This essay was published by firstpost.com at https://stg.firstpost.com/opinion-news-expert-views-news-analysis-firstpost-viewpoint/shadow-warrior-the-us-midterm-elections-and-implications-especially-for-india-11146761.html
This is being written on the eve of the US midterm elections, and so far as can be gathered from voluminous punditry, it appears the Democrats are going to take a direct hit. Normally the ruling party loses seats in the midterms, but this time the loss could actually turn into a rout, especially because of inflation and high interest rates.
If the opinion polls are correct, and there is no hanky-panky at the voting-booth, chances are that the Republicans will gain control over one or both of the upper and the lower house: the Senate and the House of Representatives. This means that Joe Biden will be a lame duck, and his far-left, ‘woke’ agenda will be stymied by continuous obstruction by the Republicans.
US election issues
Democrats are on the defensive on many issues that are top of mind for the US voter:
Inflation and the economy
Abortion and women’s rights
Immigration and border control
Climate change
Law and order
The war in Ukraine
The Trump factor and the 2020 election
Undoubtedly there are other, local issues that concern voters, but on the national level this is what they will bring to the voting booth on November 8th. In general, there is a backlash to the extreme-left politics espoused by the ‘progressives’ who appear to have hijacked the Democratic Party.
Inflation is hurting people directly (at about 8%, a 40-year high, and very visible in the price of staples like food and petrol). Naturally, those in charge in times of trouble take the blame, whether it is deserved or not. As the Fed tightens, there will be job losses; there already are, in Big Tech, eg Twitter and Meta, including for other reasons. Small businesses are hurting, too.
The abortion issue looked like a major galvanizing force a few weeks ago when the US Supreme Court overturned the legendary Roe v. Wade decision, but it has faded in importance except for the activist leftist faction within the Democratic party (the so-called ‘progressives’).
Relatively uncontrolled immigration through the porous southern border is an emotive issue in border states such as Texas.
With riots in several cities, ‘defund the police’, and general mayhem such as repeated school shootings, rampant gun violence, breakdowns in law and order may be an emotive issue.
Climate change is less of a concern than it had been earlier, because it is increasingly clear that there will be pain to the general public in making a move to renewable energy.
The Ukraine war, although it has some bipartisan support, is dragging on, and is correctly seen as a factor in increasing oil and gas prices, as well as food prices.
Former President Trump is still a factor in the Republican party, and quite a few members of that party are convinced that the 2020 elections were flawed at best, and stolen at worst.
Finally, one of the imponderables is the ‘swing vote’: groups that may be persuaded based on specific issues.
Swing voters
It appears that there are only two genuinely committed votebanks: one is the mostly white, young-ish, college-educated ‘liberal’ Democratic cohort, that comprise the ‘progressives’ of both the East Coast and California. The other is the rural, again mostly white, older, non-college-graduate ‘conservative’ cohort, which has been dependably Republican for long.
Black voters have been Democrat-leaning for years, and that will continue to be the case. Other groups, for example Latinos (Spanish speakers, or their descendants, often immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Cuba and so on), may well change their allegiance. Latinos were dedicated Democratic voters, but they have shown signs of defecting in droves because of the overly-socialist noises coming from the Democrats. Latinos who escaped from leftist ‘paradises’ like Cuba and Venezuela have no illusions about the pleasures of socialism and communism.
Similarly, Indian-Americans in America have been dependably Democratic-leaning. That party was seen as immigrant-friendly, minority-friendly, etc. but as Indians (as well as other Asian-Americans) see the appalling deterioration in their cities, they are beginning to sour on extreme-left Democrats. For instance, Asian-Americans spearheaded the recall of school board members and a district attorney in San Francisco.
Unfortunately, those Indian-American legislators (you know who they are) who are most woke and most anti-India are unlikely to be dislodged as their constituencies are leftist strongholds.
Put all these factors together, and unless there is widespread voting fraud (the US equivalent of booth-capturing), it is hard to see how the Democrats are going to avoid a disaster. A lame-duck President Biden has consequences for the rest of the world, too.
Global implications from a lame-duck US Presidency
What are the implications? On the one hand, a number of the problems facing the world at the moment can plausibly be traced back to the US, and to be fair, they were not all created by the Biden Administration. But Biden has certainly exacerbated things, leading to global pain.
The four big problems are: 1. The coronavirus, 2. Inflation, 3. The Ukraine war, 4. Dependence on China.
It seems increasingly likely, despite strenuous objections and attention-diverting tactics by the US medical establishment led by Anthony Fauci, that the Covid pandemic is the result of a lab-leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments in ‘gain-of-function’ were being carried on, with American funding channeled through Peter Daszack’s Ecohealth.
Impact: Ideally, in a lame-duck Biden regime, the US comes clean on the whole virus conspiracy.
The massive money-printing exercise and largesse (a few thousand dollars to every US taxpayer as stimulus payments) have led to too many dollars chasing too few goods, the textbook definition of inflation. This structural problem was exacerbated by supply-chain disruptions (read imports from China) due to the coronavirus and the Ukraine war.
Impact: Instead of throwing good money after bad, as in the ill-considered and Orwellian Inflation Reduction Act, a chastened Biden regime might pursue more sensible fiscal policy.
Speaking of the Ukraine war, neutral observers are hard pressed to see how it has helped anybody, other than the pals of the Deep State, for whom increased military spending means a windfall. Atlanticist Democrats with Eastern European ancestry have dragged the US into some obscure blood feud of theirs with the Russians. Starved of Russian energy supplies, Western Europe is likely to suffer a cold winter and find that its industry is severely damaged.
Impact: With the prospect of a loss in the midterms, WaPo reports that the hitherto pugnacious Biden crowd is telling Zelensky to seek a negotiated end to this pointless war. That is a relief.
Through a series of poor strategic decisions, the US has made itself almost fatally dependent on China as a supplier. While it is not impossible, a decoupling of supply chains (the China + 1 strategy) is difficult. Apple is the latest company warning that its production in China is taking a hit partly because of Foxconn’s well-publicized troubles with pandemic lockdowns.
Impact: This is the one Biden policy that makes sense: isolate China and deny it technology. Biden has been China-friendly but the U-turn will get bipartisan support.
There are some other secondary implications: for instance, the Republicans may probe the Hunter Biden laptop and its damning contents. This could potentially lead to a Biden impeachment, which would then make Kamala Harris the US President. That would be an outcome with many implications, especially for comedians and talk show hosts.
The impact on India
India is low on Joe Biden’s priority list: he hasn’t even bothered to confirm his ambassador to India, although that may be a blessing in disguise. Eric Garcetti, the designate, is a Los Angeles party hack who is being kicked upstairs after a disastrous showing in his home town as mayor.
In the 21st century, under Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, it has been clear that America is not exactly India’s friend. That was perhaps fortunate, given Henry Kissinger’s dictum: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal”.
Biden’s most prominent action regarding India was the futile effort to bully India into joining the US-NATO camp regarding Ukraine. His officials have taken ‘revenge’ in a number of petty ways, including the denial of visa appointments (when last checked, the waiting time for a visitor visa in Delhi was 880 days. Contrast this with just 2 days in Beijing).
Then there was the announcement of $450 million worth of enhancements to their F-16 fleet to Pakistan, followed by the release of that country from the FATF gray list, as well as the approval of a billion-dollar IMF bailout package.
A less woke, lame-duck US Administration may well be in India’s interest. The more worried the US gets about China, the more value they see in the Quad, as the Trump Administration did. In that sense, continuing frictions between the US and China would be useful to India, as indeed also a full-fledged Thucydides Trap of all-but-war between them.
Similarly, a less cocksure US Administration may want to bring the Ukraine war to an end with a face-saving exit for all concerned. Nuclear brinkmanship is not good for business in general, and if pushed, the Russians may in fact use tactical weapons, or worse. Nuclear war always seems like a bad idea, including with China over the latter’s likely invasion of Taiwan. We don’t know the unintended consequences.
On the other hand, any commercial pressure that the US puts on China is good as far as India is concerned. Presumably the chip wars, wherein the US is apparently intent on putting the brakes on Chinese development and manufacture of leading-edge semiconductors, will continue or gain momentum. That is in the US interest, and incidentally in India’s as well, as India tries to attract more investment into its own chip industry.
On average, a lame-duck Biden Presidency is a reasonably good outcome for India. If 2024 brings back a Republican Presidency (not necessarily Donald Trump) that too may be a good thing. The decline of the woke ‘progressives’ is good; however the hostility of the Deep State and the Military-Industrial Complex is not going to diminish until and unless India becomes a major economic and military power; which of course will happen by 2047.
1720 words, Nov 7, 2022
Ep. 81: The US Midterm elections and the implications especially for India