Democracy stands to become self-destructive unless it can extirpate a cancer which can be termed electoral obsession disorder for want of a better phrase – something which seems to have powered into the vacuum left by a World Cup flattering to deceive.
Bad enough that electoral years are nothing but, without the other year also placing investments and structural reforms on hold. If last week’s column analysed the current problem of debt repayment arrears being all too often millions being lured by the cheap credit of the free-market dawn, only to fall victim to the sky-high interest rates imposed in order to avert pre-electoral panic, those jitters seem entirely needless in hindsight – President Javier Milei’s midterm triumph surprised many but if the severity of the previous crisis was in direct proportion to the intensity of fears of a Kirchnerite comeback, then all the more reason why people voted against it. If electioneering continues to crowd out governance, people will start thinking that the Chinese have the right path to economic progress.
So if this columnist is so dead set against this premature obsession, why is it today’s topic? Because the presidential elections here may be still over 14 months in the future but less than three months to go for the United States midterms – not only might the outcome of the former depend heavily on the latter but parallels can be detected which may enable one to learn from the other.
The catalyst for this focus on the US midterms is, of course, last week’s Democratic primaries in Michigan anointing Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim championing the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as senatorial candidate. Not the first screening of this version of ‘Up in Michigan’ (one of Ernest Hemingway’s earliest short stories) – Rashida Tlaib, also Muslim of Palestinian origin, was already elected to the House of Representatives for Michigan’s 13th district back in the 2018 midterms. Nor is El-Sayed this year’s biggest Islamic splash in US politics – his DSA comrade Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as Mayor of New York City on New Year’s Day. This recent proliferation of Near Eastern names in the United States goes back decades in Argentina, especially in western mountain provinces – the Menems in La Rioja, Sapags in Neuquén, the Saadis and Jalil of Catamarca, among others – even if their Levantine origins are not always Muslim and nor did they enter politics amid a traumatic backdrop of Gaza Strip invasion and Middle East conflict.
The impact of El-Sayed’s narrow win over the Democratic establishment is to poise a potential game-changer for November’s midterm, reversing Donald Trump’s slump more or less throughout the year ever since he thought he could emulate Venezuela in Iran. The DSA are picking up enough wind in their sails to contemplate splitting the opposition party, even running their own presidential candidate in 2028. The obvious interpretation of such a split is that it would be handing over both elections to the Republicans on a silver plate.
Yet it might not be quite that simple if we crosscheck against Argentina’s last presidential elections in 2023. Like Trump now, the outgoing Kirchnerite Frente de Todos government was in deep trouble although for different reasons – mostly the fault of its presidential candidate Sergio Massa, who as economy minister had made a mess of the economy by recklessly throwing money at the problems in a frenzy of electioneering. Yet Massa fancied his chances of snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat when he sensed that Milei’s libertarian candidacy could split the centre-right down the middle. Just to ensure that it was straight down the middle, Massa aided the Milei campaign on the side against front-running Juntos por el Cambio standard-bearer Patricia Bullrich (who has since decided that if you cannot beat them, join them). Massa won the first round but not with a sufficient percentage to avert a run-off culminating in the Milei Presidency.
A split left in the United States might be no more dead in the water than a split right in Argentina back in 2023. El-Sayed and Mamdani won their primaries because an intense minority of militants deployed a bigger turnout than a lukewarm majority of moderates but only around a third of Democratic Party voters identify at all with socialism or woke (which has only entered the Argentine vocabulary in the Milei Presidency thanks to the rhetoric of his “cultural battle”) – how much more likely are these heavy tinges of socialism, Islam and woke to spook the US electorate at large. But should a DSA remove such elements from the party, the Democrats might stand to gain more from a middle ground disenchanted with Trump but resisting any opposite extremes than it loses from the departure of their radical wing. In any event an unbroken string of five midterm US government defeats makes November their election to lose.
Should the wheels come off for Trump, this would be another question-mark over Milei’s re-election chances (especially if Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins his fourth presidential term in Brazil in the month preceding the US midterms, an outcome which seems likelier with both Milei’s insults and Trump’s tariffs looking counterproductive). But this column will not enter into the fool’s errand of speculating about elections still 63 weeks away – if a week was a long time in politics for Harold Wilson in the stable two-party systems of the past century, how much more for the volatile politics in these liquid times.
Apologies for yielding to electoral obsession disorder today in the hope of returning to more substantial issues next week.
