All attention is focused on the USA, where the November congressional elections are approaching. Their outcome will answer many troubling questions that arose two years ago, when D. Trump won the presidential election.
Will American voters say that Trump is not what America represents? Will they reject his racism, misogyny, nationalism and protectionism? Does he mean that his refusal (under the slogan "America First") to respect the principles of the international rule of law is not what the US stands for? Or will they confirm that Trump's victory was not a historical coincidence caused by the results of the Republican primaries, in which an unsuitable candidate won, and the Democratic primaries, in which a rival ideal for Trump won?
The future of the USA is being decided, and the passionate debates about the reasons for the 2016 election have ceased to be exclusively scientific. The main question is how the Democratic Party (and similar parties in Europe) should position themselves to win the majority of votes. Should it move toward the center or focus on winning over young, progressive, enthusiastic newcomers?
There are serious reasons to assume that the second variant would very likely bring success in the elections and eliminate the threats coming from Trump.
Voter turnout in the US is very low, and even lower in non-election years. In 2010, only 41,8% of voters voted, and in 2014, according to data from the "US Elections" project (USEP), only 36,7% of registered voters went to the polls. Among supporters of the Democrats, the turnout is even worse, although it seems to be improving in this election cycle.
People often say they don't vote because they think their vote won't change anything: both parties are like an egg. But Trump has shown that this is not the case. Republicans who rejected the claims of supporters of a strict budget policy and last year voted for a significant tax cut for billionaires and corporations - have shown that this is not the case. Republican senators who supported Brett Kavanagh's nomination to the US Supreme Court, despite his misleading affidavits and completely credible evidence of his past sex crimes - have shown that not to be the case.
However, the Democrats are also responsible for voter apathy. That party is bound to end its long history of collusion with the right, which began with President Bill Clinton's cuts in capital gains taxes (which made the richest 1% even richer) and financial market deregulation (which contributed to the Great Recession) and finally with the bank bailout program of 2008 (which gave very little to the employees, who lost their jobs, and the owners of the mortgaged apartments that the banks wanted to take from them). For 25 years that party, it sometimes seemed, was more busy winning the support of those who lived on capital income than those who lived on wages. Many voters who do not want to go to the polls complain that the Democrats are too busy criticizing Trump without proposing any real alternative. The urgent need for politicians of the second type was evident after the support given by voters to progressive candidates, such as Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for president, or 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, who in the primary election convincingly beat the fourth ranking member of the Democratic Party in the US House of Representatives.
Progressives, such as Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, manage to propose attractive ideas to the very voters that Democrats must mobilize to win. They are trying to restore access to a middle-class standard of living by providing decent and well-paid jobs, restoring a sense of financial security, and also guaranteeing access to quality education and medical services, regardless of people's current state of health. They stand for affordable housing and a secure old age where people do not become the prey of the sleazy financial sector. They call for increased dynamism, competition and market fairness in the economy in favor of limiting excessive market power, the process of financialization and globalization, and also in favor of strengthening the bargaining positions of workers.
Such privileges, characteristic of the middle class, are attainable. America could afford them half a century ago, when it was much poorer than it is now; she can afford them even today. In addition, neither the American economy nor its democracy can afford to echo the expansion of the middle class. Government policy and programs, including state medical insurance options, supplementary pension benefits, and also mortgages, are crucial to the realization of the given concept. I am delighted by the active support for those advanced proposals, and also by the political leaders who advocate them. I am convinced that in a normal democratic country such ideas would dominate. But American politics is corrupted by money, election rigging, and massive attempts to disenfranchise people. The 2017 tax bill is nothing more than a bribe to corporations and wealthy people to focus their financial resources on the 2018 election. Statistics show that money plays a huge role in American politics.
But even in such a corrupt democracy (with its deliberate attempts to disenfranchise a portion of the population), the strength of the American electorate matters. And we will soon find out if it has more significance than the money flowing into the pockets of the Republican Party. The political and economic future of America, and to a significant extent the peace and progress of the entire world, will depend on that answer.
The author is a winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018.
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