Based on widespread public revulsion, Trump and Republicans should receive what Obama called a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms when Democrats lost scores of seats. However, the question this time is whether the staggering $1.3 billion being spent by Republicans on Senate attack ads on Democrats, plus Elon Musk’s $366 million, will reduce the number of Democratic wins.
Carroll County in the rural state of New Hampshire offers some clues as to the likely outcome on November 3. Named for Charles Carroll, the only Irish Catholic signatory of the US Declaration of Independence, it is a swing county of 50,000 people in a swing state. This time of year, the peak Fall colours are fading, but it is still staggeringly beautiful with its lakes, mountains and forests.
However, the soaring price of gas, heating oil and healthcare is souring the mood for local folks. Those living in rural areas have to drive at least 20 miles round trip to a grocery shop or even to fill the gas tank. The housing stock is older and often poorly insulated, which adds to heating costs during the long winter for those least able to afford them.
Many retirees are attracted to New Hampshire because it has no income or sales tax, but properties are heavily taxed to pay for schools, road maintenance and police. Many services have to be supplemented by volunteers. The state motto of Live Free or Die appeals to their sense of self-reliance
Traditionally, residents of the Granite State have been able to agree on the expenditures at New England-style town meetings where locals gather to vote on property taxes and expenditures. But that tradition is under assault by a combination of Maga extremism and the Free State movement, which 20 years ago targeted New Hampshire as the location of its campaign to destroy state government, including public education and social services.
Many Carroll County citizens like to keep their political options open, reflecting the 36 per cent of eligible New Hampshire voters who register as “undeclared”, a larger percentage than for either political party. Local folks prefer to focus on what we can all do together; when your car goes off the road in a winter storm, neighbours rush to the rescue without concern for your politics. The most popular political sign on the roads here is: “We all do well when we all do well.”
In interviews with nearly 1,000 of these key “undeclared” voters in Carroll County, local Democratic volunteers are finding that for many, the flood of Republican attack ads seem irrelevant and hackneyed. This has been a year when costs are soaring, billionaires are getting richer and the important Canadian tourism fell by 30 per cent because of Trump’s attack on Canada and his punitive tariffs.
People are stressed by the loss of control in their lives. Many are struggling – or care about their neighbours who are – and just want their government to put schools, healthcare, and housing first.
These household interviews also reveal that many will vote for Democrats as a protest against Trump, not necessarily because they love the Democratic Party. Unlike in Ireland with its third-party alternatives, the way to express voter anger is to vote for Democrats or not to vote at all.
Some locals feel that over recent decades the Democratic Party became too woke, focusing on identity issues rather than helping them to get good jobs. As a result, local Democrats frequently emphasise their record of “getting shit done” rather than being in the Democratic Party.
One of those interviewed was a young woman who is just now able to live independently, but her healthcare is not affordable. “Republicans keep telling us to have more children than you can afford and then they eliminate services,” she complained. “There is very limited access for women, health clinics are too far away.”
Another is an 89-year-old woman who has lived in her home for many decades and is very community minded. She is distressed at the lack of civility that is causing a heated division in her town. She believes that “the underfunding of schools and the decline in affordable healthcare are limiting the future for young people.”
These responses have given rise to a “Down Ballot” election strategy by Democrats whereby they publicise the familiar local candidate that the voter knows to motivate him or her to get to the polls. Once there, they hopefully vote up the ticket for Democratic Congressional candidates, a reverse coattails approach.
We will know on the night of 3rd of November whether Big Money or the people have prevailed in the United States. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a progressive Rhode Island Democrat who would be chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee if Democrats win the Senate, was asked recently if we will see a powerful “blue wave” similar to the one that swept him and other Democrats into office in 2006. “The difference this time,” the Senator responded, “is back then we didn’t have creepy billionaires spending over a billion dollars to smear Democrats.”
[ US midterms: how likely is a blue wave?Opens in new window ]
Based on the findings in Carroll County, this election may not so much be a blue wave as a protest wave against the corruption and incompetence of Trump and his supine Republican Party.
If the election does result in Democrats controlling Congress and key States, the Democratic Party has only two years before the next presidential election to demonstrate to angry Americans that it is once again the party of the working people fighting for their interests against the billionaires.
Ted Smyth is president of the advisory board Glucksman Ireland House, NYU.
