Backlash or Blue-State Blip?

 When the euphoria has subsided, it may be re­called that Democrats have pulled this off before. Since 2017, a pattern has emerged whereby Trump’s loyal Republican base turns out in huge numbers in presi­dential election years while Democratic voters do the same in off-year elections, followed by the mid-terms. As they have just done in handing a sweep to the hitherto demoralised party in gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the New York mayoral contest, legislative elections in California and Pennsyl­vania and a bunch of local polls.

There is a message to President Donald Trump, especially in how centrist, establishment Democrats like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey respectively with a clear message about the cost of living. There’s a warning to Republicans in the shift of the Latino vote back to Democrats. The economy has cost GOP candidates everywhere and while the president was not on the ballot, November 4 wasn’t a good night for him. But there is no guarantee a divided Democratic Party will keep this momentum till the mid-terms. Nor does it resolve the bitter struggle between centrists and so­cialists, the latter buoyed by newfound mascot Zohran Mamdani. Above all, these victories are unlikely to be translatable nationally a year from now.

The Loneliness of Dick Cheney

  The tragedy of Richard B Cheney (1941-2025), for­mer US vice president and sec­retary of defense who died on November 3, is that he will be remembered less fondly than he would have wanted his Republican Party to and with more of a grudging acknowl­edgement than he would have expected from Democrats. Once America’s biggest war hawk, Dick Cheney had lent his voice to the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ (and his daughter Liz).But he was never forgiven for two things: the war on terror with its excesses and for paving the way for Trump by expanding the unitary execu­tive authority of the president.

It’s now forgotten, for example, that the Surge that brought the disastrous 2003 Iraq invasion under control was Cheney’s doing. Mentored by Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney was an old-school free-market con­servative who had presided over victory in the First Gulf War, to be dogged by scandal in the second when he was ac­cused of favouring his former employer Halliburton with oil contracts—or when he acci­dentally shot a hunting mate. And yet, he defended same-sex marriage because his youngest daughter Mary was a lesbian. At 34, he was such a shrewd campaign strategist that a beleaguered Gerald Ford almost defeated Jimmy Carter in 1976.

 To Bust or Not to Bust

  Donald Trump’s quandary: on the one hand, he asked Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster to end the longest government shutdown in US history. On the other, he didn’t want to lose his support among GOP Senators who had stood by him during the impeachment process in his last term. Busting the filibuster would end the crisis and resultant voter woes which Trump blamed for GOP losses on November 4—as would a compromise Democrats have new energy to demand but is anathema to the president. But the Republican reluctance stems from genuine fears of what a future Democratic Senate majority would do.