Do You Want to Live in Biden's or in Trump's America?

Interview with Todd Belt, Director of the Political Management program at The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University. 

Less than a month from the decisive midterm elections in the United States, there are a lot of things going on so fast — domestically and around the world. Usually, a midterm election is a referendum on the incumbent president, but this one makes it more of a choice election: Do you want to live in Biden´s America or you want to live in Trump´s America?

So, as foreign correspondents covering this country, where should we be putting our attention right now? “A real good place, if you are looking for a story about real meaning in this election, is to look to the States. We have a lot of state legislator races, many governorships coming up, and state Supreme Courts. They are important in many ways because our country is broken in a half between the states and the Federal government - the states have as much power as the federal government, but also because of things that are happening”, says Professor Todd Belt, Director of the Political Management program at The Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University. 

Professor Belt thinks that “Midterm elections usually get a little less notice, but this one is really important this year because of the GOP´s decision of US Supreme Court of overturning the Roe & Wade precedent for abortion and it is now kicking the ability to set abortion law in the first trimester back to the states".

Midterms also include federal elections for the Senate and House of Representatives. “In the first term of a president’s term in office, he usually loses seats: 26 in the House and a handful in the Senate,” explains Professor Belt. Since the Senate is currently 50-50, the Democrats losing just one seat would mean that Republicans would take over.

“This year, however, is a little bit different,” says Professor Belt. “Our elections for the Senate are different from the elections in the House. There are actually 35 seats that are up this time, 21 of them are Republican and 14 of them are Democratic seats. That means it is harder for the republicans to get that majority because they need to defend all those seats to take away one of those 14 seats that the democrats have. Republicans need to protect all their own and take away one from the Democrats.”

Just as in presidential elections, midterm elections also have what we call the “swing states” in senate races. Most of these states are pretty secure for the Republicans and many of them are pretty secure for the Democrats. There are a few key swing states that are going to decide the election. For example, right now, it looks like Pennsylvania is going to go Democratic, which is really unusual because it has been voting more Republican but some of the Republican money has been pulled out of the state into other states. 

So, if the Republicans think that they are going to lose that—and they have a very high chance of losing it—then they have to pick up two senate seats, and there are four other states that are sort of Democratic states and they may be able to pick up some of those: New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. 

The Republicans look like they are not going to get New Hampshire. That means they’ve got to get two out of three seats that are really up there. In Arizona, the Republicans have a chance but it is not looking so good for them. In Georgia, Republicans have not given up on their candidate (Herschel Walker) because they need all those seats. 

It’s really interesting, the strategy that Republicans and Democrats have for the Senate. Of course the Senate is really important for the approval of federal judges, both for the Supreme Court and the lower courts as well. If Democrats are able to hold on to the Senate, they will be able to get the judges that Joe Biden wants through the Senate and put them onto the federal bench. But, if Mitch McConnell becomes the Majority Leader because of a Republican majority, he will put a hold on all of the new judges.

Why is this coming midterm election particularly different? 

Usually, the president’s party will lose an average of 26 seats. It has been as high as 63 in the past: Obama lost over 60 in 2010. The reason for that is presidents can not totally satisfy all of their constituents, and they lose popularity. The president’s popularity is closely tied to how things are going to go, but it is not always the case. We have had two different exceptions to this rule where the president’s party usually loses: In 1998 when people were really upset with Republicans for impeaching then-President Clinton, and also in 2002 when people were rallying behind the Republicans and president George W. Bush after 9/11.

Will abortion be one of those outliers that goes against the usual tradition? 

“It definitely could, because there has been a surge in voter registrations and among young women—and each state does it differently, not every state reports which political party people are registering for—but in the states that do, we can see them registering much more Democratic than Republican. So, Democrats think that this could be a way that they can get more votes and this can be one of those exceptions and they can turn election in that way. 

What else is on the table?

“The Economy, is always number one.” It isn’t always inflation, it is also unemployment—and it is very good right now, but Inflation is in everybody’s faces. When they go to grocery stores or even when they drive down the street and they see those big numbers on gas stations, no matter what you say to people, there’s nothing that matters more to them than what they see, and what they pay, and what they actually feel. There’s no way to campaign around it. 

That’s going to be number one, and that really works in the Republicans’ favor. When people are asked in surveys which party they feel is better handling inflation, most people will say the Republican Party. So, there is a built-in advantage for the Republicans on this issue of inflation. 

The other issue that Republicans really want to use on this election has been the issue of crime, and particularly crime in the cities. These days, with phones and everything, people are taking pictures of robberies and they can be scary. That is another thing Republicans are running on. 

However, they have a problem of their own there. The head of their party, Donald Trump, is now facing five different criminal investigations, especially the search of Mar-A-Lago where he—we have a video tape—was moving documents around before and after a subpoena. So, it is difficult for a party to say “We are the party of law and order” when the head of their party is under investigation. 

Democrats want to talk about Roe v. Wade but the Republicans don’t want to talk about that too much. Democrats want to use this to boost their turnout. Abortion used to be the issue that got republicans to vote, now it is going to be used to motivate democrats to vote. Why? Because when you have something taken away from you or when you perceive a loss, you are more likely to get activated and to vote. This is something that will reduce republican voter turnout because they got what they wanted. Democrats had something taken away from them and this will inspire them. 

Republicans will also talk about immigration again, one of the big social issues that they have forced back into the headlines with relocation efforts. Some of their candidates were successful last year in talking about school issues: choices, content of books, masking and openings during pandemic…

Democrats, on the other side, are going to talk about how Joe Biden has done, such as on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) - which does more about the climate. The infrastructure bill, which was never done under Trump; even if they always wanted to get it done, they never got it done. Biden got it done. 

Student loan forgiveness, this is something very powerful and important for young voters - who gave Joe Biden the White House. Democrats are trying to get them activated again. 

For the first time since he became the president, Biden popularity is higher and has improved a lot in recent weeks. Will that help Democrats on November 8? “Our old Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, said, ‘All politics is local.” Professor Belt doesn’t think that's quite the case, as it was back then. “When everybody's on social media and paying attention to national politics, I think national politics is much more important. But there are still local issues that really matter.” 

In recent years, in the U.S. and around the world, political interests come in many cases before people's interests. We have a very polarized country. 

What is the role of Trump-endorsed candidates? 

We've seen Donald Trump be very powerful in his endorsements in the primary section of the elections, although not quite as powerful in some of the state level elections. His preferred candidates for governors lost in a couple of places, but it was almost like he had sort of the golden touch that whoever he wanted to support would be able to use his name to fundraise and to generate a lot more interesting media coverage and volunteer base. 

The energy at the base of the Republican Party is the Trump part of the party. It's really not surprising that his preferred candidates would win because it is his supporters that are more at the extreme wing of the party. In these lower turnout elections, you're more likely to see the polar wings of the party turned out rather than the middle of the American electorate, because it is Republicans against Republicans and Democrats on Democrats.

When it comes to the general election, people have gotten very tired of Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election. The Mar-a-Lago incidents actually brought him back, front and center, in American politics, and allowed him to do what he likes to do, which is play the victim. So now a lot of people are going to be voting in November based upon what they think about Trump on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, rather than what is going on. This is actually a benefit for Democrats.

Most of the candidates that Trump supported are on the ballot, and some of them are very weak. He chose them just because they were loyal to him and would repeat his lies about the 2020 election. Many of them have turned out to be, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, “weak candidates.” So, this is Trump's effect, which has been very powerful up till now. It remains to be seen if it will carry through the general election. 

Donald Trump has always seemed to find new voters every election, which is kind of interesting. He found a lot of new white working class voters in 2016, and a lot of new Hispanic voters in 2020. His performance in the 2020 election wasn't enough to give him the White House, but a lot of places actually went for him that we normally would think would go for Democrats. It's not out of the range of thought that Trump could be very powerful in the general election, but given the structure of our elections, it is less likely. 

Will Donald Trump run again in 2024? He announced his intent to run for re-election the day after he was inaugurated in 2017. So, why is he waiting so long? There’s a couple of reasons. Saying that he would run again is tantamount to admitting that he actually lost before, so that's a part of it, and he doesn't like people to know that he lost. The other reason is he uses it to get back into the spotlight and right now he's still there. People were thinking he was going to announce before the Mar-a-Lago search happened, but that put him back in the spotlight where he likes to be. He can wait until after the elections to announce if he wants to, which is when people normally announce, in order to generate more enthusiasm. You don't want to announce too early because then people will stop giving you money and people will lose interest in you. You want to peak just at the right time, you want to ramp up your interest, your campaign contributions and your volunteer base in a way that is going to be there for the long run. It is a long campaign, nearly two years for the presidency. It does make sense for him to wait, especially since he's still in the news like he likes to be, and he's still getting the attention. 

What about the credibility of electoral institutions, if we consider that some historic episodes like the US Capitol attack happened for the first time? 

A lot of people are saying democracy is really what's on the ballot this time, and I think that's a really good point. Most of the Republicans who have been nominated for the House are election deniers. Now we know that Donald Trump actually said to some people that he knew he lost, he just didn't want everybody to know that he lost. That's something that has come out of the January 6 committee. 

There are a lot of people who really still believe he didn't lose or at least say that publicly. What they will do—at the state level or at the federal level—is to change laws, to make it easier for someone who has lost to have it overturned. We've seen some laws like that in states like Georgia and Texas. That’s really concerning. The inability to hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions is concerning. If Republicans take the House, we could see them engage in a number of investigations of, say, Hunter Biden, or other things that they're trying to get back at Democrats for just because of what happened to Donald Trump, saying that he lost the election and it wasn't fair.  

People are more likely to think that elections are rigged or somehow there's a lot more malfeasance in the casting and counting of ballots—which is not true, there's only been very little malfeasance that's happened. Coincidentally, it's been mostly on the Republican side, not on the Democratic side. It's the ones who are talking about it, who are the ones that are actually doing it. 

In the United States, we see people saying: “We're a republic, not a democracy” and that it was the will of the people on January 6 to replace the electors and to try to get rid of Mike Pence or to intimidate him into doing something that he knew was wrong. There are tendencies toward authoritarianism in our country that are very concerning. 

This isn't the only thing happening on the Republican side. We’ve also seen some illiberal tendencies among Democrats. Some of the left wing of the Democratic Party really go out of their way to censor speech that they disagree with: the whole idea of cancel culture and canceling people if they say things that people think are inappropriate, engaging in what they call hate speech. These are things that Republicans are actually trying to turn into campaign topics and to use to their advantage.

Democracy, it turns out, is very fragile. 

The U.S. is the longest standing democracy in the world and we've seen authoritarian figures overcome democracies all around the world. It is always always a fight to keep democracy, even in our country. Our second president, John Adams, supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, which really allowed the government to jail people who were saying things they disagreed with. And, of course, we had the Civil War. So people always say, it's never been this bad in our country. Well, we did have a Civil War, we had people killing each other. So, it has been worse. We had an entire group of states secede from the Union, and fight an entire war over this, the bloodiest in our nation's history. During that time, Abraham Lincoln did suspend the doctrine of habeas corpus, which allows for a timely hearing in front of a judge so that he could jail people who were suspected, not proven, just suspected of being spies for the South. We also have the history of the treatment of African Americans in this country, the denial of their civil rights, the denial of the right to vote, and, of course, the internment of people of Japanese ancestry in this country during World War II. It is always a constant battle to make sure that people's liberties and freedoms are protected in this country. 

To continue the fight is to have free and fair elections, and to make sure that people trust them. That is really something we have to be concerned about this election time around. 

We see more and more people using the search term “Civil War” in geolocation in the U.S., and it is a real risk and it's something concerning. We do have some comfort in the fact that we know the U.S. Armed Forces stuck with democracy last time around and the generals around Donald Trump and were not going to allow him to use the military. But if we start to see members of the Armed Forces at the top start questioning the legitimacy of elections and the commander in chief, that’s when we really start to worry. The U.S. armed forces are the best trained and best armed in the world so it is extremely dangerous, and we are a nation full of guns. We know there’s a bunch of frustration and energy and a lot of well armed people. It is a deadly combination, we have to be very careful. 

What are your predictions of results for the next coming midterm election? 

 A lot of political scientists got out of the prediction business after 2016 because most of them thought Hillary Clinton was going to win, and a lot of new voters just showed up. We're going to have a lot of new voters on November 8. It looks like they're registering Democratic, but we can't be completely sure because of those different rules in different states. 

“If I were betting, I would say Republicans probably get the House of Representatives and Democrats the Senate” professor Belt says. 

We have a question that we asked people, which is called the generic ballot question: “As of today, would you do you plan to vote for a Democrat or Republican for the House of Representatives?” 

Republicans have a little bit of an edge there; we would expect it to be about a 10 percent advantage. It's about one to two percent right now. Actually, for a little bit of time, Democrats had an advantage there. We also know that the president's popularity is very closely tied to the results and Joe Biden is getting better but he's still below 50 percent, which means that the candidates who are running in the House and in the Senate in the Democratic Party have to outperform their president, and that is a difficult thing to do. 

“I don't see the House being retained by the Democrats, I think Republicans will probably take it. I think the Democrats will have the Senate. It’s going to be 50 or 51 Democrats, and I think that they're able to retain it but they're not going to get to that magic 60 threshold that they need to really push legislation,” he adds. 

What’s next after midterms in the political scenario? 

“Republicans are waiting to find out if Donald Trump is going to run. If he is not going to run, we are going to see a lot of Republicans jump in, like Tom Cotton and Ron DeSantis. Some may jump in even if he does run, but most will probably not because Donald Trump is the Republican Party right now; he can command all the attention, all the money and all the volunteers. 

On the democratic side, many people have said that they don’t want Joe Biden to run for another term and he’s getting up there in age, but right now Joe Biden can’t say that. The reason why any sitting president cannot say that he is not running for another term is because people would just abandon ship. They will leave the government. A lot of the best people that he has working for him would decide to run for president and they would start raising money and volunteers and all that, and members of Congress wouldn’t work with him anymore. So he can’t say that, even if he wanted to. 

Generally, it is not a good idea to run against your own party’s incumbent president. Most people who do so don’t win