The Republicans are already fighting internecine wars to control the Trumpist factions and Biden’s agenda is in question
There are victories that can become a nightmare. That is what awaits the Republican leader in the Lower House, Kevin McCarthy, who yesterday had all the ballots to become the next speaker of Congress. Short of all the votes being counted, the polls appear to have handed his party a win, but so close that he is likely to consume it in internecine warfare. Yesterday, they already started.
After a long night of endless recounts and mixed emotions, the day after the most important election day of their lives, the Democrats had told the electorate, the United States woke up without clear results. The only thing that was certain was that the majority of citizens did not want a nuclear option that would blow up the entire system, as Donald Trump deniers propose when questioning the legitimacy of the elections themselves. Rather, they want the two parties in power to come to an agreement to find solutions to the problems that concern everyone, from inflation to citizen insecurity. And always without eliminating acquired rights, because nobody conceives that the Democratic Party could have saved face without the massive vote of women to defend abortion.
The old formula of dividing the power of the chambers between both parties became palpable throughout the day, but if in the past that forced the president and the opposition leaders to negotiate and understand each other, the bitter polarization of the country does not allow now option for consensus. On the contrary, it leads the country to political immobility for the next two years and puts McCarthy in a difficult position.
First thing in the morning, after realizing that there would be no quick results, McCarthy called his team together and held a conference call with his advisers in which he acknowledged that the avalanche of votes they expected to comfortably stand up with the 218 seats they need to be majority in Congress did not occur. His next goal is to make sure that the extremist wing of the party doesn’t take away the opportunity you’ve always dreamed of.
Sources from the so-called Freedom Caucus told CNN that there are about two dozen members willing to vote against his candidacy if he does not make concessions of power to his far-right sector. Seven years ago this caucus of the Lower House, which emerged with the Tea Party, already blocked his rise to the leadership of Congress and forced his own radicalization. Thanks to the strength of Trumpism, today they have 35 members and are much more organized. They are the ones who come out of the polls stronger, because whoever is president of Congress within the Republican Party will need the seamless unity of all members to be able to pass weighty legislation.
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In a similar context, Joe Biden’s agenda has been in the hands of two conservative Democratic senators for the last two years, who exercised the power of their minority to sabotage the president’s progressive plans. Biden dreamed of getting at least one more seat in the Senate to be able to dispense with the vote of Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. That senator number 51 who would provide the tiebreaker in a Senate Solomonically divided from 2020 in 50 to 50, materialized in the early hours of yesterday with the miraculous victory of John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.
All the heavyweights of the party had turned to the fight for the only vacant seat left by a Republican senator in these elections, but for Biden’s dream to materialize it is essential to retain all the seats that were at stake. Three were still in contention yesterday and one will not be known until December 6, because in Georgia a second round is necessary if none of the candidates obtains 50% of the votes.
Arizona and Nevada hold the thread of life for both parties. In the first, astronaut Mark Kelly, who was launched into politics by the attack on his wife, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, has had the support of the family of the beloved Republican senator John McCain, who died of cancer, at his campaign closing date. . His children could not allow his legacy to remain in the hands of a character like Blake Masters, devoted to Trumpism. Preliminary results look good for Kelly to retain McCain’s seat and Democrats at least have a chance to continue as they were, in the hands of Manchin and Kinema, with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
Nevada was another story. There, Republican Attorney General Adam Laxalt, grandson of a beloved governor of Basque origin, can benefit from the last votes coming from the rural area to consolidate his preliminary victory over Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Hispanic elected to the Senate. The state agrees to receive mail-in votes postmarked on Election Day up to six days later, so everyone was trying yesterday to read the political color of the ballots to be counted in the coffee pits to find out if Cortez Masto has a chance. to go back If that mountain of remaining votes comes mostly from Clark County, to which the city of casinos belongs, with the organizing power of the unions to mobilize the vote in favor of the Democrats, Nevada could be in the blue box and the dream would continue with life.
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Beyond the control of the cameras and what it may mean for the agenda of Biden and the United States, the Republican Party was yesterday at a momentous crossroads that requires deep reflection. Does it help you to remain chained to Donald Trump in order to maintain power? The former president has raised 350 million dollars for the approximately three hundred candidates he has supported in these elections and has participated in thirty rallies and forty fundraisers. By his calculations, 224 of the 330 candidates he claims to have selected have won their contests, “and frankly some had very low odds and came in fifth place,” he said Tuesday night.
Trump had organized a party to follow the results at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where he gathered “people that you read about who are not the nicest but are financially brilliant,” he told the press, who called for follow his words. He expected a big celebration, and although according to his habit he did not allow reality to spoil his speech, the tone changed throughout the night. Fetterman’s victory in Pennsylvania dampened expectations for him, but so did the close competition in key seats like Arizona and Georgia, in which he has invested a lot of time. The Lower House also resisted him and soon the ‘fake media’, which he thanked for their presence at the beginning of the night and invited them to have fun with music and food, once again became the ‘great enemy’, punished by “play down” the “incredible victory” of his chosen ones.
The former president has summoned the country for a “big announcement” next Tuesday. Everyone expects him to launch his presidential campaign to win back the White House, but no doubt in the coming days he will receive a lot of pressure to hold out at least until it is known what to celebrate.
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