Trump is panicking. He knows that come November the Republicans are highly likely to lose control of the House of Representatives. They may also lose control of the Senate, but it would take an electoral miracle for the Democrats to win the two-thirds majority necessary to boot Trump out of the White House.
But loss of the lower house would be bad enough. It is the lower house that could impeach him for the third time. Democrat-control of the House of Representatives, can, make it very difficult for Trump to continue to implement his far-right agenda. They can investigate all of the actions of his first two years and block, impede and obstruct anything he has planned for the final two years.
The multi-million dollar jet given to the future Trump presidential library by Qatar will come under scrutiny. The same goes for all the business deals struck by his family and friends and the bitcoins the family have floated. The politicisation of the civil service; tariffs; weaponisation of the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents; pardons for the Capitol Hill rioters and various cronies; misuse of emergency powers; questionable expansion of presidential powers and, of course, the Epstein files, will all come under a Democrat-controlled political microscope.
For the past 18 months the public have been asking: Where are the Democrats? Well, they have been they have been collecting evidence and biding their time. In a radically divisive America, they had little room for manoeuvre without a majority in either of Congress’s two houses. Every time the Democrats tried to act, they were blocked by Trump’s congressional lapdog, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
That will change dramatically if – as expected—the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in November.
Which is why Trump is panicking. And he is panicking now because he needs to start employing every clean and dirty political trick to prevent a Democrat win.
The president has already tried gerrymandering—the redrawing of electoral boundaries to ensure the desired result. This backfired. Republican Texas complied with presidential wishes, but their moves were made redundant by counter gerrymandering by Democrat-controlled California.
Another political trick is a Republican-sponsored bill currently working its way through Congress called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. This bill would require voters to produce a a document proving citizenship to register to vote. This would mean an “enhanced” driver’s license, passport or birth certificate.
Half of all Americans don’t have a passport. Others don’t have birth certificates. Many married women have changed their names so they would have to produce their marriage licenses with their birth certificates. Only Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington have “enhanced” driver’s licenses that would meet the requirement. Under the act, election officials would also be ordered to purge voter rolls. The Brennan Centre for Justice, a non-partisan organisation that monitors the validity and fairness of elections, reckons that if the SAVE act passes about 21 million Americans would lose their vote. The vast majority of these Americans support the Democratic Party.
Trump’s primary target is the credibility of American elections. That is why he expends so much effort in claiming that he won the 2020 election. In almost every hour-long rambling speech he makes, the president mentions at least once that the 2020 elections were “stolen.” He produces no evidence to back up his claim which has been repeatedly debunked. But no matter, Trump works on the principle that if you say it often enough it will become true.
A corollary to the stolen election story is that if the Republicans lose the mid-term elections it will be because they were rigged. This is part of a strategy whose tactics are likely to include: pre-emptive fraud claims; selective acceptance of results; attacks on Democrat election officials; delayed certification of results; interventions by Republican state legislators; lawsuits challenging voting rules, challenges to ballot counting and/or certifications; emergency injunctions in close races and the spreading of misleading claims on election night. If nothing else, these tactics could delay the seating of the next Congress.
The constitution decrees that the organisation and conduct of elections Is handled by the individual states. This usually means that an elected Secretary of State implements the rules with oversight by the legislature and the right of appeal to the state Supreme Court. This has worked reasonably well for more than 200 years. But in Trump’s divided America, the president does not trust Democrat-controlled states to hold free and fair elections. So, he has proposed that the federal government “nationalise” the elections and take responsibility for the election process. The problem with that is that the federal government is controlled by Trump’s Republican party. Of course, if Trump did try to “nationalise” the electoral process, the move would be blocked by the courts because state control is mandated by the constitution.
Trump’s tactics will not go unchallenged by the Democrats. They too are lawyering up to meet every challenge that Trump throws at them. In fact, constitutional lawyers on both sides of the political divide are likely to this moment be piling up fees, anticipating more fees and thumbing through yacht brochures.
Exactly how the course of the 2026 US mid-term elections will run is not clear. The only thing for certain is that they will not run smoothly.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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14 Comments
“For the past 18 months the public have been asking: Where are the Democrats? Well, they have been they have been collecting evidence and biding their time”
Is this what American politics has come down to. Two years of incriminations played out in the senate from November onwards. It’s almost theatrical. How about governing for a change…..
@Craig Levene
Yes, the current playbook is; when the Democrats hold power, expect politically inspired charges to be directed at Trump and his key supports, and when Republicans hold power, expect politically inspired charges directed at key Democrats who have participated politically inspired charges against Trump and his supporters. It is really quite shocking but that is what politics in the USA has become.
A second move to watch for if Democrats win both the House and the Senate will be the end of the filibuster in the Senate to enable Democrats to enact their agenda. The process that will lead to this outcome started in 2013 when the Democrats in the Senate used the nuclear option to remove the 60 vote requirement to confirm lower-court judicial nominees etc. The Republicans responded when they regained power by removing the 60 vote requirement for Supreme Court nominees. The Democrats considered abolishing the filibuster under the Biden administration in order to be able to expand, and pack, the Supreme Court with liberal minded Justices but enough Democrat senators pushed against the proposal to prevent it happening. In view of how outraged the Democrats are by many recent Supreme Court rulings, I have no doubt the Democrats will abolish the filibuster next opportunity they get.
One element seems to be missing and that is a radical movement among the people to bring about long term change that counters the ideas beliefs and practices of Trump and his associates. We need to accept that doing things in government alone is not enough; there has to be grass roots campaigning all the time to persuade people and show people a better way. In any case, are people fed up with what politicians do in government or are they different in the USA from in the UK.
This applies here too; we Liberal Democrats need to spend a little less time in Parliament and a little more around the country constantly engaging with people about what we and they want done to put our country on the right track. Farage gets criticised for not being in Parliament enough but that is one reason why his campaigning is working. Ed and our MPs should get out there among people much more.
Kristi Noem has just said “When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country”….
I’m slightly shocked to read comments on a Lib Dem forum that basically say the Democrats and the Republicans are as bad as each other. Let us be utterly clear – only one of these parties has upheld, and will uphold, democracy. In 2016 (a very close vote and where the Democrats won the popular vote) and in 2024, the Democratic candidates conceded graciously on the night. Trump meanwhile clearly lost in 2020, has as I far as I know never conceded, encouraged a mob to attack Congress while the results were being certified, and continues to whine 5 years later that it was stolen, all of which undermines confidence in the electoral process – which is the intention.
@Martin Pierce
There is no doubt that Republicans are happy to engage in ‘dodgy practices’ or worse to advance their agenda – unfortunately the Democrats are often guilty of this as well. You quote 2016 as an example of when the Democrats conceded the presidential election ‘graciously’…really? If you check it out, the Democrats in a few counties in Florida actually engaged in a quite outrageous attempt to ‘create’ extra votes by hand checking ballots that had been machine counted to identify votes that had been ‘missed’. This attempt was possible because voters indicated their vote by punching out a little square called a chad to indicate their vote. In some cases, the chad remained attached – known as a hanging chad – and it was possible the machine missed the vote due to it folding back into place when scanned. Once the Democrat-majority review panels had checked the ballots for these possibilities, and were still short of finding enough votes to win Florida, they started to check the ballots that had been declared ‘blank votes’ due to all the chads being fully attached to the ballot papers – they claimed they were looking for voters who intended to vote but didn’t push the stylus hard enough to even detach a single corner. They argued that were were finding ballot papers with slight indentations that suggested an intention to vote…at this point the US Supreme Court ruled that the counting should stop and the final result declared. Hardly the Democrats ‘conceding graciously’…
– Joan Summers
You’re describing the 2000 election, not 2016. Florida didn’t use punch cards in 2016.
Clinton conceded the morning after the 2016 election and attended Trump’s inauguration. There was no recount drama, no pressure campaign on state officials, no fake electors, and no mob storming the Capitol.
The 2000 Florida recount was conducted under state law, in public, with bipartisan observers, and resolved by the courts. Compare that to 2020: a sitting president pressuring election officials to fabricate votes, organising a scheme to submit fraudulent elector certificates, and inciting a violent attack on Congress to prevent the certification of his successor.
Legal recounts versus attempted coup. Are we really expected to believe you don’t see the difference?
@Andrew Melmoth, Andrew Pierce
My apologies – I stand corrected. Definitely the wrong election!.
So yes, 2016 was conceded graciously. 2000 was the one the Democrats attempted to steal.
Must be a sign of me growing old that I can confuse presidential elections 16 years apart!
– Joan Summers
Multiple independent recounts after 2000 confirmed Gore would have won Florida under most standards, including the statewide recount he was requesting. Gore pursued legal remedies through the courts and then accepted the Supreme Court’s decision. He conceded, presided over his own Electoral College defeat in the Senate, and attended Bush’s inauguration.
Calling a legal, transparent, court-supervised recount an attempt to “steal” an election, and conflating the 2000 election with 2016, is standard fare on far-right forums preparing people to accept genuine election subversion. You didn’t just mix up dates. You absorbed propaganda designed to normalise actual theft by claiming everyone does it. That should tell you something about your sources.
@ Andrew Melmoth
“Multiple independent recounts after 2000 confirmed Gore would have won Florida under most standards…”
Allow me to suggest that this is not the case and to provide you with the following analysis to consider:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160318154912/http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBallots.pdf
“including the statewide recount he was requesting”
In actual fact, Gore had requested hand recounts in just four heavily Democrat counties (Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia) – and ultimately the Supreme Court stopped the counting on the basis of ‘equal protection’ since different standards were being used in different parts of Florida to determine whether a vote should be counted.
“…is standard fare on far-right forums preparing people to accept genuine election subversion.”
I assume you must have personal knowledge of far-right forums – I have never accessed one so I will take you at your word on this.
@Craig Levene: The Democrats can’t “govern” (federally) because they don’t have their person in the White House.
Tom Arms, But in Trump’s divided America, the president does not trust Democrat-controlled states to hold free and fair elections. So, he has proposed that the federal government “nationalise” the elections and take responsibility for the election process..
Correction… ‘Trump trusts the Democratic States to hold free and fair elections’. which is why he is trying to prevent such elections..
I think Joan Summers is right. See as an example this article on a Democratic Party attempt to prevent the Green Party candidate for president from going on to the ballot:
https://apnews.com/article/wisconsin-jill-stein-harris-trump-lawsuit-405e8bae8ff9becfa81a1360708d59a0
Also it’s worth recalling to mind that gerrymandering is named for Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a Democratic Republican. A precursor party to the current Democratic Party.
Nobody claims the Democrats are perfect, but the examples of alleged electoral malpractice or manipulation cited above pale in comparison with the Republican-sponsored attempt in 2020 to subvert the election result with the baseless “stolen election” conspiracy theories and culminating in the Jan 6th insurrection.
Trump still peddles the “stolen election” claim. In comparison, in 2000 the Democrats respected the SCOTUS ruling to stop recounting in Florida and accepted the result. Since then they have let bygones be bygones, even if they did have a much stronger case than Trump that their candidate should really have won.