By Denis Bright 

The re-democratisation of the US is reflected in improved voter turn-outs at the mid-term elections on 6 November 2018.

The Blue Wave to the Democratic Party in the Senate this time was not fierce enough to over-turn the majority for the Republican Party. The new senate balance is now Democrat 47, Republican 53 and two independents, including the left-leaning Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The net loss of two senate spots by the Democrats occurred despite a favourable nationwide swing of 5.5 per cent. The national senate vote reached 59.3 per cent for the Democratic Party.

The Blue Wave in the contestable senate spots did not make it to Florida, Missouri, North Dakota and Indiana which were all re-gained by the Republicans to off-set Democrat gains in Arizona and Nevada.

In Texas, Republican Senator Ted Cruz survived with 50.9 per cent of the vote despite a swing of 6 per cent to challenger Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke vacated his Congressional District 16 in Dallas to contribute to make an unsuccessful tilt at the senate to assist with Democrat efforts to gain control of both houses of Congress.

A most encouraging trend at the mid-term election was the high voter turn-out (Vox, 19 November 2018):

Senate spots were highly contested in the swing states where one third of the senate is elected every two years with special votes to confirm appointments from death or retirements.

In the State of Michigan, the votes from the college cities of Lansing and Ann Arbor as well as increasingly de-industrialised Detroit offered protection from a possible Red Wave to the Republican Party.  

The Red Wave triumphed in Florida where Democratic Senator Bill Nelson was defeated by 10,000 votes from a voter turn-out of over 8 million:

As in Britain after the Tony Blair landslides in 1997 and 2002, a change of administration does not necessarily bring a change in policy direction on all fronts. Even President J. F. Kennedy (JFK) was still under the clutches of the military intelligence networks after his narrow victory in 1960 and a status quo result at the 1962 mid-term election. Having accepted CIA intervention in Cuba in a futile attempt to topple Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs, JFK was able to hold the line against military solutions to the Cuban Missile Crisis with some moral support from both Nikita Khrushchev and Pope John XXIII. The CIA got its way in South Vietnam with the coup against President Diem just three weeks before JFK’s own assassination on Friday 22 November 1963.

The Blue Wave in Pennsylvania

Permit me to use some illustrations from the mid-term election results in Pennsylvania which includes the City of Philadelphia.

In Pennsylvania, voter turnout jumped from 43 per cent at the 2014 mid-term election to 58 per cent in 2018 (WITF 19 November 2018). This turn-out was still lower than at the 2016 presidential elections.

In parts of Philadelphia and the Allegheny hinterland, east of Pittsburgh, the turn-out rate was over 60 per cent. College towns in Allegheny County east of Pittsburgh added to the Democratic vote attained by Senator Bob Casey with only minor total leakages of 1.6 per cent to the Greens and Libertarian candidates.

In Pittsburgh based, Congressional District 18, the Republicans did not contest the election. However, in Allegheny County on the eastern outskirts of Pittsburgh and into the adjacent college towns, the high rates of voter participation gave 65.7 per cent of its support to Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

The Democratic Party achieved a net gain of three districts and the state is now evenly divided between the Republican and the Democratic Party. District 1 as well as Districts 9-16 are still in Republican hands. Districts 12-15 recorded Republican votes in the 66 to 70.5 per cent range.

Gerrymandering of congressional districts was an important weapon for the Republican Party. This protects the Republican hue in District 1 in Pittsburgh by concentrating Democratic Party support in the adjacent Districts 2 and 3.

The Twists and Turns of Congressional Districts in Philadelphia

The seat by seat analysis of the district results inn Pennsylvania is well covered in articles from Politico.

There has been a revolution in the gender balance of congressional representatives from Pennsylvania with an increase in female representation from zero in 2014 to four. All women are from the Democratic Party. The zero representation for women prior to 2018 was repeated in the congressional districts of ten other states. On election night, 55 of the 65 women in the House of Representatives were Democrats.

Madelaine Dean now represents Congressional District 4. Here the Democratic vote has increased from 25.46 per cent in 2014 to 33.94 per cent in 2016. The 63.45 per cent vote for Madelaine Dean justified her decision to transfer from the Pennsylvania state house at the right time as enthusiastically reported in the local media:

That will change in January when four Democratic women from the Philadelphia suburbs and Lehigh Valley are sworn in: Madeline Dean, Chrissy Houlahan, Mary Gay Scanlon and Susan Wild.

Their election is significant, according to Terry Madonna, a veteran pollster and political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

“They won’t be Trump fans, to put it mildly,” he said.

The women ran on numerous issues, but they also had an anti-Trump message in their platform, even if they didn’t say the president’s name.

Their victory speeches also talked about change and a fight that continues.

“Tonight, we’ve changed the face of Congress,” Dean said.

“Our politics and our government have been turned upside down, and together I hope we’re going to turn our country right side up again. This is not the end of our journey. We have only just begun this fight, and we have a lot of work to do now,” Houlahan said.

Rep. Dwight Evans from the Pennsylvania’s Third District in Philadelphia also has a strong democratic vote. Unlike some Democrats, Rep. Dwight Evans questions some of the fundamentals of market ideology as the right foundations for the welfare of working people:

“The real fundamental question we’ve really got to ask ourselves is, what type of a society do we want?” Evans said in a recent campaign stop, criticizing the GOP (Republican Party) tax cuts for helping corporations and the wealthy while driving up the deficit and leaving less room for needed domestic programs.

Ignored by the national elements of his party, Leib, 33, called out CNN anchor Jake Tapper, a Philadelphia native, on Twitter in mid-October, trying to get some coverage. On the trail, the businessman and leader of the city Young Republicans argued that one-party Democratic rule had not helped the city.

“I’m a realist. I realize this would be the upset of the nation, right?” Leib said in an interview with news website Billy Penn in October. “But I’m still out here working hard to connect with people.”

An estimated 56 percent of the district’s population is African American, according to the data journalism website FiveThirtyEight. Two years ago, Hillary Clinton took 91 percent of the vote in the precincts that now comprise the newly re-drawn Third.

 

Challenging Political Apathy in Downtown Philadelphia with Rep. Dwight Evans (image from philly.com, photo by Michael Bryant)

Extending the 2018 Mid-Term Swings  

The progressive traditions of both Australia and the US would be vastly strengthened by more critical news reporting and cultural activism. These results were a snub to the more traditional style of campaigning by Democratic campaign bosses.

The more engaged US electorate surely demands responsible policy risk-taking over the endless use of predictable rhetoric. The precedent of taking good-will from Republicans for the benefit of the wider community is a reminder of the history of the Woodmere Art Museum in the Chestnut Hill District of Philadelphia.

The Museum and some of the art treasures were from the estate of Republican benefactor Charles Knox Smith (1845-1916). His wealth was derived from risk-taking in business, including mining investments in Mexico. This country is now being fenced off from the US and the polemics over this non-issue has shut down the US federal government.

The twists and turns in this upcountry winter landscape are a reminder of the changes which both Australia and the US must make to remain vibrant societies in the years ahead.

The promo for the current Pennsylvania Landscapes exhibition uses the work of impressionist artist Walter Elmer Schofield (1866-1914). It gives a cheerful light to the winter landscapes of Upcountry Pennsylvania from a work completed in 1913.

This was the year of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration for two terms. After commitment to the Great War in Europe, a Republican-dominated Congress after the 1918 mid-term elections rejected the value of participation in the League of Nations to build a just peace.

Shades of 1918 still exist in the rhetoric of President Trump’s America First Approach to the hopes of progressive globalisation.