United States President Joe Biden, who claimed to be optimistic about this Sunday's election despite polls predicting a landslide victory for Republicans, was rightly relieved yesterday that his Democrats could lose control of Congress.
According to the incomplete results, the Republicans will have a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, while the outcome of the vote for the Senate was uncertain yesterday since the results in the key states were not announced.
However, even such an outcome was better than expected for the White House, according to the Reuters agency. "Never underestimate how underrated Team Biden is," White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein tweeted.
"Unbelievable," a surprised Biden associate told the British agency, while Republican officials admitted that the expected "red wave" was absent.
"There is definitely no Republican wave, that's for sure," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told NBC.
Surveys have shown that for Republican voters, the main issues in the election were high inflation and crime rates, while Democrats were motivated by issues such as abortion rights and gun violence.
Accordingly, the election result, as reported by Reuters, indicates that the voters punished Biden because of the economic situation in the country, although at the same time they opposed the moves of the Republicans to ban abortion.
Republicans are likely to succeed enough to take control of the House, meaning they could block Biden's pledge to re-legalize abortion rights or ban the sale of assault weapons, and launch potentially damaging investigations into his administration and family.
The poor performance of some Trump-endorsed candidates indicates that voters are exhausted by the election and government chaos caused by the former Republican president.
However, it is far from the convincing victory that the Republicans expected, while the Democrats avoided the heavy defeats in the middle of the term that have traditionally affected the current presidents, including Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
The poor performance of certain candidates supported by Trump indicates that voters are exhausted by the election and the chaos in government caused by the former Republican president.
"I think his ego is just too big," 75-year-old Yvonne Langdon told Reuters as she voted for Republican candidates in Michigan.
Biden characterized the election as a test of American democracy at a time when many Republicans accepted Trump's accusations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Several so-called "Election deniers" who supported Trump's claims achieved victory, but the fear of violence and other obstructions by right-wing observers at the polling stations did not materialize.
If the Democrats really limit their losses in the House of Representatives and eventually retain control in the Senate, according to analysts, the topic of abortion is the most deserving.
Leading up to the election, there was a belief that the energy generated by the Supreme Court's decision to strike down constitutional protections for abortion rights would not be enough to save Democrats compared to voters' fears about the economy.
However, during the night it was shown that the topic of abortion remains strong, and the best example of this is Michigan, where Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who promised to "fight like hell" for the right to abortion, convincingly defeated the Republican candidate.
Regardless of the final result, Biden, who turns 80 this month, has limited the shelling that befell his Democratic predecessors. In the currently deeply polarized America, this can be characterized as a victory, said "Financial Times" columnist Edward Luce and added that regardless of the division of seats in Congress, the election provided important insight into important topics.
One of the key conclusions, according to Luce, is that Donald Trump is weaker than the polls predicted. In fact, right-wing candidates Trump has endorsed have fared worse than typical Republicans. What is perhaps most painful for Trump is the landslide victory and re-election of Ron DeSantis as governor of Florida.
DeSantis, whom Trump calls "DeSanctimonius," is likely to be Trump's rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Probably the best indicator of DeSantis' conservative effectiveness is the distinctively negative tone with which Trump talks about him. "I would tell you a few things about him that are not flattering," Trump said on Monday. "I know more about him than anyone else - except maybe his wife."
That DeSantis is considering a run for the White House has been an open secret for months, although he has not spoken about it publicly, Reuters points out. David Jolley, a former Republican congressman from Florida, said he expects DeSantis to publicly express his presidential ambitions soon. "He and his team believe they can win the support of enough delegates to win the nomination and defeat Trump."
On the other hand, as Edward Luce points out, Biden could make a collateral profit from the political fratricide that is likely to break out between the creator of MAGA and his increasingly impatient successor.
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