Joe Biden is right.
The US midterm elections are “a good day for democracy”.
That’s something to rejoice in as North Americans, in a country almost intertwined with the United States.
I’m not joking: it’s been a good week for American democracy and therefore for the democracy period. Let’s take the good news when it’s over.
democracy
A democracy does not collapse all at once. It worsens in small gestures. In a long work to undermine counter powers. By gradation.
The midterm election results give this American circus a dose of hope.
The first reason: the weakening of Trump. And by extension, Trumpism as a political movement.
Most of the candidates Trump has endorsed have been rejected. Where he pushed through negationist candidates, backers of the stolen 2020 election, it ended with disappointing results.
His star also faded in his media. Fox News, long his propaganda outlet, appears to have abandoned him. The New York Post, his favorite newspaper, is now laughing at him.
The new darling: Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida. An offspring of Trump, but still not Trump. It counts.
Certainly a number of negationist Republicans were elected. It’s undeniable. But it is neither a “red wave”, nor a “bloodbath”, nor a “Trumpian Surge”. A narrow victory for the Republican Party, not Trump.
Abortion rights, a democratic matter, were upheld everywhere, even in a hyperconservative state like Kentucky. It’s not nothing.
The vote was relatively calm. The count too, despite some allegations of voter fraud. Which in itself is an achievement in the American context.
International
The stronger Trumpism is, the more vigorously the authoritarian populist international emerges.
Politicians continue to emerge from this model and adapt it to their countries’ cultural codes.
But this election offers us rare good news in American politics: Democracy resists!
