Republicans are expressing growing confidence that the party will take back control of the US Senate in crucial midterm elections next week. However Democratic Party leaders on Thursday insisted they could hold the senate and even pick up some seats.
Polls are suggesting that Republicans will win a majority in the House of Representatives in the election.
Several key contests for seats in the Senate are essentially tied, according to polling data. However, Republicans are increasingly optimistic about their prospects in states such as Pennsylvania and Nevada. Republican senator from Iowa Joni Ernst, a member of the party’s leadership, told Politico in the US: “Chances at this moment are very, very strong. I’m just going to say we’re going to get the senate next Tuesday.”
However, the Democrat leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, predicted that while the election would be tight, his party could hold on and even pick up some seats.
Separately, former president Donald Trump has hit out at the leader of his own Republican Party in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, for working with Democrats to lift the debt ceiling for the US government. In a call-in interview with the Real America’s Voice television network. he said: “Mitch McConnell keeps allowing them to have it. I mean, they ought to impeach Mitch McConnell if he allows that. Frankly, Mitch McConnell, something has to be, they have something on him. How he approves this thing is incredible.”
Speaking in New Mexico on Thursday, President Joe Biden promoted his plans to reduce student debts.
Meanwhile former president Barack Obama has supported Mr Biden’s warning about the threat to American democracy posed by candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election. At a rally in Arizona Mr Obama particularly warned about the dangers to democracy in that state. “If you’ve got election-deniers serving as your governor, as your senator, as your secretary of state, as your attorney general, then democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona. That’s not an exaggeration. That is a fact.”
On Wednesday Mr Biden warned in a speech in Washington that the democratic traditions of the United States were under threat. Mr Biden said he wished he could tell the country that the assault on American democracy had ended following the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th last year by supporters of former president Donald Trump in a failed bid to prevent the certification of the presidential election. However, he said he could not do so.
The president said there was an alarming rise in people condoning political violence or just remaining silent.
He tied the January 6th attack on the building to the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi last week.
Mr Biden blamed Mr Trump, without naming him, for the threat to US democracy. “American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election. He refuses to accept the will of the people. He refuses to accept the fact that he lost. He’s abused his power and put the loyalty to himself before loyalty to the constitution.”
