US Politics

Marion McKeone: Tribalism trumps all else in US politics

With just over a week to go, none of the traditional mid-term metrics are adding up, but there is a glint of good news for Democrats in the plummeting support on both sides for near-total bans on abortion

Donald Trump, the former US president at a campaign rally for Republican mid-term election candidates in Minden, Nevada: for Democrats, Trump’s omnipresence in these elections is a blessing and a curse. Picture: Getty

Illegal gun-for-cash raffles, Republican royalty campaigning for Democrats, a former Republican governor running as a Democratic challenger, an avid pro-lifer caught up in multiple abortion scandals – welcome to the 2022 US mid-term elections

It’s a universally held truth that mid-terms are a referendum on the occupant of the White House. But that truth presupposes that the previous president has taken himself off the political stage and on to the lucrative after-dinner speaking circuit.

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