection, with his age and job performance serving as the primary justifications.
The founder and director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, a seasoned political analyst, claims that “people are angry about petrol prices, they’re concerned about food prices, which are still quite high, and they’re angry about inflation overall.”
Presidents often have little influence over the economy, but when people are upset, they tend to look for someone to hold responsible.
However, even though the Democrats still face tough challenges, a series of circumstances in recent weeks have caused both political parties to reflect.
Outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 25, protesters for abortion rights yelled.
First off, as the Kansas result indicates, the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion has energized Democrats and given the pro-choice movement a campaign theme that seems to resonate with voters of all political stripes: personal freedom.
Second, the Biden administration has achieved some notable successes: the unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% on Friday, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was assassinated, and an economic bill will likely pass, allowing the president to fulfil campaign commitments to combat climate change, increase corporate taxes, and reduce drug prices.
Third, politicians who support Donald Trump’s erroneous assertions that the 2016 presidential election was rigged are consistently winning their primaries.
The Republican Party’s establishment has expressed concern over this, believing that some of its nominees are too extreme to win over moderate voters, particularly in suburban areas where elections are frequently won or lost.
Political analyst and former senior strategist for Barack Obama David Axelrod stated this earlier this week: “I think if you asked anyone six weeks ago — Democrat or Republican — they’d be expecting a Category 5 hurricane (against the Democrats) come November. They are now considering the possibility that it will just be a Category 3.
On Tuesday, three Republicans who support Trump’s lies won significant seats in Arizona, a crucial swing state, providing the most recent example of his brand of election denialism.
One of them is Mark Finchem, who has previously identified himself as being a part of the Oath Keepers militia organization, which is currently being investigated for its involvement in the January 6 Capitol attack.
Mark Finchem, a former oath keeper, is a Republican running for secretary of state of Arizona.
With Trump’s support, Finchem was able to get the Republican nomination for Secretary of State in Arizona, a position that grants the holder the authority to oversee and possibly even invalidate future elections.
Blake Masters, a 35-year-old venture investor who has campaigned for the jailing of COVID adviser Anthony Fauci and accused Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of being a “paedophile apologist,” will represent the GOP’s bid for the highly coveted Senate seat.
And in the battle to be the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, a former television anchor who is now a strong proponent of Trump’s “stolen election” claim, narrowly defeated an establishment figure who had Mike Pence’s support.
Trump-backed election sceptics also won nominations in Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania on Tuesday, in addition to their triumphs in Arizona’s primaries.
However, this has alarmed a few Republicans, especially because Trump’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol last year is currently the focus of a justice department investigation and is being closely examined by the January 6 committee.
Meanwhile, Biden is dealing with his own issues. Even though many in his party are not sure he should or will run in 2024, he insists on doing so.
During a debate this week in New York, prominent House Democrat Carolyn Maloney declared, “I don’t believe he’s running.”
Additionally, he has attempted—somewhat vainly—to attribute the cause of rising energy prices to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February.
And according to trend data from FiveThirtyEight, with a current approval rating of about 39%, he currently has the lowest approval rating of any elected president at this stage of their term since the end of World War II.
This has become a major concern in some crucial battlegrounds to the point where candidates have decided not to campaign with him.
Tim Ryan, a Senate candidate, and Nancy Whaley, a candidate for state governor, for instance, chose not to attend when Biden visited Ohio in June to promote a program helping union workers. They did so because of “scheduling conflicts.”
Raphael Warnock, a Senate candidate in Georgia, a formerly Republican state that supported Biden for president in 2020, has also tried to distance himself from the party as Republicans use catchphrases like the “Biden-Warnock Agenda” as a form of attack.
And then there’s the troublesome query that many people have: Is the president still qualified for the position? Biden will be 82 when the next election is held in 2024, and 86 when his second term comes to an end.
While his supporters insist he is still “intellectually engaged,” some White House insiders find his age to be an unsettling subject because of his propensity to muddle his sentences, lose his focus, or have trouble with names and teleprompters.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden joined Scott Morrison at a fictitious joint press conference to announce AUKUS.
He even seemed to forget Scott Morrison’s name when he awkwardly referred to the former Australian Prime Minister as “err… that fella Down Under” last September while announcing the new AUKUS submarine pact.
The founder of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an online political newsletter that forecasts the results of US elections, Sabato, agrees that it would be “unwise” for Biden to run again but adds that the Democrats lack a clear successor because Kamala Harris, the vice president, would be too divisive.
On both sides of the abortion debate, voters turned out in large numbers in Kansas. In November, Democrats want to see a similar turnout.
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On both sides of the abortion debate, voters turned out in large numbers in Kansas. In November, Democrats want to see a similar turnout.
(Harris’ detractors are considerably less polite; they contend that she lacks substantive policy positions, is despised by some members of her own party, and may find it difficult to win over some voters because she is a woman of colour.)
However, Sabato asserts that a midterm landslide is now beginning to seem less likely. The inferior calibre of the Republican nominees could result in Democrats retaining control of the Senate, where Republicans would need to flip states like Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire to regain control of the chamber.
While Republicans were more likely to take control of the House, it might not be the route Democrats fear, in part because of Trump.
According to Sabato, “Democrats look better the more he’s in the news.”
If he is correct, time will tell. In the 2006 midterm elections, President George W. Bush’s Republicans took a “thumping,” President Barack Obama’s Democrats were famously “shellacked,” and President Donald Trump’s Republicans were completely defeated.
