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Midterms and foreign policy

I gave a talk this morning at the Italian International Affairs Institute (IAI) on “The 2018 American Midterm Elections: What Do They Signify for the US and for Europe?” Here are my notes for the occasion, which I pretty much used as written:

• It is a pleasure to be back at IAI, which has been kind enough to host my talks many times over the 25 years since I left Rome as Charge’ d’affaires ad interim of the American Embassy.
• Let me start with some basics: the elections are “midterm” because they fall in the middle of a Presidential mandate. They are multiple, that is elections rather than election, because more than one institution is contested: all of the House of Representatives, about one-third of the Senate, and many governorships, state legislatures, and local positions.
• They are also multiple in another sense: even elections for Federal offices in the US are run by the 50 states, not by the Federal government. While all the states elect members of the House from single-member districts with approximately the same population as well as two Senators (no matter what the population of the state), the rules governing who is eligible to vote, design of the ballot, polling procedures, opening times, counting, tabulating, and ultimately deciding the outcome vary quite a bit from state to state and even from county to county.
• Quite a few of our states have trouble getting it all done, especially when the margins are narrow. There are still a few seats undecided.
• Nevertheless, the general shape of the outcome is clear: Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives; Republicans have maintained control of the Senate, widening their margin by a couple of seats.
• What does this mean for the future, especially for American foreign policy and relations with Europe, including Italy?
• First thing to understand is that the election was not about foreign policy. The two biggest issues were health insurance for Democrats and immigration for Republicans. Trade, national security, nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, the Middle East, Iran, China, Russia and all the other issues IAI and I care about were virtually absent from the pre-electoral discourse.
• It was vigorous and led to a high turnout by American standards: about 50% of registered voters. That will sound very low to you, but it is not low in the US, where about 60% turn out for presidential elections and midterms generally draw about 40%.
• There are many reasons for this. Americans move frequently and die pretty much at the rate of everyone else. There is no national procedure for updating registration lists, and virtually no one unregisters when they move out of a community to another one. So some of the low turnout is a statistical artefact.
• The resulting anomalies have led to Republican claims that there is a great deal of fraudulent Democratic voting in US elections. There is no evidence for that. To the contrary, the evidence demonstrates concerted efforts by Republicans in many states to suppress voting by their opponents with ID requirements, closing polling places, and other tricks of the trade.

• The higher turnout this time around occurred among both Democrats and Republicans, but the Democrats have more to gain because their relatively young voter population normally turns out much less than the older Republican voter population.

• What looked like a modest shift the day after the election turned into a considerable Blue Wave as more results are finalized. The shifts from the last midterms in 2014 are notable:

under 30, +11D to +35D
women, +4 to +19
Latinos, +26 to +40
Asians, -1 to +54
college grads, -3 to +20
independents, -12 to +12
single, +13 to +24
not white evangelical, +12 to +34

• Rural areas voted heavily for Republicans. Suburbs, which have generally leaned Republican, turned bluer this time, mainly because of the votes of college-educated women.
• In short: Americans are divided, perhaps more than they have been since World War II.
• On one side, we have a modest, but bigger than normal for midterms, recovery of the Obama coalition, despite a House of Representatives gerrymandered in favor of Republicans and a Senate “map” that incidentally favored Republicans.
• Some high-profile progressives like Beto O’Rourke—a challenger for Ted Cruz’s Senate seat in Texas—and Andrew Gillum—the black Democrat who ran for governor of Florida—lost, but their showings were respectable enough to make them serious future candidates.
• On the other side, we’ve got a Trump-dominated Republican party, which will be more radical than in his first two years. Many of the relative moderates are not returning to Congress. The Republicans there will be whiter, more male, and more rural than before.
• The big winners in this election were those who want America divided and immobilized. That includes Presidents Putin and Xi. America will be consumed for most of the next two years with the 2020 presidential election. The Mueller investigation and oversight hearings will increase the noise and divisiveness, perhaps even to the point of impeachment.
• The Democrats, who are mostly moderates, have limited powers to influence foreign policy. Their main lever of power will be oversight: the power to convene House hearings and subpoena witnesses. The Senate will continue to rubber stamp Trump’s nomination of judges and ambassadors.
• That said there has been considerable agreement in the current Congress between Democrats and Republicans on maintaining the foreign affairs budget and toughening up against China, Russia, and North Korea. There are disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal, which Democrats favor, and on the defense budget, which Republicans traditionally favor.
• In the Middle East, we are likely to see a continued US effort in eastern Syria, some effort at rapprochement with Turkey, and Congressional pressure to stop the war in Yemen as well as sanction Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The Administration will resist that pressure but may give in on Yemen, which would bring Washington into closer alignment with most Europeans.
• It remains to be seen whether the consensus in favor of funding defense, development and diplomacy that existed in Congress since 2016 will be maintained. The Administration itself has signaled an intention to cut defense. Many newly elected Republicans will want to cut development and diplomacy. Democrats will defend both, but compromises should be expected. There is nothing popular about the foreign affairs budget in the US, though most Americans do favor continuing commitments abroad.
• On NATO and the EU, I don’t think much will change. Trump has made it clear he thinks little of NATO and less of the EU. The Congress and the American people are more favorable to both and will try to insist on maintenance of the Alliance. Trump’s hostility to the EU will, however, find some resonance among protectionist Democrats and Republicans. The steel and aluminum tariffs seem destined to stay, at least for now.
• Macron and Merkel notwithstanding, there are of course many in Europe who are sympathetic to their own version of Trump’s nationalism: make Italy, Hungary, Poland, or Denmark great again by blocking immigration, protecting domestic industries, rallying anti-minority sentiment, and undermining the rule of law. Berlusconi after all was an Italian invention.
• I’m afraid the only thing that will sober some of Trump’s American supporters will be a major economic downturn, and even then they may prefer to blame it on someone other than the incumbent, most likely minorities, immigrants, Europeans, and terrorists.
• That said, I think we have passed the moment I would call “peak Trump.” Even without a recession, most Americans—3 million more of whom voted for Hillary in 2016 and haven’t approved of Trump since—are now fed up. Unlike 2016, that majority has spread into red suburbs and states and mobilized more effectively. Democrats won the popular vote for Congress by about 7%. That could be a landslide in a presidential election.
• Trump has a difficult road ahead. But that should be little comfort. If I had to guess, his fall might be at least as painful as his rise. He will resist accountability and transparency to the last.
• Europe has a tremendously important role to play during the next two years. Merkel and Macron have already done great work in maintaining the vision of a united and liberal Europe. So long as Germany and France remain on that line, I can hope the rest of Europe and the US will eventually find their way back from ethnic nationalism.
• But they and those of you who agree with that vision are going to have to do much more. Here are a few concrete suggestions:

• The NATO allies really do need to meet the 2% goal by 2024. Failing to keep on the tracks plays directly into Trump’s malicious hands. If they do so by joining together to form Macron’s European army, I have no objection.
• A negotiated resolution of the trade dispute is highly desirable. Even better would be returning to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which offered big economic benefits.
• The US and Europe need to hang together on Russia and China or hang separately as Ben Franklin said to his fellow revolutionaries. US gas supplies should help on the Russian front.
• On Iran, I see no hope of a US/EU accommodation so long as the US stays out of the nuclear deal. But I don’t really see how it can re-enter under this president. Some issues will have to wait for 2021, when discussing a follow-on deal will be needed anyway.
• On Syria, prospects are better. The US and Europe seem to be on the same wavelength in withholding reconstruction aid until there is a credible and irreversible political transition under way. That is the way to succeed, but pressures on Europe will be great.
• On Libya, the Americans are hoping Italy and France will work together to end the civil war and put the country back on a sustainable path.

• There are lots of other issues, but the overall strategy should be this: hang together where possible, help each other out, and hope to get to 2021 in good enough shape to return to the trajectory most of us would prefer: a Euro-Atlantic community whole and free, though wiser and better, from Vancouver to Vladivostok.