Washington Correspondent
Two years after the calamitous end of his mandate, Donald Trump is back at the center of American political debate.
The midterm polls, which this Tuesday, November 8, see American voters vote to elect the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, the governors of 36 states and hundreds of other local elected officials, largely resemble a referendum on its nobody.
The former president is the subject of several legal investigations, and could soon be charged by the attorney general.
He was also directly implicated during the hearings of the commission of inquiry into the riot of January 6, 2021 as the main responsible and instigator of this unprecedented attack on Congress.
But he retains the support of a solid majority of Republican voters, and deliberately influenced the ballot to prepare his likely candidacy for a new presidential term.
purge the party
While the United States is facing the highest inflation in forty years, a subject that voters regard as their most serious concern, even before rampant insecurity and uncontrolled illegal immigration, the electoral campaign has been largely absorbed by the crisis opened in 2020 by Trump by refusing to accept his defeat.
Read also “Midterms”: “The subject of inflation dominates the campaign”
The election would have been difficult, anyway, for the Democrats.
Joe Biden's approval rating hovers around 40%.
The Democrats are unlikely to lose their narrow majority in the House, and retain their tiny one-vote control of the Senate.
But Trump adds an additional and unprecedented challenge.
The crisis he created from scratch, rehashing in each of his public appearances his thesis that the 2020 election was stolen from him by massive fraud by the Democrats, has contributed to undermining the legitimacy of his successor, and seems have contaminated the entire American electoral system.
Since the beginning of the year, Trump has used it to impose his control on the Republican Party.
He first sought to punish and purge the party of elected officials who failed him by voting for his impeachment, or simply refusing to give in to his pressure to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. Most were defeated in the primaries by Trumpist candidates, such as Liz Cheney, representative of Wyoming and daughter of the former vice-president of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney.
Others preferred not to represent themselves.
Read alsoMidterms: the game of “gerrymandering”, American-style electoral redistricting
But, above all, Trump imposed his own candidates against the party apparatus.
Often inexperienced, these controversial personalities all have in common their allegiance to Trump and his stolen election thesis, whether out of conviction or opportunism.
These choices have been criticized by many Republicans.
"In the Senate, the quality of candidates counts,"
said Mitch McConnell.
A former ally of Trump, having broken with him after the riot on January 6, the leader of the Republican minority in the Upper House hopes that his party's victory will allow him to regain his post at the head of the Senate, one of the most influential in Washington.
The Democrats initially considered that these controversial candidates would work in their favor.
Thinking they would be easier to beat in the November election, the Democratic Party spent more than $50 million supporting them against more moderate candidates in Republican primaries in California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, as well as Pennsylvania and Virginia.
But these Trumpist candidates turned out to be more threatening than expected.
If elected, they will argue that the former president's dominance is total, allowing him to announce his candidacy in the 2024 ballot.
A feeling of panic
The most significant results will take place in the states where these candidates are vying.
In Arizona, Blake Masters openly denies the legitimacy of Joe Biden's election, and supports the wildest fraud theories.
In Georgia, former American football champion Herschel Walker, another candidate imposed by Trump, resisted all the scandals - natural children, companions forced to have abortions and accusations of domestic violence - to directly threaten the outgoing Democratic senator.
Read alsoMidterms: how big will the sanction be for Joe Biden?
In Pennsylvania, another crucial state, former doctor and television star Mehmet Öz is neck and neck with his Democratic opponent, struck by a stroke at the start of the campaign.
In Ohio, bestselling author J. D. Vance, winner of the Republican primary thanks to Trump's support, could also win this seat.
In New Hampshire, former general Don Bolduc, who also supports the thesis of electoral fraud in 2020, threatens the outgoing Democratic senator.
In Nevada, the Hispanic electorate is sliding towards the Republican Party.
Even more worrying for Democrats: polls have shown in recent weeks that their gubernatorial candidates are under threat in states that have traditionally been theirs, such as New York or Oregon.
Even Joe Biden, who generally refrained from pronouncing the name of his predecessor, spoke about the danger represented for American democracy by this former president who refuses to respect the rules.
“American democracy is under attack because the former president of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election,”
Biden warned last week.
The concern of the Democrats has given way in recent days to a feeling of panic.
On the Republican side, the announced victory will be mainly measured according to the success of the Trumpist candidates.
