After the results of the mid-term elections on November 8 were finalized, the "red tsunami" expected by the Republican Party did not appear.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who had predicted that he could retake more than 60 seats from the Democrats, "couldn't celebrate" and had to call his supporters home to sleep the next morning, saying that the Republicans would wake up tomorrow to win the House majority. .
Watch now: "Hong Kong 01" US midterm elections 2022 special page
November 9 has come and gone, and while the Republicans still have a good chance of winning a majority in the House of Representatives, the result will have to wait for the confirmation of constituencies that count slowly.
Moreover, the most ideal outcome for the Republicans would be to take a dozen seats from the Democrats and take back control of the House of Representatives with a narrow single-digit majority.
As for the Senate, Democrats took Pennsylvania first from Republicans, leaving Republicans with three remaining undecided Senate seats, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Get two seats to get the majority.
This is difficult.
Although the Democratic Party lost some congressional seats, Biden's speech on the first day after the election had a pompous demeanor, claiming that "the newspapers and political commentators were predicting a huge red wave, but it did not happen," referring to reporters People tend to dislike his "optimistic obsession", but he himself knew things would turn out well.
When asked by reporters that two-thirds of Americans did not want him to run for re-election, Biden even half-jokingly called reporters "watch me" (perhaps it means whether you dare to run for the election anyway), Said that a decision may be made early next year.
Biden's triumph is not without reason.
McCarthy, who is likely to be the next speaker of the House of Representatives.
(AP)
Best Democratic election in 30 years?
The loss of congressional seats by a president's party in midterm elections is the norm in American politics.
Of the 39 midterm elections since the U.S. Civil War, only 34 have the ruling party lost any congressional seats.
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term in 1934, the ruling party has lost an average of 4 seats in the Senate and 28 in the House of Representatives.
Even starting in 1994, when Democrats ended nearly 40 years of control of the House of Representatives, in the subsequent six midterm elections, the president's party lost an average of more than three seats in the Senate and more than 24 seats in the House of Representatives.
In contrast, in this midterm election, the Democratic Party almost lost a seat in the Senate, and may even gain a seat in the end, while the House of Representatives lost at most a dozen seats. From the perspective of historical records, it has been considered a super-standard performance— — Not to mention, the U.S. is experiencing persistently high inflation of more than 8% not seen in 40 years, and Democrats are at a rare electoral disadvantage that deserves a big defeat.
More notably, Biden, who is running against Trump for the lowest popularity in history, outperformed his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, in the first midterm elections. Even better.
In the 1994 midterm elections, Clinton lost 10 seats in the Senate and 54 seats in the House of Representatives; in the 2010 midterm elections, Obama, who had just passed the Obamacare Act, also lost 6 and 63 seats in the two chambers, respectively.
Achievements have surpassed Clinton, Obama?
Moreover, in terms of legislative achievements in the first two years in office, Biden is also comparable to the two former presidents Clinton and Obama.
Clinton passed paid vacation legislation two years before his first term, cut some taxes, implemented some background checks for gun purchases, negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, and passed the now-infamous crime-strike legislation.
Obama's achievements are the bailout bill after the 2008 financial tsunami and the "Obamacare" that allowed 20 million Americans to receive health insurance.
In contrast, Biden's legislative achievements are also comparable to those of two former presidents: the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act to fight the epidemic, the $12,000 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act), the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes the largest climate spending in history, cuts to drugs, a minimum corporate tax, and lower government deficits.
Even more surprising is that the bipartisan confrontation Biden faces is stronger than that of Obama and Clinton, while Democrats have only a tiny single-digit majority in the Senate and House of Representatives (ref: 50/100; crowd: 220/ 435), much less powerful Congress than Clinton (cf.
From this political background, Biden's achievements can be regarded as surpassing his two Democratic predecessors.
Trump waited for the results of the vote count at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on the night of polling.
(AP)
After this election, many comments also pointed out that the results of the Democratic Party exceeding reasonable expectations are more likely to cause the "slow death" of the Republican Trump force.
People have also noticed that after the polling day, the questioning elections that are the core of the Trump faction did not generally appear, and many candidates who have always echoed Trump's election fraud conspiracy theory also generously admitted defeat.
"Ending Trumpism" is of course a major contribution to the United States and to the world.
Judging from the results of the mid-term elections and legislative achievements in the first two years of his term, Biden can actually be regarded as a president with considerable political achievements.
This reality is in major contrast with the general perception of the American public about Biden.
What is Biden an expert on?
According to the polls of the midterm elections, American voters are dissatisfied with Biden as high as 58%.
Whether it is conservative or liberal public opinion, Biden is also ridiculed to the best of his ability.
His slurred speech, sluggish hands and feet, and often the wrong words are often seen in the media.
With the severe economic situation in the United States at the moment, people inevitably feel that Biden is incompetent - Democrats' attitude towards him is tolerant and considerate, or they think he is the apple that "isn't that bad"; Republicans also generally Avoid portraying Biden as the public enemy of the people (press: because his image is too incompetent to set off the image of the public enemy), but direct the fire at the Democrats behind Biden, "Biden is just a doll of the progressives of the Democratic Party." The argument is even more popular among conservative public opinion.
Biden, who knows that he has low popularity and low popularity, also rarely canvassed four votes during the mid-term election campaign.
It wasn't until the final sprint that he began to run to key states to stand for some Democratic candidates.
At the same time, the Democratic Party, who felt that the election was unfavorable, dispatched the charismatic Obama to support the election.
Comparing Obama with Biden, many Democrats lamented that Obama is a rare political genius, and secretly regretted Biden's powerlessness and incompetence.
Trevor Noah, a famous American comedian, even played the speeches of Ao and Bai directly on his program. The audience (mainly liberals) did not need Noah to take the initiative to lay out their spontaneity. To laugh dumbly.
However, in terms of governance achievements, even under the political and economic headwinds, Biden's first mid-term election results were far better than Obama's. Although the performance of the two is difficult to directly compare, Biden did achieve what Obama could not try. climate legislation.
This disparity between personal ability and political achievements inevitably makes people feel that Biden is actually an expert in "playing as pigs and eating tigers".
Whether it's his 2020 "run at home" run in the Democratic primary, beating the popular Bernie Sanders, or his sudden success this summer amid the Democrats' desperation The largest climate investment in U.S. history—with European energy companies recently claiming that the U.S. is investing more in new energy than the European Union, which has long claimed to be a powerhouse of new energy—has this shocking abrupt change, which coincides with the polling day of this midterm election. The difference is the same.
In the final analysis, "playing as a pig and eating a tiger" is actually a kind of expectation management.
In American politics with turbulent opinions and multiple powers, many things will not fundamentally change just because of the actions of one person and one party. The ability to manage expectations is perhaps the most valuable trait of successful politicians.
U.S. midterm elections | Good news for investors
US midterm elections | The red tsunami did not come to the "blue dam" but continued to collapse US midterm elections | Trump became the Republican "troublemaker"