If the predictions come true and the Democrats lose control of Congress in tomorrow’s elections, it won’t be unusual. For decades, it has been the norm for the president’s party to lose midterm elections, as if voters want to punish themselves for a choice made two years earlier. This happened under Bill Clinton in 1994, when the “Republican Revolution” swept both houses of Congress, as happened in 2010 under Barack Obama, when Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives, and Republicans experienced the same chill in 2018, under Donald Trump. . Such turmoil on Capitol Hill does not determine who wins the race for the White House two years later (Clinton and Obama won a second term relatively easily, and Trump almost won). Under normal circumstances, the cohabitation of an incumbent with a Congress controlled by an opposition faction is not considered abnormal; on the contrary, it is part of the logic of broader consensus and convergence in the Center, towards which the mechanisms of the American constitution are balanced. push.

Except that for several years, conditions in America were not just normal, as the whole world learned about with the unprecedented events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Most of the two factions do not consider the opposite side a political and ideological adversary, but as a foreign body, a miasma that must be exterminated at all costs. Trump accuses Biden of being a crypto-socialist, a hostage of extremists, while Biden calls Trumpism “semi-fascism.” Both characterize their opponents’ behavior as “un-American,” a term that refers to McCarthy’s infamous committee on un-American activities and witch-hunts against communism that marked the darkest era of American democracy. The recent assassination attempt on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has fueled dire predictions that it is only a matter of time before America’s elected representatives mourn the victims of political violence.

On one issue, there is a surprising convergence of views between blue and red America: the assessment that the Republic faces an existential threat – from the opposing faction, of course. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that 69% of Democrats and exactly the same number of Republicans believe that the Republic is “on the brink of collapse.” Meanwhile, states pursue diametrically opposed policies on key issues that affect the daily lives of citizens – abortion, immigration, law enforcement, education, etc. – depending on who controls them. We’ve gotten to the point where the Republican governors of Texas and Florida are smuggling thousands of illegal immigrants into the blue states of New York and Illinois. “America is already in practice a transnational state, consisting of two completely hostile national communities with the same population and political weight,” we read in an article in The New York Review of Books on September 22.

Democrats are expected to lose control of Congress, but that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if both parties hadn’t lost their ability to talk.

Addressing voters on national television from Washington on Wednesday night, Joe Biden sought to galvanize the Democratic base by adding drama to the campaign battle. “Democracy itself is at stake in the election,” the US president said, citing the fact that hundreds of Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and for senior government positions (291 according to the Washington Post) deny or question the results. . 2020 election spouting Donald Trump’s “big lies”. However, it is far from certain that this last-minute intervention will bring the expected results. In contrast, Democratic Party officials have questioned the wisdom of his selection to run, given that his popularity is low, around 40%.

Recent polls have shown that the Republicans are confidently winning the House and have a 50-50 chance of overturning a 50-50 tie in the Senate, where the battle will be decided in four or five swing states. It has been a brief summer of optimism for Democrats as the Supreme Court’s decision giving states free rein to decriminalize abortion angered many and raised hopes of a midterm victory. However, with the arrival of autumn, the sky darkened. Republicans supported accuracy and crime, the two top concerns of most voters, and were rewarded. According to a Harvard University poll, 37% of voters rate accuracy as a top issue, followed by employment and crime at 29%, the areas in which they have the most confidence in Republicans. Women’s rights and abortion are considered the central issue by 17% of voters, and the events of January 6, 2021, despite the active television coverage of the hearings of the relevant commission of inquiry, are in 19th place with 7%.

If the Republicans are expected to dominate the next chamber, Trump investigations into the events in question will be put into the freezer, while it is possible that Biden and his son Hunter will be investigated for interference in which Ukraine is also implicated. If they also win in the Senate, Biden’s hands will be tied in legislative work, as well as in the appointment of Supreme Court judges. At the same time, Tuesday’s election is becoming something of a Donald Trump referendum: if his anointed ones succeed, his chances of winning the 2024 runoff again will skyrocket, and if not, Republican fundraisers will look for other solutions. In the meantime, the loser of 2020 is holding out hope as we live in an era of incredible political resurrections: within a week, Lula and Netanyahu, two very different politicians, stamped their passports back into power despite their eighth decade of scandal-stained lives. Why not Donald Trump?