Why the 2018 US midterm elections matter

As the clock ticks towards a brand new year, TODAY will be running a series of commentaries looking at key issues that will dominate headlines on both the local and foreign front in 2018. First up is a closer look at the crucial midterm election in American which could have implications not only for the United States, but the rest of the world.

When it comes to American politics, attention tends to be lavished mostly on the presidential elections.

But the off-year midterm elections during the midpoint of a presidential term have long been an important barometer of the political mood and the upcoming 2018 midterm elections will be no different.

In addition to being the first major nationwide referendum on United States President Donald Trump since his shock election last November, it will shape the contours of political power in the US for the next few years and foreshadow some important trends and developments as the country moves closer to the next presidential election in 2020.

While there have certainly been other signposts along the way to assess Mr Trump’s performance, be it the release of a National Security Strategy this month or his first State of the Union address next month, the midterms will be the first major nationwide referendum of Mr Trump’s performance as president.

That is significant because for all the alarm that Mr Trump has generated thus far – from his courting of the far right to an ongoing investigation into shadowy dealings with Russia – how exactly Americans themselves feel about the president, which is at times separate from how they perceive the Republican Party or the state of the country, is still quite unclear.

On the one hand, Mr Trump’s approval rating, which as of now averages in the high-thirties, is significantly lower than what his predecessors enjoyed at this time in their presidencies.

At the same time, the administration’s performance itself has not been all that bad.

At home, economically, stock markets are recording historic highs, while growth in the past few quarters has been stronger than even some administration officials had expected. And while Mr Trump has suffered some costly defeats, most notably on healthcare, he has recorded his share of wins as well which are of broader interest to the Republican Party (GOP), with the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch and the historic tax bill being two cases in point.

Abroad too, even though the Trump administration’s nascent ‘America First’ foreign policy might still spark alarm, at this point its broad contours – which include an emphasis on economic protectionism, national sovereignty, and hard power – have enough resonance with Americans in theory and have not yet incurred any political cost to the GOP.

That has allowed Mr Trump to project an image of toughness against America’s enemies – from a retreating Islamic State to ‘Little Rocket Man’ Kim Jong-un – without having to actually back those words up with actions that amount to wars or intervention as yet.

Second and more broadly, the midterms will shape the contours of political power electorally up to the next presidential election in 2020. The most significant indicator in this regard will be the balance of power in the legislature. Republicans currently hold both the House of Representatives and the Senate, giving them effective control of all three branches of government. The midterms, which will see all of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate up for grabs, have the potential to break that monopoly.

Past midterms have almost always seen losses of some kind for the sitting president, so the question is not whether we will see a Democratic wave in the midterms, but just exactly how big that wave will be.

The current expectation is that the Democrats will win the House but just miss out on the Senate.

The latter was once considered all but impossible but is now a longshot following a wave of sexual harassment allegations in the US that imperiled Roy Moore and led to Doug Jones’ victory in the Alabama Senate Race earlier this month, giving the Republicans just a razor thin 51-49 margin.

How things play out here is important because even with control of just the House, the Democrats will have the ability to then block any major piece of legislation that Mr Trump tries to push through for the rest of his term as they plot his ouster in 2020.

That was essentially what Republicans did once to Barack Obama when they achieved a record level of House seats following the 2010 midterms. Though the president would still have the ability to pass agenda items through other means from executive orders to bipartisan compromise, his powers would be significantly curbed.

Third and lastly, the 2018 midterms are important because they also could foreshadow some of the trends and developments we are likely to eventually see in 2020 presidential elections and beyond.

On the Republican side, there will a lot of attention given to the extent to which Mr Trump has preserved his support base and its makeup in terms of race, age, or education, to get a sense for how ‘Trumpism’ is surviving as an outlook.

Some have been quick to dismiss Mr Trump’s win as being due to particular circumstances around the 2016 elections – including a weak and crowded Republican field and issues specific to Hillary Clinton as Trump’s opponent. But others have argued that broader trends are at work, including a growing portion of the American electorate, mostly male and without a university education, who are anxious about their relative economic position in an increasingly diverse country and are more susceptible to nativist, nationalist, or protectionist sentiments.

But the key question will be what we see in terms of the broader struggle underway within the GOP.

With all the focus on Mr Trump, it is easy to forget that his election occurred within a larger context where the GOP leadership that had been unable to unify itself in opposing newer, radical forces that had emerged during the Obama years, with the Tea Party being a case in point.

The extent to which the usual mix of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and national security conservatives in the Republican Party are willing to align themselves with Mr Trump, as opposed to remaining disengaged or switching allegiances, will be a key variable within the civil war still raging within the GOP.

And there will be powerful forces seeking to shape this, including that of Mr Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

On the Democratic side, the midterms will shed a bit more light on the relative success of messaging designed to oppose Mr Trump that we may also see in the 2020 election.

The Democrats have learned from the 2016 election that simply opposing Mr Trump is not enough and that they need their own messaging as well.

But it still is not clear exactly what that message should or will be.

And there is a continued tug of war within the party about the extent to which they ought to continue along a more centrist line, targeting a broader base including disaffected Trump voters, or move more toward the left to fully capitalise on a wave of grassroots anger among Democrats, including the slice that supported Senator Bernie Sanders in a divisive primary.

Beyond the message, there will also be talk of who the best messenger might be in terms of the Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential election against Mr Trump.

Though there have already been all sorts of lists drawn up, which include well-known names like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, the elevation of new Democrat midterm winners to legislative seats could see their names being added to the list as well.

To be sure, though the general trends are clear, it is still too early to predict exactly what will play out in the 2018 midterms.

The factors that traditionally play into political outcomes, including Mr Trump’s popularity and the country’s economic outlook, all have the potential to change in the coming months, whether for better or for worse.

And the potential for crises and other intervening events that could drastically alter the Trump presidency – whether it be a terrorist attack on the homeland or major findings from the Russia investigation – ought not to be discounted.

But irrespective of how they turn out, the 2018 elections will tell us a lot about how Americans perceive Mr Trump as president and how things are likely to play out the next time the country goes to the polls to vote for their leader in 2020, with significant implications not only for the US, but for the world at large.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Prashanth Parameswaran is Associate Editor at The Diplomat Magazine based in Washington, DC, where he writes extensively about US foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific, Asian security affairs, and South-east Asia. Look out for our commentary on Tuesday (Dec 26) on key developments in Indonesia in 2018.