The Tribune

What will the New Year bring for American politics? It’s hard to find two people who will agree on that suddenly existential question, but there is undeniably something stirring among voters in the United States. For a change, they are truly engaged.

The election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 seemed cataclysmic at the time, but close observers of the American political scene had detected decades of growing malaise and disengagement outside the Washington Beltway. A political elite drawn from both parties had been revealed as increasingly corrupt and inattentive to both the national interest and the well being of its citizens and supporters.

Trump’s election punished both major US political parties.

Unlike most of his fellow office holders in so many ways, Trump has proudly and notably stuck to his campaign promises, boasting repeatedly that he is governing for the stubbornly obdurate base that represents his consistent source of support and has impeded any serious Republican attempt to separate from him. Trump’s base, as far as the polls show, also represents around 35 percent of US voters.

Trump’s record so far is objectively mixed, as with most newly elected American presidents. To his credit, the stock market has soared and unemployment has dipped while the inflation rate in the economy has barely nudged upward. In fact, the US Federal Reserve Bank has begun to raise interest rates in the belief that some inflation is necessary to stimulate further economic growth.

Many of the same Americans on both the east and west coasts whose hatred for and vilification of Trump fuels much of the contemporary US political discord have, ironically, seen their stock portfolio values rise by as much as 20 percent and more.

How much credit is due to Trump is uncertain, but it would be shortsighted to suggest that anticipation for the Republican tax bill with its corporate tax cuts was not a factor in the economic surge. Large corporations and banks have been major beneficiaries of the GOP tax cuts, and if they react responsibly, a period of even more sustained growth is possible, even likely.

“It’s the economy, stupid!” has become a reliable bellwether catchphrase in American politics for over a generation. So what’s the problem for Trump and the Republicans?

Well, for one thing, there is his persistently, unabashedly adolescent behaviour. Trump has become a national embarrassment. And his allegiance to nativist, isolationist and protectionist dogma threatens America’s place in the world. The United States, described proudly by Ronald Reagan as the “shining city on the hill”, seems to be on an inexorable slide into the gutter. His seeming disavowal of climate change and free trade has convinced many the US no longer has the will to be a positive force in the world.

Now that 2018 is upon us, Americans across the political spectrum increasingly eye the November elections as a transcendent opportunity.

Democrats and Trump-haters in both parties are beginning to talk publicly of an electoral landslide this year that would overturn Republican majorities in the House and the Senate. The Democrats would need to gain 24 seats to regain control of the House of Representatives and, after their stunning upset win in Alabama last month, only two seats to recapture the Senate. Yet their best chance of a big win lies in the House.

Big swings in the lower house are not uncommon in the first bi-election after the presidency changes political hands. The last time this happened was only eight years ago. Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act were major issues, and the Democrats were routed. The Republicans gained a staggering 63 seats, recapturing control of the House.

In apparent preparation for a Democratic triumph in the House, the party has just installed as its Judiciary Committee ranking minority leader Jerry Nadler, a veteran New York congressman and constitutional law expert who could become the committee chair and Trump’s lead prosecutor in any impeachment proceedings.

The Senate is much tougher for Democrats, both because they are defending far more contested seats and which states are in play. But the Senate is worth watching, because it is there that an impeached (indicted) president could be tried, convicted and forced from office.

One thing is for certain, this will be a year where the rollercoaster ride of American politics driven by the Trump presidency has many twists and turns still to go.