[Theme music starts]

RUBY:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Americans will head to the polls overnight, in the country’s midterm elections.

With control of the US House of Reps and the senate on a knife's edge, major losses for the Democrats could make the next two years of Biden’s presidency incredibly difficult, and bring major reform to a standstill.

That is something Donald Trump will be hoping for, as reports circulate that he could announce his presidential campaign for 2024 within days.

Today, former Democratic adviser and a senior fellow at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Bruce Wolpe, on the US midterms and what they mean for the future of American politics.

It’s Tuesday, November 8.

[Theme music ends]

RUBY:

So, Bruce, millions of Americans head to the polls to vote in the midterms. And the reason that this is so important is because this vote is what decides the makeup of Congress. And right now, the Democrats have the majority. But what happens if that changes if they lose it?

BRUCE:

It would be pretty profound. However, the key word to describe midterms is volatile. The President is almost always a loser in the midterms, the past four presidents - so going back to George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and including Donald Trump. They get into office, midterms occur two years later, and generally the public tends to vote against the president's party. The current Democratic majority is five seats. The maths is really politically relentless.

So it's really uphill as far as the House is concerned. That in itself is a significant setback. But the real question is, is the Senate also going to follow suit? It's more variable in the Senate in these midterms, historically speaking. It only requires a net loss of one seat in the Senate for Republicans to take over, and there are about half a dozen senate races that are in the margin of error for virtual ties. We're not sure how they're going to go.

If you lose control of the House… First of all, that means that Biden cannot have any legislation pass Congress that the Republicans oppose. So his days as being a major legislator are over.

But returning to the Senate, if the Senate goes Republican, there are two strikes there.

First, it means a bigger repudiation of Biden than just if one House goes Republican. Second, it means because the Senate has certain special powers that are very important to a President. The Senate confirms justices to the Supreme Court and other appointees to the judicial system. And secondly, the Senate also can confirm executive branch appointments. So if Biden has nominees for the cabinet or regulatory agencies, they're going to have to pass Republican muster. They won't be as liberal or progressive as they are today when Biden could get them through with this 50 seat control of the Senate. So, it really goes to the degree to which the Biden presidency on Capitol Hill comes to a stop.

RUBY:

And it's interesting. I mean, you mentioned that historically Americans tend to vote against whoever the Government of the day is when it comes to midterm elections. But it wasn't that long ago that Trump lost power. And since then, the conservative movement in the US has seemed to really go from scandal to scandal. We've seen, obviously, the protests in the capital. Trump himself was recently raided by the FBI. So how is it exactly that the Republican Party is now in a position where they could do well in the midterm elections?

BRUCE:

Well, let's just go back to the beginning of Biden's presidency for a moment.

He comes in. Trump is no longer president. People feel a real sense of relief. He gets a good start. He's going to fight COVID. He does it. And we move from the chaos of the Trump years in managing COVID to something much more public health oriented and made sense to Americans. He passed a $2 trillion economic recovery programme, cash in people's pockets, It was working.

But then a couple of things happened. Afghanistan happened in the middle of July in 2021 and it was really ill-fated.

Archival tape – Reporter:

“The Taliban is in control of Afghanistan, the country’s President has fled, and western countries are scrambling to get people out. This took the US by surprise…”

BRUCE:

Covid did not go away... And that meant that he wasn't managing the pandemic very well.

Archival tape – Reporter:

“I cannot believe this is where we are almost 2 years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming, we knew we needed more tests. The administration had dropped the ball on this.”

BRUCE:

So by the end of the year, he was sort of stalled on Capitol Hill…

Archival tape – Reporter:

“Another hold up on another Presidential Bill… despite a last ditch effort here by President Joe Biden, the voting rights legislation he wanted people to vote on before Martin Luther King Day is now stalled.”

BRUCE:

…And then the Supreme Court issued a major ruling on abortion, which took away the rights of American women to have access to abortion services.

Archival tape – President Joe Biden:

“The court literally taking people back 150 years. This is a sad day for the country in my view.”

BRUCE:

That lit a real firestorm.

Archival tape – President Joe Biden:

“I will do all in my power to protect the rights of women in states where they face the consequences of this decision.”

BRUCE:

And then Biden started getting lucky here on Capitol Hill. He passed a big clean energy and health care programme, he passed an infrastructure bill. So he was looking like a winner. But then the economy, inflation exploded in the US, just like it did here in Australia. And at the end of the day, it's your pocketbook that is the biggest driver in elections.

Archival tape – Reporter:

“Right now inflation is dominating conversation on debate stages, in campaign ads and you’re talking about it with your family friends. And now President Biden is in some hot water as he called the economy ‘strong as hell’ over the weekend.”

BRUCE:

And so here we are. The economy, inflation, crime, immigration have overtaken concerns about what kind of democracy do we have? What kind of rights do American women have? They have retreated to second place. And that's why this Republican wave has been growing over the past six weeks.

RUBY:

Okay. Well, with that in mind then, let's talk a bit about the candidates, the Republican candidates who are running for election right now. Who are they and what sorts of platforms are they running on?

BRUCE:

Well, Donald Trump has remained, even though he's out of office, the dominant force in the Republican Party. What Trump has been able to induce is fear amongst the Republican members of the House and the Senate. If you cross me, I will make sure that your future is limited. And so they really have fallen in line behind him. So many of the candidates, and particularly in the Senate races that are so close, are hand-picked by Trump.

Archival tape – Herschel Walker:

“At one time Science said man came from apes, did it not?…if that is true, why are there still apes?”

BRUCE:

In Georgia, Herschel Walker, former football star hero in Georgia, but with a very colourful, shall we say, and checkered personal history.

Archival tape – CNBC Reporter:

“The GOP's anti-abortion nominee, Herschel Walker, is denying a bombshell report from The Daily Beast that he urged his girlfriend to get an abortion back in 2009 and paid for the procedure.”

BRUCE:

Who is not especially articulate or commanding on public policy issues. Well, he's doing surprisingly well in Georgia against Raphael Warnock, who won the seat a couple of years ago.

Archival tape – News Reporter:

“A new diet pill is flying off store shelves in Utah thanks to a big endorsement from Dr. Oz.”

BRUCE:

In Pennsylvania, Trump endorsed a celebrity television doctor, Mehmet Oz. As you know Trump loves TV celebrities.

Archival tape – Dr. Mehmet Oz:

“I'm a surgeon. I'm not a politician. We take big problems, we focus on them, and we fix them. And we do it by uniting…”

BRUCE:

…Mehmet Oz, a Turkish American who came out of nowhere he has no political pedigree…

Archival tape – Dr. Mehmet Oz:

“I’m a living embodiment of the American Dream… Ask yourself this and others in your family. Are you unhappy with where America is headed? I am.”

BRUCE:

He’s running against the Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke a couple weeks ago. He’s recovering but he is impaired, voters are wondering whether he's up for the job. Oz may win that seat.

Archival tape – Reporter:

“Let’s give a warm Arizona welcome to Republican Arizona candidate, Blake Masters!”

BRUCE:

In Arizona. Blake Masters, a 36 year old techno-billionaire, also without political experience, is running against Mark Kelly, former astronaut. Republicans really want to take Arizona back.

On the other hand, these Trump candidates may not win and they are extreme in many respects or out of the mainstream. And they're sort of extreme in many instances, and they may be too extreme for moderate voters in key states.

So we will see.

RUBY:

We’ll be back after this.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

RUBY:

Bruce, in the run up to these midterm elections, it certainly looks like the political landscape in America isn’t becoming any more unified after the defeat of Trump, any calmer…

BRUCE:

I think we're looking, frankly, at a rancid political atmosphere. The country is as divided today, if not more so than it was when Biden was elected. So almost no progress has been made, in part because Trump never conceded the election.
He says it was rigged, he was robbed, stolen, and he wants that set right. And so his base is amped up to say, yeah, the Biden election was illegitimate. Most Republicans think that Joe Biden is not the legitimate President. And in the candidates that Trump has selected across the country, a sort of precursor of their being endorsed by him is well… Do you also believe that the election is not legitimate with me? Do you stand with me on that issue? And they do, and it's not just at the congressional level. There's a guy running in Wisconsin for governor who said, if you vote for me, I will ensure you that Republicans will never lose another election. That is pretty scary stuff.

RUBY:

And we've seen the result of this kind of political environment, haven't we? It was only a few weeks ago that someone went to the house of the Speaker Nancy Pelosi, looking for her, and attacked her husband. How are the repercussions of that being felt?

Archival tape – Police officer:

“This was not a random act, this was intentional. And everybody should be disgusted at the thought of what happened this morning.”

BRUCE:

Every so often something happens that is on a very human level, very granular, and it really hits you and part the attack on Paul Pelosi. The husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one such event that occurred about ten days ago.

Archival tape – Police officer:

“I can confirm that Mr. Depape forced entry into a rear door at the rear of the Pelosi home.”

BRUCE:

Apparently a Trump acolyte broke into the House looking for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and wanted to attack her and worse.

Archival tape – Police officer:

“Officers, observed through the open door, Mr. Pelosi and Mr. Depape inside the entryway of the home. And they observed Mr. Pelosi and Mr. Depape each with one hand on a single hammer. Mr. Depape immediately pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently attacked him with the hammer.”

BRUCE:

What was so eerie about it was when the assault on the Capitol was underway and the mob broke into the building and went to Nancy Pelosi's office and ransacked it and looked for her, many voice were saying, ‘Nancy, Nancy, where’s Nancy?’

Archival tape – Capitol Rioters:

“Nancy Pelosi…. Where you at Nancy?!”

BRUCE:

And this attacker in San Francisco in the Pelosi house. And he kept asking Paul Pelosi, ‘where is Nancy?’

And so what that meant was that the attack on the Capitol on January six, 2021, was continuing to occur in October of 2022.

And that is pretty frightening. There's an inner gyroscope in some of these people and they're still spinning the messages.

RUBY:

Yeah, it does seem like turmoil of that particular era - the Trump era, hasn’t subsided. And it sounds like, from what you're saying, that this kind of political chaos, this polarisation, this fracturing, even political violence, is now normal in the US?

BRUCE:

It's the normal now, and people fear it will be the normal in the future. The way to stop, the way to beat extremism in politics, is to beat it at the ballot box. If extremism is a loser, then ultimately it recedes as a political force. This election is really also about 2024. Let's just talk about that for one moment.

If Biden loses control of Congress will be a weaker president. Does that mean that he really should run for re-election in 2024, or can the Democrats find a stronger Democrat to carry it forward at that time?

On the Republican side, I think it's really interesting. I think this midterm election will determine whether Donald Trump really will be the Republican nominee and could be the president again. And look at it this way: in these tight races with Trump candidates, if the Democrats beat them that means that the Democrats have beat Trump candidates in states across the country. And that means to Republicans, well, is Trump really the king-maker that we want him to be?

Think it through this way: you won the White House in 2016, fantastic. In 2018, you lost the House of Representatives. In 2020, you lost the White House. In January 2021, you lost the Senate because you had those two special elections in the Senate and they went for the Democrats. And in 2022, your candidates were so extreme that we couldn't take the Senate, so why should we stick with you to lead us to victory in 2024?

On the other hand, if Trump candidates win and that means Trump candidates can beat the Democrats up and down the country, and that means he's in the pre-eminent position to be the Republican nominee and a favourite in 2024.

RUBY:

It's amazing, isn't it, that two years after he lost the election, the conversation is still around Donald Trump?

BRUCE:

You know it is. And we've never had been in this position before where a former President has really dominated the news like this. And on so many days, Joe Biden is President, you look at the front page of any American newspaper and it's Trump above the fold, and Biden is at the bottom of the page. And we can't get away from him now. And, you know, I think it's just amazing. It is really amazing.

RUBY:

Thank you so much for your time.

BRUCE:

Thank you.

[ADVERTISEMENT]

[Theme music starts]

RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Melbourne’s Crown Casino has been hit with a record $120 million dollar fine by the Victorian Gambling Commission for failing to encourage responsible gambling.

The fine was handed down partly because Crown failed to prevent patrons from gambling sprees that could last, in some cases, multiple days.

And in federal politics, the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus has reprimanded former Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his disclosure of confidential cabinet information.

In a letter sent to Morrison and tabled with the Senate, the Attorney General referenced a book written by two journalists with participation from Scott Morrison, that included detailed descriptions of the inner workings of government during the Covid outbreak.

Dreyfus wrote, quote: “I trust there will be no further disclosure from your period in government that undermine national security and the integrity of the cabinet process”

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

[Theme music ends]