A protest against the price of EpiPens. Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty
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Just suppose for a moment that Donald Trump’s Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections this November. The conventional view of this entirely plausible result: Chaos! Clearouts! U-turns! That’s what happens when presidents’ parties lose midterm elections during their first term in office. It’s not fatal – far from it – but it does require a new start.
Careful students of American politics will have spotted a flaw in this argument: we already have all of these things in the Trump Administration. Even before a single midterm ballot is cast. This is the most fissiparous White House since the British burnt it down. Folks are cleared out, or clear out themselves, almost every day. Policies come and go. Trade wars are declared and suspended with dizzying speed. Walls, once promised, remain unbuilt; infrastructure is unimproved.
I wonder, therefore, whether a Republican loss this November might have the opposite effect on the White House. Faced with a disorganised but noisy opposition from Congress, what if Trump’s response were to focus on being Trump; what if the President were to double down on measures that could truly be described as radical and populist and by doing so bought off significant numbers of otherwise troublesome opponents. In other words, what if the Trump post-midterms White House were to make a proper break with both parties?
There are two big items he could press which might garner support from a wide cross-section of the 116th United States Congress and form the basis of a Trump 2020 re-election bid.
The first – the break-up of Big Tech – is already the subject of much debate among conservative Americans as well as left-wingers upset at what has become of the once-adored tech industry they regarded as their own. From Steve Bannon, the President’s former right-hand man, to Elizabeth Warren, the left-wing Democrats’ darling, the cry goes out: “Break up Facebook! And Google! And the other tech companies whose market dominance feels to so many capitalists like a proper case for anti-trust action.”
Such a move feels like it would be a good fit for Trump – but it would take enormous political acumen and focus. And the Supreme Court would make the ultimate call as they did with Big Oil. So maybe not.
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