Elections for the US Congress: From the "red wave of victory" there is only a little water left in the palm of the hand

For "Vreme" from New York

Although it is more than obvious that from the "red wave of victory" that the Republicans dreamed of, there is only a little water left that can still slip between their fingers, this does not mean that even those few drops cannot completely disrupt the plans of the president Joseph Biden and his Democrats. According to CNN's latest estimates, out of a total of 435, the Republicans currently have 216 representatives in the House of Representatives, and the Democrats 199, while both are tied in the Upper House with 48 of the 100 senators each.

Americans, by the way, love to leave reviews on the websites of the companies they work for, the stores where they spend their wages, the banks they owe thousands of dollars for houses and cars, the psychiatric offices and gyms that serve to make it all easier to bear, or the bars they go to to they forget everything, so halfway through Joseph Biden's presidential term, voters had the opportunity to express their opinion on the rule of the Democratic Party, which during the previous two years had both the president and the majority in both houses of Congress, which gave them full freedom to govern the most powerful country in the world as best they knew how.

What the citizens think of this performance is more or less clear, just as it is obvious how the driver of the "elevator" will fare when someone who, for example, is in a hurry to the theater on Murray Hill, gets stuck on 41st Street, where the passenger will sit through a third of the first act show because the person sitting behind the wheel did not glance at the Google map and see that the same place can be reached, without abnormal traffic jams, on 37th Street.

Democratic inflation

It is similar with the rule of the Democrats. They started at full speed at the beginning of Biden's term, giving him full support for an economic package to help citizens in the midst of the covid pandemic; without discussion, a law was agreed which provides for the complete reconstruction, in certain parts of the country, of completely ruined roads and railways; something has been done to remedy the problem of climate change and to tighten the procedures for purchasing weapons, which, literally, in some places can be obtained with any personal document.

But in the meantime, there has been a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, an uncontrolled wave of migrants that the Republican governors of certain federal states simply put on buses and send to where the Democrats rule, and, worst of all, inflation that, despite the constant intervention of the Federal Reserve, is still close to forty years old. maximum. This, of course, has brought with it continuous increases in rents for apartments, higher interest rates on credit cards that everyone pays for everything, higher costs of basic necessities and fuel, without which life in America is impossible, due to the huge distances between any two points that need to be covered , completely unimaginable, which all together, more than obviously, the voters didn't like too much.

Republican abortion

They, hand to heart, did not say that they were completely disappointed with the rule of the Democrats. But the unexpectedly favorable result of the Democratic Party was largely contributed by citizens' fresh memories of the violent intrusion of Republican extremists into Congress in 2021 in an attempt to prevent a peaceful handover of presidential power, Trump's undisguised enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, who is showing his true face with crimes in Ukraine, and the conservative decision of the Constitutional Court that led to the ban on abortion in certain federal states.

This, again, does not mean that the Republicans have not recorded some success with which they can be satisfied. Taking over the House of Representatives alone could completely block the president's agenda, as the passage of any legislation requires support in both houses of Congress. It will take a long time before all the votes are counted and the complaints about the irregularity of the election process are resolved, while the extremely uncertain results of the voting in certain federal states are still awaited, but it is already clear that this was a typical American election in which in domestic topics were in the foreground. Painful issues of aggression against Ukraine, which the US unreservedly supports, or strategic rivalry with China, remained somewhere far in the background and were hardly discussed during the campaign and public confrontations between the candidates.

 Avoiding political discussions

Not too much was said among people even about the elections themselves before their holding, while all the media were buzzing about their "historical importance" that will "determine the fate of America".

After the end of the theater performance on Murry Hill, it was literally impossible to hear that any of the fifty or so guests who stayed at the cocktail party with the actors mentioned the vote. Polarized to the point that any talk of politics means mutual nodding of like-minded people or exhausting arguments with those they disagree with, they talked about what they came for - a piece of theater.

No one was ready to ruin the evening for themselves and others with fruitless arguments, knowing that those who do not understand each other without an explanation, will not understand each other even after the explanation, so that they will have to schedule additional appointments in the doctor's offices where they will listen to advice on peaceful resolution of conflicts or pay extra hours in the gyms, depending on who is closer to the type of therapy.

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