The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

FOR months, headlines have screamed out warnings that the future of American democracy was at stake in Tuesday’s elections.

Election deniers, hardcore Trumpers and actual participants in the January 6 assault on the US capitol were all on ballots around the country.

Conservative commentators on Fox News and elsewhere steadfastly stuck to issues like inflation to help Republican candidates, while more liberal talkers represented the election as a potential existential crisis.

The results promise more competing hyperbole, controversy and general divisiveness.

After record-setting sums of money were spent on political advertising, especially since the informal start of serious campaigning in early September, voters across the country were certainly on alert but curiously at the same time enervated. “This whole process has been simply exhausting,” one woman told a TV reporter.

35 seats in the US Senate were up for grabs and this year, Democrats were supposedly in an advantageous position because they were defending fewer of those 35 seats.

Also on Tuesday’s ballot were 36 governorships, and while the national media normally pays less attention to those races, they could be significant in a few states. The entire House of Representatives was up for election as is the case every two years.

Watching the returns on Tuesday was often less suspenseful than boring and repetitive. Vote tallies ebbed and flowed like momentum in a Sunday NFL game, and many viewers doubtless waited until after 9pm in the East to even bother with watching. After that hour, numerous contests would be in the “fourth quarter” and it would be interesting to see how the votes added up.

Many close races were not called until well after bedtime for most people, and it was tiresome watching network “statistics nerds” fuss around trying to slap a new lead on an evolving and still undecided election story.

Hanging over news coverage was the fateful decision of Fox News’ 2020 election guru to be the first network to call Arizona for -- Joe Biden! The fact that Fox was right and gained some credibility was lost in Trump’s claim that the network had betrayed and abandoned him. That guru was fired two months after the election.

• There are all sorts of doomsday scenarios being floated in case the Republicans eventually retake the House or the Senate or both as the result of Tuesday’s elections.

Mostly, people are talking about inflation, the economy, crime, abortion and immigration. In normal times, and presently, Americans aren’t thinking much about the implications of the election for the nation’s foreign policy.

But some pundits are doing so. And the issue they’re most concerned with is the massive American military assistance programme that increasingly serves as a life line for Ukraine’s military opposition to the brazen invasion of its sovereign territory by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The US has already authorised more than $60 billion in assistance, and another $40 billion is reportedly in the American legislative pipeline. All this while inflation and the overall cost of living are stubbornly rising despite the American central bank’s repeated efforts to rein them in.

New Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance has said publicly that the US should moderate or stop its massive military aid to Ukraine. Other Republicans, and even some progressive Democrats, have voiced concerns.

It’s not clear how House speaker-hopeful Kevin McCarthy really feels about aid to Ukraine. His statements on the record have not been consistent.

And one can guess how Donald Trump feels about the issue. He cannot be feeling warm and fuzzy toward Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who famously rebuffed his military assistance blackmail attempt just three years ago.

Furthermore, a Wall Street Journal poll released on November 3 shows that aid to Ukraine is becoming a much more partisan issue. The survey showed that 30% of Republicans now believe the US is doing too much, up from just 6% in March immediately following Russia’s invasion in February.

Nevertheless, according to the BBC, citing Reuters polling, there is still a large portion of Americans in favour of continued assistance to Ukraine: 73% earlier this month.

But there is a growing sense that this sentiment is fragile, and the combination of greater GOP control over the budgetary aspects of American foreign policy and stubborn inflation could rapidly erode such support.

A topic that is heating up in policy circles concerns the American position on a possible negotiated settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war. Most observers feel that Russia will only want to deal with the US in any such negotiations. Biden spoke out on this earlier in the summer.

“Nothing about Ukraine happens without Ukraine,” Biden said then. “It’s their territory and I’m not going to tell them what they should and shouldn’t do.” But Biden has nonetheless often appeared to be resigned to the inevitability of some kind of negotiated settlement.

In response, establishment US foreign policy figures like president of the American Council of Foreign Relations Richard Haass are speaking out. “One of the values at stake (in this war) is that territory is not to be acquired through the use of force. For those urging the US to push for a deal, the burden is on them to show how the US could do so consistent with that value.”

Overall, several policy considerations, in addition to potential election results, are nudging the Americans toward more formal discussions about how to bring an end to this conflict. Positions that seem immutable now can and likely will change by the end of this year. The Ukrainians had better do everything they can to maintain their current battlefield momentum and recapture as much of their lost territory as possible before January. Realistically, there can be no guarantees that American assistance will continue at current levels much past that time.

AS PREMIER LEAGUE HITS PAUSE, THE STORY SO FAR

THE world’s most celebrated and most powerful national soccer league – the English Premier League -- will have completed about one third of its 2022-2023 season when its twenty teams pause for a seven-week mid-season break starting on Sunday to accommodate the quadrennial World Cup, being played at the home of the highest bidder this time along the shores of the Persian Gulf in Qatar. This unprecedented winter schedule is a concession to the unplayable Middle East summer heat. More on the World Cup next week.

In many respects, this EPL campaign is falling within normal expectations, inasmuch as the Big Six teams (Manchester City, Man United, Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Liverpool) all sit within the top eight positions at this point.

The interlopers are Newcastle, now under new ownership fortified by a lot of oil money from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, and Brighton, an overachiever likely without the squad depth to remain in contention for the title over the course of the season.

The story of this season so far is Arsenal. The Gunners have played 13 games, earning 34 points out of a possible 39. Arsenal have made their best-ever start to a Premier League season: Former long-time manager Arsene Wenger’s undefeated Invincibles in 2003-04 managed only 33 points from their first 13 games, and a win against Wolverhampton next week will confirm Arsenal’s top spot in the standings ahead of the World Cup break.

Lurking just behind the Gunners are Manchester City, widely regarded now as the world’s best soccer team. City has won three of the past four EPL titles, and just added the world’s best young striker over the summer in Earling Haaland, a Norwegian prodigy whose father once played for the Citizens. Most observers think Man City will celebrate another title when the last games are played in May.

There aren’t any other serious title contenders at this point. Liverpool have been in such a funk that there is actually speculation about the future of their brilliant German manager Jurgen Klopp. Also, the American group that owns the Reds – and the Boston Red Sox – have reportedly put the club up for sale. Only the Egyptian wizard Mohammed Salah has played up to par for Liverpool so far, and they have receded into long-shot status as title contenders.

Tottenham, Manchester United, Chelsea and Newcastle are all title pretenders. One or two of them will nevertheless qualify for the lucrative European Champions League next year, but they won’t win the EPL crown this season.