MAKHUDU SEFARA | Democrats win historic rebuke of Trump in midterms, but will this ease pressure on South Africa? - TimesLIVE
Ahead of the US Senate and House of Representatives elections this week, President Donald Trump urged Americans to vote as if he was on the ballot.
Assuming he was still popular, Trump urged voters to “pretend I am on the ballot”. The result, a bully with a bloodied nose, is the outcome of this referendum on Trump’s second term.
Ordinary voters sent him an unequivocal message of disapproval. The American press called it a “stern rebuke” of Trump’s divisive agenda. Part of that agenda is to single out South Africa for intense focus, using lies about genocide to prop up anti-SA sentiment.
In the Democrats blow up victory, they registered a number of firsts.
Dr Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim US senator; Chris Pappas became the first openly gay senator of New Hampshire; Peggy Flanagan became the first Native female elected to the Senate; Trump’s fave Greg Abbott was defeated by the first Latino Governor of Texas Gina Hinojosa. The deportations and ICE’s murderous streak were always going to cost the administration votes.
Lastly, the election of Juliana Stratton in Illinois was historic in that it, for the first time, sees three black women serve concurrently in the Senate — the other two being Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
In short, this was a very historic election on many fronts. It’s not just a historical rebuke of a bully, ordinary voters wanted to send a message that they are not as hateful of Latinos, Muslims, African women as the zealots who believe in Make America Great Again (MAGA). For measure, the voters ensured the MAGA candidates lost, some of them badly.
Predictably, Trump, like a snake eating its tail, started blaming some of the candidates who lost, including those handpicked by him. His deputy, JD Vance, said: “There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is.”
For South Africans, though, the question is whether the victory is big enough for the Senate to push through an impeachment motion to end the nightmare Trump and, of late, his South African Ambassador Brent Bozell III, have unleashed. The truth is Trump — and all he comes with —will be around for the last two years of his term.
But control of the crucial Senate means the Democrats will be able to conduct major investigations and publicly hold officials accountable.
The first of these is Pete Hegseth and the legalities of the costly war in Iran, which Trump has insisted on calling a “special operation” — one that has single-handedly raised the cost of fuel and thus the cost of living in the US and across the globe. Affordability became a big issue in this election.
Some hope there would also be an inquiry into a scheme to allow only Afrikaners into the US on the basis of a phantom genocide in South Africa. While the Democrats won’t have the numbers to push out Trump on their own, they’re sure to make 2027 a year of aggressive scrutiny of the last two years of Trump’s rule.
Robert Garcia, who is the Democrats’ top man on the powerful House Oversight Committee and who is set to become its chairperson in January, issued a two-letter warning to the Republicans following their loss: “Lawyer up”.
Senate finance chair Ron Wyden captured the mood in one word — “subpoenas.”
Will the buried Jeffrey Epstein files be revisited? Either way, we must hope Trump is kept sufficiently busy to worry about South Africa. His negative impact on the world has hit us in our pockets and, thankfully, cost him. That he will suffer legislative paralysis is plain. He will likely be a lame duck for the next two years.
As a new political reality dawns in Washington, trade, industry and competition minister Parks Tau and his team will frantically be trying to mitigate the impact, even if it’s not catastrophic, of our removal from African Growth and Opportunity Act with effect from January 1.
While the midterms are generally considered an internal reconfiguration of power, they have major implications for judicious use of power by the world’s biggest economy.
The weakened Democrats helped Trump to become a vicious bully, stopping supply of medicines and reorganising global affairs on his say-so. His social media posts became the informal presidential gazette. This election result is a rejection of his politics and his methods.
President Cyril Ramaphosa termed it the introduction of a “new era in world relations” while Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre appreciated that “voices are now emerging in American politics that are closer to us ... on climate and environment, and in foreign policy”. On the surface, Trump is likely to be kept too busy putting out fires at home to pay attention to South Africa. While the White House retains control of foreign policy, the Senate and the courts are most likely to be used to keep him in check, despite his unpredictability.
Whether he becomes a real lame duck or not, this historic moment represents a repudiation of crass racism and sexism that Trump, Bozell and their MAGA cousins represent.
The victory is not evidence that the global right-wing, populist wave is dead, but it shows the end is nigh. Americans believed Trump was on the ballot and deliberately voted for change. They voted for an affordable life just as they voted against an unnecessary war that has affected the globe.
The Washington bully has a bloodied nose.
