US Midterms 2018: How will voters respond to sorry state of disunion at the midterm congressional elections?

It's a crucial time in the first term of the self-declared nationalist 45th President of the United States. His administration has done nothing but divide America. He goads and baits his progressive and even moderate opponents, while egging on the worst of his own supporters.

In Congress, the Republic Party (GOP) is in control, but still somehow presides over stagnation. So far, the most active use of their dominance in Congress has been to use it to back the President and his decisions - against even reasonable criticism - largely by inaction.

While the GOP is held in destructive unity, the Democrats are busily undergoing an internal struggle. The progressive wing of the party - symbolically represented by the Sanders Presidential campaign - is striving for a bigger part in the wider party, still controlled by pro-business moderates.

Midterm Congressional Elections

The midterm elections give voters a chance to take stock of this sorry state of disunion.

On 6th November, voters will go to the polls to vote on members of Congress - one third of seats in the Senate are up for grabs and all of the House of Representatives. In the Senate, there are two seats per state. In the House of Representatives, seats represent districts on the basis of state population.

This won't be a vote on the President directly, but it will shape the balance of power in Congress - through which any new bill he wishes to pass must navigate. Right now it is run by Republicans, but as things are at present that could well change tomorrow with a strong result for the Democrats.

So the Democrats will be pleased that so far news seems to be positive for them. It's good news for them that turnouts for early voting have been high. Low turnout tends to favour the GOP, because it is older, whiter, more affluent voters - conservative bread and butter - that are a reliable turnout.

On other fronts, there's good news for the Democrats too. Small donations tot he Democrats have come in at double of those to the GOP. Presidential approval, sitting at a twelve year midterms low of 40% - the lowest since, and second only too, George W Bush who sat on 37% at the 2006 midterms.

Democrats are also polling well. They sit at a 49% to 41% margin, wide enough to tip the election towards a landslide and rebalance Congress towards the Democrats. There are even indications that youth turnout, which as elsewhere leans heavily progressive, may also be high this time around.

But general polling can't tell us all we need to know about the individual races. In the House of Representatives there are plenty of Republcian seats up for grabs. However, in the House of Representatives there are just 35 seats up for re-election, of which just 9 are Republican - limiting how deeply inroads can be made. But taking five of those seats would be enough to tilt the balance towards the Democrats.

High water mark in Texas: Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke

So which seats are the ones to watch to see if Congress will swing heavily to the Democrats?

To look at one example: the most high profile Senate seat being defended is that of Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz in Texas. A deeply controversial figure who has wielded the backing of the Evangelical Christian movement.

He is facing a surprisingly tough race against the Democrat challenger Beto O'Rourke, who has served three terms in Congress as a Representative for El Paso. In stark contrast to Ted Cruz, O'Rourke is pro-LGBT rights, supports efforts to tackle climate change, women's right to an abortion and a meaningful reform of healthcare in America.

Contrasting the big money PAC support that Ted Cruz enjoys, O'Rourke focused on raising money from small donations from individuals - a stance that makes him stand out against a backdrop of big money lobbying in politics and appears to have served him well with impressive campign funding.

Even with an impressively run campaign and the signs of a strong turnout, it has to be said that it will be a major upset if Beto O'Rourke wins this seat.

But it is an important benchmark for Democrats across the country - in fact, likely to be the high water mark of a Democrat 'wave' (landslide electoral victory). If O'Rourke looks like getting even close to taking this Senate seat for Texas from Cruz, that could herald a strong night for the Democrats.

Restore a little hope

For two years, this President - a self-proclaimed nationalist and obvious narcissist with a hardcore following of white nationalists - has had nearly free rein in Washington thanks to Republican control of Congress enabling him. It's time to restore some of the checks and balances. It is time that he faced some meaningful opposition - faced some possibility of being held to account.

For that role, the Democrats will do. They're far from the progressive ideal, but right now they represent a better, more inclusive vision of America - and they are engaged in internal reform that is pushing them to be something more. In that, there is hope. America could do with a little of that right now. All progressives, everywhere, could do with a little of that right now.

Argentina midterms raise the question: What's so funny about compassionate realism?

Mauricio Macri's hold on La Casa Rosada lightly reinforced by small gains at the Argentina legislative midterms. Photograph: La Casa Rosada from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

The midterm elections in Argentina did little to settle the future of Argentina. President Mauricio Macri's movement gained a few seats, just enough to keep his project rolling forward.

That Macri's project is essentially austerity in a more extreme context is important for progressives to consider. It presents the epitome of what the Centre-Right consider the justification for strong dose of 'realism', but raises the question of why that has to be delivered in the form of harsh measures?

The Midterms elections covered a third of the Senate and half of the lower House. It would have been hoped by Cambiemos to be an opportunity to reinforce Macri's presidency with a stronger legislative contingent - just 16 of 72 in the Senate, with just 86 Deputies out of 257 in the Chamber, to around 46 and 105 for various Justicialist groups combined, respectively.

The four biggest parties each had about half of seats their Chamber seats up for reelection, while most of the Senate seats were being defended by Justicialists (Peronists).

As it happened Cambiemos made gains, though they were few. The coalition took 19 seats, not enough reach a majority, while those were offset by the 25 seats gained by former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, rallying voters from various populist parties to her particular faction.

Even if this result is more than Macri and Cambiemos might have feared, it is still less than they will have hoped. Part of the reason why may be that, after two years in office, Macri has yet to deliver a deep sea shift in the country's economic condition.

That shouldn't really be a massive surprise, because two years is nothing. But the public are restless and what Macri has asked for is a huge change in approach from the Kirchnerist-Peronist years.

Not least are the cuts to subsidies that help with the cost of living for low income families. This is the austerity programme familiar to many progressives around the world.

In Argentina this has particular significance. In reason years, at the least, the Kirchnerist-Peronist populists - especially under the presidency of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner - have tended to offer up big promises, comfortable lies to package harder truths and deeper crises.

Of relevance to all of those resisting austerity is the response of Centre-Right, Argentina as elsewhere: to serve up cold reality and a cold shoulder.

The Cambiemos coalition, that Macri has serving up a meagre helping, includes most of Argentina's Centre and Soft Left - social democrats and social liberals - and you have to wonder have these partners feel about their direction.

Macri has bet the house on austerity, in the meantime putting the poorest in some jeopardy, gambling that foreign private investors will step in and take a chance on Argentina. But it's yet to pan out that way.

The midterms buy Macri some space. Over that past year he has poured the blame for the present situation on the Kirchner "K" movement - calling it the "K Inheritance", probably fairly. But that approach will only work for so long.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is already building for a comeback, taking seats at the midterms while Macri's approval ratings hover dangerously low at 41%/46% (approve/disapprove).

Macri has offered some consolation to his Cambiemos partners. Last year he announced what he called a 'Marshall Plan' - a reference to the huge public investment made by the US government in it's allies after World War II.

In reality, it was a public-private investment initiative foucsed on lowering the cost of business - in that conservative vein of reduced costs hopefully leading to reduced prices and reduced cost of living.

But these pledges are coming alongside efforts to force Trade Unions and dockworkers to accept pro-competition measures - and while cornered, they are far from convinced.

All of this leads back to the central question. Populists offer an unrealistic view smothered in giveaways and the Right demand a reaction steeped in a cold austere reality. The question is, why can't we address reality with warmth?

Why is it so difficult to imagine a compassionate realism? To pursue a course that does not abandon the most vulnerable to the mercy of corporate interests and charity, when righting a sinking ship.

Politics in Argentina is raising this question. Progressives and their allies the world over need to find a way to respond.

Looking ahead to the local council elections on 5th May - what do councils do and who stands to lose or gain?

Manchester Town Hall, where the one third of council seats are up for election. Photograph: Manchester Town Hall by Mark Andrew (License) (Cropped)

The return of Members of Parliament to work after the Easter Recess, is a good time to take a look at what is ahead. For MPs, the impact of their efforts over the next month will be for the benefit of others in their party besides themselves.

On the 5th May there will be elections. Amongst them are the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and London devolved assembly elections. But perhaps most pressing for the situation at Westminster will be the midterm local council elections.

Local government in the UK, in the form of elected councils and council workers in their employ, represents a confusingly multi-tiered system that provides or commissions local services (LGA, 2011) - some of which represent mandatory duties while others are discretionary and the council can charge not-for-profit fees for them.

The services councils provide include those for children, like schools; for adults with needs; social housing and housing benefit; scrutiny of local health services; museums, libraries, sports and recreation facilities; care for local roads and co-ordination of public transport; care for the local environment and management of waste collection and disposal or recycling; planning; collection of local taxes like business rates and council taxes; administration of elections; and the keeping of registers of births, deaths and marriages.

After six years of austerity, with as much as 40% of funding cut from their budgets, and likely cuts more to come, there has been substantial discontent on councils, and in party council associations, with the government (Sparrow, 2015) - not least in the Conservative association. That situation has not been eased by the transfer of further burdens not being matched by the transfer of sufficient means of funding, and central government decisions like the substantial cut to business rates included in Budget 2016 (BBC, 2016).

Governments usually struggle during midterms - especially after spending a long time in government. But after years of austerity, with frontline services slashed even, to his great discontent, in the Prime Minister's own council area (ITV, 2015), the Conservatives must be expecting considerable losses.

So for the Conservatives, this election is fairly simple. Lose as little as they can and hope that their opponents, particularly Labour, fall well short of their own targets - from the Conservative view, embarrassingly enough that it becomes an interesting news story.

What the Conservatives do not want is Jeremy Corbyn's Labour to show itself able to beat the Tories in the popular polls. Labour will almost certainly be under pressure to, at least, achieve results comparable with those of Ed Miliband from 2012, which means gaining a not insignificant number of council seats (Labour List, 2016).

However, possibly of greater importance from the view of the MPs returning to work today, is the national vote share. What MPs at Westminster will want to know is whether a Corbyn-led Labour can come first in the popular vote - because that would establish the party as a realistic option come 2020.

Labour's efforts at achieving gains in vote share and seats will be hampered by the array of parties scrapping with each other, as well as with the Conservatives, to make gains (Ford, 2016). In Scotland, the seemingly unstoppable SNP momentum will make life difficult for Labour, while in Wales Plaid Cymru tend to be much stronger when it is Welsh Assembly election time than in the national polls.

In England, UKIP will likely continue to plague Labour - as they have yet to go away completely despite the failure of their big push in May 2015 and the stats saying their vote share has fallen by a swing of around 8% nationally since then (Britain Elects, 2016), not least because of the European Union Referendum scheduled for June.

There may also be some pressure applied to Labour by the Liberal Democrats. It's one thing for the party to talk up its #LibDemFightback, but another for, over the same period from the May 2015 election, the party to see a positive swing of around 4% (Britain Elects, 2016{2}) - putting it well ahead of the other parties in England in terms of local momentum.

Not least do the Liberal Democrats have a reputation for campaigning at the local level, based on a committed and engaged approach to local government and community-based politics that is even acknowledged by their opponents (BBC, 2015; Labour List, 2016). If momentum swings back their way, they may have a positive showing that gives tangible substance to their fightback.

From Labour's perspective, they may help their own cause by establishing these things as limiting factors (Ford, 2016), allowing them to set their own, much more modest, targets. Yet they are unlikely to have that liberty and will probably be under pressure to make real terms gains.

For MPs at Westminster, the next few weeks and the bills that they will debate could have a substantive impact on the council elections. Policy at the national level will be seen through the lens of its impact on local government - at least a temporary boon for local government that can often feel sidelined from political debate and policy decisions that affect them being made centrally at Westminster.

It should be kept in mind, however, that midterm election results can only tell you so much. Local government elections from 2011 through 2014 all saw Labour under Ed Miliband top the polls - though sometimes only barely as the UKIP spectre ate away at the support of both the Conservatives and Labour.

From a country-wide perspective, what midterm local elections can be is a substantive base with which to demonstrate momentum, a fightback, and upon which to build a platform. For progressives from all parties, under a Conservative government and with council services under increasing strain, that will likely be the main hope with 2020 firmly in mind.