HOPES AND FEARS OF AMERICANS

During the US mid-term elections on November 6, the Americans voted to define 35 senators in the 100-member Senate, 36 state governors and 435 members of the House of Representatives. As expected, the Democrats grabbed the majority of seats in the House of Representatives, while the Republicans held sway in the Senate. Thus, the elections ended with a draw.

For President Donald Trump, the elections became a vote of confidence. According to a CBS survey, more than 60% of the voters admitted that their attitude toward Trump was the key factor defining their choice of candidates. The incumbent president passed this test indeed, as the results of the Mid-term 2018 became one of the best achievements of the reds in many years. In fact, the Republicans has never won the mid-term elections, especially when the elections took place during the first presidential term and the president had a low support rating (less than 50%). But Donald Trump is the second American president, who has managed to retain majority in the Senate.

On the other hand, it would be an overstatement to think that the elections were a roaring success for the Republicans. The Democrats, after all, have considerably strengthened their positions, which means the president will have to negotiate many of his initiatives with the congressional opposition. He will still be able to appoint his people to the key government posts after their endorsement in the Senate, but many controversial bills, such as the wall along the US-Mexican border, tough migration policy, tax breaks for the richest people, the fate of the Obamacare can get stuck in the House of Representatives.

Perhaps the main trouble for Trump is the increased ability of the Democrats to continue investigations (Russian interference in the 2016 elections, tax violations of the president and his accusations of sexual harassment) against the current administration. If the Republican majority could block the inquiries earlier, now the road is open for investigators. Special Counsel Robert Mueller will become stronger, and the Democrat heads of various committees will be able to summon the individuals close to Trump. His ardent opponents are even thinking about the impeachment, albeit an unrealistic scenario, as they need the support of the two-thirds of the senators.

Apparently, it is just the beginning of the battle. Trump's opponents are massing against him, as the election results show as well.

Trump is constantly accused of sexism and inciting xenophobic attitudes towards the Muslim and Hispanic communities. In fact, one of the first bills that Trump signed as soon as he took the office was a ban on the nationals of seven Islamic countries entering the US, namely Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya, later including Chad, North Korea and a number of Venezuelan officials. And like a strong response to the president, a record number of women (over 80), including the 29-year-old Latin-American Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest female congresswoman in American history, and two Muslim women, Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), became the representatives of the Congress. In general, the elections were record-breaking in terms of the number of Muslims elected at the regional and federal levels with a total of about 100 people taking part in the campaign.

A 36-year-old Somali, Ilhan Omar, who will also be the first Muslim congresswoman in a headscarf, has lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for a while, and then ended up in the US thanks to the support of the Lutheran Church. Omar, of course, remembers Trump's pre-election campaign and his very negative remarks about the Somali community in Minnesota. The newly elected congresswoman is also at odds with Trump regarding many other issues. She advocates the introduction of a universal health care system, a mandatory minimum wage of $15 per hour and subsidies for poor students. Rashida Tlaib, 42, is a social worker from Detroit, MI coming a large family of Palestinian immigrants. She openly declared that she decided to participate in elections in order to counteract Trump’s policies, in particular his ban on some Muslim countries. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half of the Muslims in the United States (about 3.35 million) felt discriminated last year, and 74% called Trump hostile to them.

All these facts suggest that the American population is divided in two camps, those that support Trump and those that are against him. Same as the political establishment of the United States. Incidentally, the past elections showed a zealous willingness of ordinary Americans to vote, something that has not been the case for quite a long time. The mid-term's turnout has become a record for the last decades:  114 million voters in 2018 compared to 83 million in 2014.

The majority of voters supporting the Democrats were people under 35 years old with higher education, representatives of national minorities, women, and the residents of suburbs. The so-called "rural America" ​​and older people supported GOP. Trump lost the support of the suburban residents, but this is not a catastrophic loss and can be rectified during the rest of his term.

But there is a real danger that the tense situation in the society on the eve of the elections can aggravate. The alarming bell rang just before the midterms when a 46-year-old Robert Bowers, Trump's opponent, who believes that he is "surrounded by Jews", shot eleven people in the synagogue of Pittsburgh. American-Jewish organisations have long been talking about growing anti-Semitism in the United States, noting that over the past year dozens of Jewish community centres throughout the country have received threats of mining. Despite Trump’s special treatment of Israel, as opposed to Obama, a recent poll by J-Street, a liberal American Jewish organisation, shows that a significant number of American Jews are against both the domestic and foreign policy of the White House. 72% of American Jews believe that Trump's statements and policies are one of the main causes of the tragedy in Pittsburgh. Huge number of migrants from Central America, who want to break into the United States as refugees, also added nervousness to the general atmosphere. Trump said that there were many gang members and bad people among the migrants, and ordered the deployment of about 15 thousand troopers at the border. Thus, many commenters in the media and social networks complain about the "atmosphere of hatred" in the country, accusing the president and his supporters of fomenting xenophobic attitudes. Nevertheless, the results of the elections show that for the millions of Americans, Trump is still the "protector of the nation."

It is not surprising that the pre-election campaign has become unprecedentedly scandalous. The appointment of attorney Brett Cavanaugh, who had been charged with sexual harassment, to the US Supreme Court, further heated the passions. A lot of speculation was going around the envelopes with homemade bombs sent to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, former CIA director John Brennan, and others, including the CNN, which Trump is openly fighting with. It turned out that the sender was an avid Trump supporter.

As always, the international reaction to the US mid-term elections was massive. But it was rather caused by the ongoing events in the United States, than the expectations of possible changes in Washington’s foreign policy, because the President and the Senate have more powers in this direction. Observers believe that trade wars initiated by Trump will most certainly continue, since protectionism, in principle, is supported by many American politicians regardless of their party affiliation. Russia, however, expects that the relations with Washington will worsen given the strengthening of the Democrats in the government.

In general, we can expect that the US enter a period of intensified confrontation between the executive and legislative branches in the next two years. So far, Trump, supported by a considerable number of Americans, looks quite confident. In fact, he has a number of trumps in his hands - before the elections, the president visited several states constantly recalling the "unprecedented growth of the economy" and "the creation of new jobs." Indeed, the US economy is developing dynamically, at an unprecedentedly low level of unemployment since the World War II. Furthermore, the president now acts as the real leader of the Republican Party. But the Democrats still have no strong leader. In the run up for elections, they even opted for the support of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. But the real problem of the Democrats is obviously the absence of any coherent program, except for the infamous one called “Trump is very bad.”