The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

It’s definitely starting early this year.

MOST of the time, bi-election years (even-numbered years that fall between American presidential elections) are rather slow-developing. The jabbing, sparring, dirt-on-your-opponent spewing and general uncivil misbehaviour that has come to characterize US politics usually takes a lengthy break after a presidential election year for at least several months before bi-elections.

Maybe that’s because everyone, most of all American voters, has had enough of politics and needs a rest.

From early returns, it looks like the 2022 election cycle in the US has gotten off to an unusually early start. Pundits are still obsessing about a clever, self-funded Republican millionaire’s successful campaign this month for governor in blue-trending Virginia and a closer than expected gubernatorial election in Democratic New Jersey.

But that narrative is moving along now without the usual pause to next year’s Congressional elections. Just about every commentary mentions how the newly-installed party in the White House can get clobbered in the first subsequent bi-election year. Very often, the example cited is 2010.

Then, Barack Obama and the Democrats got an early, unambiguous reminder of just how conservative the US electorate can often be. America’s first black President and his party got whacked.

But it could have actually been much worse. The Democrats somehow managed to retain control of the Senate. How did that happen and could we be heading for a repeat next year? It’s not too early to speculate. Everyone else is.

Obama took office in January 2009 with a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats. But the country’s mood had changed profoundly within a couple of years. In November 2010, the GOP gained an astounding six seats from the Dems while successfully defending every one of their own. That was quite unusual.

The Republican candidates for Senate also got 7.2 million more votes than their Democratic opponents in 2010. That’s three percent, which is a lot in a national American election.

One of the main reasons for the Democrats’ holding on to their majority despite a lot of negative factors favouring their opponents was that 2010 saw perhaps the high point in influence of the Tea Party movement within the Republican party. Much like Trumpers these days, the Tea Partiers were as disdainful of “mainstream, country-club Republicans” as they were of Democrats. There were many primary challenges to more traditional Republican Senate candidates in 2010 –- and in 2012. Some succeeded, and their success in GOP primaries led to Republican candidates getting beaten in that year’s general election.

A couple of examples stand out still. In Delaware – Joe Biden’s deep blue home state – the Tea Party managed to defeat an extraordinarily popular GOP congressman running for his party’s Senate nomination. The Tea Party candidate, Christine O’Donnell, could not escape a past that included an embrace of witchcraft, and was trounced. In Missouri, the Tea Party managed to nominate someone who actually said in public before witnesses that rape was in some circumstances a good thing. That election didn’t go well for the Republicans either, and as a result, a highly vulnerable Democratic incumbent was re-elected.

Now we head into 2022 with Trump supporters exercising an even stronger hold on Republican primary elections than what the Tea Party demonstrated a dozen years earlier. In several states, history looks like it might repeat itself and save the Democratic Senate majority.

No party nominees have yet been chosen, but in Missouri, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Republican front-runners all face personal issues that most voters may find disqualifying.

Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens is running well ahead of his competition at this point. Greitens, 48, compiled an enviable record before his 2016 election as governor, including degrees from Duke and Oxford Universities and a much-decorated period of service overseas as a Navy officer.

Yet his 16-month tenure as Missouri governor was the shortest in the state’s history since 1861. Dogged by charges that he tied up his hairdresser mistress in the basement of his home to compel her silence about their affair, the twice-divorced Greitens was compelled to resign as governor in June 2019. An early and vehement Trump supporter, Greitens declared his candidacy for the Senate less than two years later.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican incumbent senator is not running for re-election. While the Democrats have several attractive potential nominees already in the race, leading the GOP pack is Sean Parnell. This much-decorated Army veteran is also a successful author and lecturer and has been closely and very publicly aligned with Trump for several years. He has recently featured in two nationally-watched congressional races.

Parnell’s gubernatorial prospects took quite a hit this month, however. His estranged wife has accused him in a court custody hearing of choking and otherwise abusing her and their children. Parnell has been in damage-control mode for the past several weeks, but if Trump sticks with him, he could nonetheless capture the GOP nomination for next November.

Then there’s Herschel Walker, the Heisman Trophy running back from the University of Georgia who seems likely to be the GOP nominee for the Senate seat now held by African-American minister Raphael Warnock. Like Greitens and Parnell, Walker has led an apparently largely laudatory life. Aside from his fantastic college football success and subsequent triumphs in the professional ranks, Walker has been identified with successful and meritorious charity work.

Since he played for a Trump-owned team in the now-defunct United States Football League nearly 40 years ago, Walker has been associated with the former President. Trump (and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell) have already endorsed Walker.

But, again like Greitens and Parnell, Walker is burdened with charges involving a woman, in this case his ex-wife who has alleged that he assaulted her and threatened her with a gun.

None of these three has yet won the Republican nomination for the Senate in key swing state elections. All face the possibility of further personal disrepute. But all presently enjoy Trump’s endorsement. Like Tea Party favourites a dozen years ago, that may well be enough to ensure their primary election success next spring.

But as one Republican strategist told reporters, “The great misperception in politics is that these bad publicity things will work themselves out. But often they don’t. And when they don’t, the nominating party can look bad and lose elections it should win.”

The Republicans should know this. But Trump has changed the political calculus so profoundly that the GOP may be unable to save itself from some of his endorsements. That may be the Democrats’ best hope for next year.

Studying in the States

Bahamian families with high hopes for their children have long steered them toward colleges and universities in the US. Some of those American institutions of higher learning have resultant long-standing relationships with high schools and guidance counsellors in The Bahamas that have meant not only significant numbers of Bahamian matriculations at US colleges but also the establishment of a track record of Bahamian student achievement at those schools that greatly facilitates further opportunities there for young Bahamians.

Two relevant items of note have been recently reported.

First, the numbers of students from abroad (including The Bahamas) at US colleges and universities has rebounded from COVID-related factors that caused foreign enrolment to drop by 15 percent last year. In September of this year, data showed about a four percent rise compared with the previous year.

That’s good and reassuring news. Until COVID, foreign student numbers at US colleges and universities had annually surged from 25,000 in 1949 to more than a million 70 years later.

Second, though, predictive analytics via mathematical algorithms is reportedly gaining influence in college admissions in the US. That’s not good news for most Bahamian students, who generally graduate from high schools without a proven track record for reference by American college admissions staff. There just aren’t sufficient numbers of Bahamian graduates at most US colleges for meaningful comparisons. There is no reliable yardstick by which to compare today’s applicant with yesterday’s graduate.

One expert said “predictive analytics tends to encode historic harms into our planning, limiting our sense of possibility.”

This all puts even more pressure on our high school graduates to excel as individuals. It also heightens our sense of gratitude for the established relationships that already exist with some US schools.