The mid-term elections: a broad coalition against Trump and a conversation from 1975 that helps explain today’s vote

In the twentieth century, there were no so-called ‘social media’. You could encounter the world in a train compartment. There is a conversation that springs to mind every time we discuss elections – whether they are forthcoming or have just taken place; significant shifts in the vote; arithmetic, voting patterns and coalitions. It is therefore no surprise that it came to mind in the run-up to elections such as the US mid-term elections and those in Israel. It was 1975. Yes, half a century ago. On the eve of the local elections and a sort of mid-term in the regional elections.

I was on my way back to Milan from a trip that had taken me to various towns in the Po Valley. I had tried to emulate a great example: Giorgio Bocca’s provincial itineraries. My assignment for l’Unità allowed me to rely on the secretaries of the local federations, individuals who knew their terrain and had their finger on the pulse of their towns. As an example, in Modena I requested permission to interview the elderly Enzo Ferrari, and a single phone call from the secretary sufficed to open the gates of Maranello. The Communists had a reputation for being serious people, and they were taken seriously. I had gathered a vast amount of material; I’d researched the political and social scene, the traditions, and even the cuisine of each of the towns. But nothing had been as revealing as that chance conversation on the train.

I had simply been listening. I had taken care not to intervene. There had been no need for me to ask any questions. The topic came up naturally. Just like in the pub the day after the matches. One man announced that he would be voting for the PCI because ‘there’s too much crime about’, and ‘in Russia they deal with criminals properly: they either eliminate them or send them to work in Siberia’. He was clearly invoking Stalin, even before Brezhnev. No other security decree would have satisfied him. Another complained about the high cost of living, stagnant wages and high rents. It was all the fault of the ‘thieving’ politicians in Rome, whom he punished by voting for the PCI. It is likely that a few years later he began voting for the Lega. One voted for the PCI because they were ‘on the workers’ side’. Another voted for the PCI because his father had been in the Resistance; democracy had to be defended against the fascists. Yet another voted for the PCI because they were “honest and knew how to govern well”. Frankly, I do not recall anyone saying they voted Communist “because Berlinguer was a good person and Andreotti wasn’t”. Giorgio Gaber’s song (“Qualcuno era comunista”) came much later, almost twenty years on.

In 1975, the shift in votes had been remarkable for a system characterised by a high degree of electoral loyalty, where victory or defeat had for years been decided by just a few percentage points either way. The mass entry of young people into the electorate had played a significant role; the voting age had only just been lowered to 18. There was the impact of 1968. The referendum on divorce had only just taken place. In short, a wind of change was blowing. All towards the left. And the PCI had managed to capitalise on it. In Emilia, it reached almost 50 per cent. But on a national scale, the percentage remained just over 30 per cent. In the general election the following year, it fared even better. But one in three votes does not constitute a majority. In many towns, joint PCI–PSI councils were formed. But the national government remained in the hands of the PSI and the DC. The PCI, still a large and cumbersome force, was excluded. It would remain so for a long time.

Something of the sort happened in the US mid-term elections. We witnessed some remarkable events. Abdul El-Sayed, the first Muslim senator in US history, managed to secure a resounding victory in Michigan despite Trump having labelled him a ‘jihadist’ and his opponents having branded him an ‘anti-Semite’. He was not deterred by the fact that he had advocated a wealth tax on billionaires, universal healthcare (i.e. healthcare that would probably be slightly worse for everyone, which is the great spectre haunting the entire West), and had proposed the dismantling of ICE, the anti-migrant police force. “Money out of politics, money into your pockets” was his favourite slogan. These are all issues that in the past had characterised and accompanied electoral waves of support for the right.

Many of the winners in this US election openly described themselves as ‘socialists’. In Trump’s parlance, this translates as ‘communists, left-wing radicals’. Darializa Avila Chevalier, the newly elected Member of Congress for New York, once even advocated the abolition of the police, prisons and borders, as well as the nationalisation of the means of production. It had been almost 40 years since Texas – a state as staunchly conservative as California (or New York) is considered to be progressive – had elected a Democratic senator. Agricultural Kansas had not elected one since 1932, that is, since farmers too had joined the sweeping wave of support for the Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, feeling betrayed by Herbert Hoover, for whom they had also voted en masse in the previous election. Back then, they were furious about the drought and the collapse of farm prices. This time, it’s because of high diesel prices and because fertilisers are stuck in the Strait of Hormuz. Mississippi has elected its first Black senator since 1874.

At least 17 new governors are women. In New Mexico, a Native American woman has been elected. In Georgia – the slave-holding state that once sparked the Civil War – the governor, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State are all women, all of whom are Black. In Colorado, Admiral Eileen Laubacher – one of the women sacked by Defence Secretary Hegseth – defeated the fiery ‘Maga’ advocate Laureen Boebert.

One could go on. Quite rightly, media attention is focused on the most striking cases – on the victory of those whom common sense would have said ‘never again’. But it would be misleading to assume that America has suddenly shifted to the left, or indeed towards the far left. The vast majority of elected Democrats are moderates. And often moderates who have distinguished themselves by extending a hand of understanding towards their opponents’ positions and motivations. A prime example is Roy Cooper, the first Democrat to be elected senator for North Carolina’s tobacco-growing district (‘the land of nicotine’) in the last 18 years. He has always stood out for his willingness to engage in dialogue and extend a hand to Republicans. “OK, I’m not a socialist, and I’m not a right-wing Republican either. But I’m ready to work with anyone who wants to help bring down the cost of living” – this was his mantra at rallies.

There is a time for everything, says Ecclesiastes. There are times when the winner is the one who best tears down – or rather, best demonises – their opponent. Other times, it is the one who extends a hand to their opponents who prevails. Has such a moment arrived in America too? The moment of pluralism? Of course, voting against someone, rather than for someone, is always an important factor in mobilising the electorate. Even more so than ‘holding one’s nose’ and voting for the lesser of two evils. Trump has proved to be a millstone around his own party’s neck. Many Republican candidates have done their utmost to avoid being seen alongside their president. His approval ratings are at an all-time low. It matters little that there isn’t much enthusiasm for the Democrats either. What counts more is that voters are clear about who they do not want.

Trump is the president who has made the least effort to be a president for all. He has always declared himself and acted as the president of one side – indeed, of the extremists on that side. Now he must resign himself, willy-nilly, to the idea that a minority (even the all-powerful President of the United States always represents a minority) cannot expect to call the shots on everything. The American system does not provide for different parties to form coalitions. Voters are registered as belonging to one or the other of the two major parties. It is up to the individual to make the choice, whether voting for the presidency, for Congress, for governors, for judges, police chiefs, county sheriffs, and so on. The primaries decide who stands as a candidate. But the problem of forming a coalition – a ‘historical bloc’, if you will – of bringing together a diverse range of forces, ideas, traditions, beliefs and interests certainly exists. The support of just one group is not enough. The right mix is needed.

Just as in that 1975 in the Po Valley that comes to mind, the decisive factor – the one that overshadows everything else – is the convergence of a multitude of different rivulets into a single floodwave. To the point of forming a sort of ‘vast field’. Contrary to all those who say ‘no, not you’. Anglo-Saxon political jargon has specific terms for this phenomenon. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a ‘big-tent party’ or a ‘catch-all party’ is ‘a political party whose members cover a broad spectrum of different beliefs and opinions’.

No ideological bias, no entrenched political rivalries can hold sway when the tide turns. The big news is that, it seems, this time round voters have punished animosity and aggression for being ‘biased’. Instead, they have rewarded the desire for dialogue. Trump’s campaign, once again, was characterised by an ‘us versus them’ mentality. By branding opponents as enemies and traitors. By calling them extremists, communists, anti-Americans and ‘woke’. A bit like how, in Israel, Netanyahu labelled all his critics – including those with whom he would now like to form a government of national unity – as anti-Semites or ‘useful idiots’ of Hamas.

The overwhelming response pointed in one clear direction. Americans voted en masse against the Republicans, Trump’s party, and in favour of the Democrats, the party opposed to Trump. There is no disputing this. Not even Trump is disputing it this time. The wind of change is blowing strong. But these were not presidential elections. Voters were casting their ballots, as is customary halfway through a presidential term (mid-term, in fact), to re-elect the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. Trump says that if he had been on the ballot, his supporters would have won. The claim is not convincing, and it does not persuade even his own supporters. He insists that someone must have rigged the results. “How can anyone say it was all above board? With a result so far off the polls?”, he blurted out, despite having conceded defeat (unlike in 2020, when he lost to Biden). Such claims are no laughing matter, as they risk pushing the country toward a dangerous period of civil strife.

The health of a democracy can also be gauged by whether those who lose step aside without making too much of a fuss. This has even happened in Orbán’s Hungary and in Vucic’s Serbia, where he was swept from power by the elections following a student uprising. Stirring up Serbian nationalism by organising a state funeral for the war criminal Mladić did him no good. In the United States, Al Gore against Bush Jr. and Hillary Clinton against Trump had immediately conceded defeat, even though (due to a somewhat peculiar electoral system) they had received millions more votes than their opponents. In Italy, back in the day, Berlusconi had proved the grim predictions of the ending of Nanni Moretti’s film Il Caimano wrong. There were no street protests against his conviction. There was no futile attempt to keep his government afloat.

Trump willingly accepts only election results that suit him. And only rulings by judges, or by the Supreme Court, that find in his favour. True, he is not obliged to step down. These were not presidential elections. He has already shown, by inciting the storming of the Capitol in 2021, that he is not prepared to leave peacefully even if he loses. And in the event of impeachment – for which the Democrats would now have the necessary majority?

Ties, majorities by a single vote or just a few percentage points are not conducive to democracy. It can be risky. But it doesn’t work either if you change the rules of the game to make it seem as though there was no tie, that one of the two sides won by a landslide. Trump and his Republicans were counting heavily on redistricting – the manipulation of constituency boundaries. But the much-debated gerrymandering (a political slang term derived from Elbridge Gerry, the 19th-century governor of Massachusetts who invented the scheme, and from ‘salamander’, the shape produced by stretching, narrowing and shortening constituency boundaries as it suits) was to no avail.

Trump said he was surprised, and he is correct. Polls had suggested a difficult outlook for the Republicans, but not to this extent. The President did not anticipate such a result, nor did the winners. The Democrats do not yet have a manifesto. They do not yet have even the shadow of a leader. The Democratic Party has more aspiring leadership candidates than the ‘broad coalition’ here does. This will become apparent in the primaries for the next presidential election. The interesting thing is that there is no single explanation for how it all turned out. On closer inspection, the result points to a staggering variety of reasons why voters cast their ballots as they did.

Yes, of course, the doubling of petrol prices, inflation, the cost of living (for Trump, all just a matter of ineffective public relations). The perception that the tariffs have proven to be a complete failure. That the promised golden age was nothing but a fairy tale. A misguided war and, above all, a war (whatever anyone may say) that has been lost. The United States humiliated, diminished rather than ‘great again’. Petty squabbles and political – often personal – vendettas. An administration that favours the powerful and enriches the rich even further (starting, moreover, with the President, his family and friends), indeed taking it out on the weakest. It does not even leave them the crumbs; it does not produce the ‘trickle-down’ effect – the cascading impact of growth and enrichment, as remembered from the Reagan era.

Yes, all of that. But no single factor is sufficient to explain the uniformity of the election result, the scale of the defeat and rout suffered by one side, and the victory for the other. All this discontent could still have been directed against the Democrats, against the arrogance and high-handedness, the self-satisfaction of the hated elites, taking on once again the characteristics of a populist rebellion (whether left-wing or right-wing populism). What is most extraordinary, however, is the way in which a single current has carried and blended different, sometimes contradictory, orientations and components.