American voters move back to the centre — as they always do
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Throughout my recent visit to Britain, whether speaking to friends, officials or ministers, I continuously encountered profound worries about the state of the American electorate. It was too bitterly divided. It had succumbed to extremists. It was inclined toward isolationism. And so on.
In fact, as the elections last week—and the results that continue to trickle in—have demonstrated, America remains what it has been for some time: a country of moderates, whether of the Left or the Right. No doubt Americans, like other nations, have their paroxysms of extremism, such as Prohibition in the 1920s, or Trumpism a century later. Yet the political pendulum always moves back to the centre, and if the major political parties show an inclination to remain in thrall to their extremes, the people vote for divided government to ensure that the radicals do not have their way. Moreover, it is for good reason that the largest contemporary American political grouping is neither Democratic nor Republican, but what are known as “Independents”.
Americans demonstrated in 2008 and again in 2012 that they could elect and re-elect a Black president. Yet in 2016 when Democrats offered the electorate the widely disliked Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate, who managed to be perceived as both a far more Left-oriented politician than her centrist husband, and yet so elitist that she could dismiss working-class Americans as a “basket of deplorables,” voters opted instead for that bumptious, self-centred, bigoted outsider Donald Trump. In turn, Trump’s antics, his defiance of presidential and legal norms and his lording over the Republican party proved too much for voters in 2020. They instead chose Joe Biden, whom they perceived to be soothingly centrist, and they followed up in last week’s elections by handing the Republicans the worst defeat in mid-term elections that any out-of-office party has suffered since the 1930s.
It is not clear, however, that the extremists of either party will absorb the lessons of November. Democrats, despite their strong showing, are likely to continue to suffer from internecine warfare between the so-called progressive and moderate wings of the party. Indeed, Elizabeth Warren, a progressive icon, has already made a post-election case in The New York Times for Biden to impose Left-wing policies by executive order if he cannot win Congressional support. For their part, moderates who distanced themselves from loony ideas espoused by the progressive “squad” have not hesitated to accuse Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in particular of doing nothing to help re-elect those of her Democratic colleagues who faced tough Republican opposition in their race for office.
Republican internal blood-letting is likely to overshadow even the most vituperative Democratic name-calling, however. Although Donald Trump’s determination to revisit his 2020 electoral loss undermined Republican chances to take the Senate and to win a sizeable majority in the House of Representatives, he is again running for the presidency. Indeed, voters rejected almost of all Trump’s 2020 election-denying supporters, especially those running in statewide elections, and most notably re-elected Brad Raffensperger, the Republican who refused to buckle under Trump’s direct pressure to reverse Biden’s electoral victory in his state.
Nevertheless, that the party can field far stronger candidates, most notably Ron DeSantis, who won a smashing victory in Florida, appears to be of no concern to the narcissistic Trump. Among the flood of daily emails that he unleashes to his “Patriot” base was the following spitball aimed at DeSantis: “Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer.”
DeSantis is cleverly ignoring Trump’s catcalls, knowing full well that Trump hates to be ignored. Other Republicans have begun to tell their nominal party leader that it is time to step aside. More will have to do so to have any hope of getting through to the tone-deaf former President.
In the meantime, the Democrats have to convey a similar message to their soon-to-be octogenarian President. Should Biden face a younger Republican candidate—a DeSantis, for instance—he will likely be defeated. On the other hand, the Democrats’ best hope of regaining the White House is to field a younger ticket against whomever the Republicans nominate. Assuming that they reject the hapless Kamala Harris, Democrats could choose from, among others, a talented Clintonesque southern liberal, such as the former Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, or the recently re-elected Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
The November 2022 election confounded the pundits on both sides of the political spectrum, whether those who would preach to the MAGA crowd or those whose loyalists tilt toward progressivism. That these experts failed to see what was coming can be explained, at least in part, to the nature of their offerings. Punditry and moderation do not mix well; the latter is far too boring a product to sell on cable television. On the other hand, the electorate demonstrated that moderation still sells well at the ballot box. And at the end of the day, that is all that really matters.
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