As the final countdown begins to the US midterm elections today, an already rancorous battle for Congress that would determine the fate of US President Donald Trump’s presidency has erupted into open name-calling over Republican efforts to mobilize voters through racially tinged propaganda.
When polling stations open on the US’ eastern seaboard at 6am today, the stakes could not be higher. With all 435 seats of the US House of Representatives up for grabs, the Democrats look well-placed to gain the 23 they need to take back control and put a spoke in the wheel of Trump’s ambitions.
A much tougher challenge faces the party in the Senate, where 26 Democratic seats are in play compared with only nine Republican. However, with 33 million votes already counted in early voting , and with turnout on track to be the largest in a midterm election for more than 50 years, few pundits are daring to make firm predictions.
As an indication of the intensity of the fight, exacerbated by the anti-immigration rhetoric deployed by Trump, the Sunday talk shows were dominated by disputes over race-baiting.
“What you see in the closing argument is dog-whistle politics, appeals to racists, just the worst of America,” Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez told CNN’s State of the Union.
The show’s host, Jake Tapper, engaged in a feisty to-and-fro with Perez’s Republican counterpart, Ronna McDaniel. He put to her a racially provocative attack ad made for the Trump campaign and shared on social media by the president last week, which accused Democrats of allowing into the US an undocumented migrant who murdered two police officers in California.
In fact, Luis Bracamontes most recently entered the US during the administration of former US president George W Bush, a Republican. The advertisement was widely condemned.
Tapper asked the Republican National Committee chairperson chair if she had any concerns about the flagrant inaccuracy of the ad as well as its blatant racist tone.
She avoided replying directly, saying: “Regardless. We didn’t want [Bracamontes] in the country. He killed police. That’s not good.”
“Is that the Democrats’ fault?” Tapper pressed.
“It’s a systemic failure,” she said.
When Tapper said that suggested both main parties were responsible, not just the Democrats, McDaniel replied: “Who’s the party saying: ‘Let’s fix it’? Who’s the party fixing all the problems?”
With so much riding on the vote, Trump and Republican leadership have resorted to increasingly extreme language. A return to Democratic control of the House would allow liberals to block much of the president’s agenda, as well as to investigate him aggressively in committees wielding subpoena power.
In addition, 36 state governors are up for re-election and the Democrats hope to win back hundreds of seats in state legislatures. Despite economic indicators that put unemployment at 3.7 percent, its lowest level in 49 years, and wage growth at its best since 2009, Trump has taken a big gamble in prioritizing his anti-immigration policies rather than a booming economy.
The president has promised in lurid terms anti-immigrant measures from sending troops to the border with Mexico, to making it harder to claim asylum and putting an end to so-called “ birth citizenship,” whereby anyone born in the US is automatically a US citizen.
His incendiary talk has been matched by others in his administration.
On Saturday, US Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue spoke in Lakeland, Florida. He was trying to buoy up the chances of Ron DeSantis becoming governor instead of an black American Democrat, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum. Even had the neck-and-neck race not involved a black candidate, Perdue’s words would have been explosive.
“Public policy matters,” he said. “Leadership matters, and that is why this election is so cotton-pickin’ important to the state of Florida. I hope you all don’t mess it up.”
Florida joined the US in 1845 as a slave state, with half its enslaved black population working on cotton and sugar plantations. Race is also a big issue in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is vying to become the first black woman to be governor of any state and the first Georgia governor who is not a white man.
Her opponent, Brian Kemp, is in charge of overseeing elections as secretary of state. In that role he has been accused of attempting to prevent thousands of largely black American residents from voting.
Trump waded into the Georgia race, staging a rally in Macon. As he set out from the White House, he told reporters his recent spate of rallies, in which he has set out his dystopian view of a nation under siege from “invading” immigrants, had sparked a fire under the conservative base.
“There’s something very interesting that’s happening the level of fervor, the level of fever is very strong on the Republican side,” he said. “There’s a lot of energy out there... I think that the rallies have been the things that have caused this fervor to start. I have never seen such an enthusiastic Republican party.”
Polls continue to indicate that Democrats have a significant lead, though after the embarrassment to pollsters of 2016 any such figures must be handled with extreme caution.
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