The midterm elections on November 6th, 2018 are firmly placed at the halfway point of President Donald Trump’s term in office. In two years, Trump has worked hard to undermine our democratic principles, institutions and place in the world order while succeeding in his efforts to turn us against one another. All this, as he bathes in the light of a man obsessed with power. The president has become the antithesis of what the term “leader of the free world” was meant to describe.
This congressional election season has carried with it an intensity that has alternated between suffocating and invigorating in direct correlation to the extraordinary anger, bullying and fear mongering emanating from Trump. I use the word extraordinary rather than what’s become the go-to word for most things describing Trump, unprecedented, because extraordinary has to be repeated. And repeated again to remind us how far off course our current president has driven us.
Republicans now controlling the Senate and House of Representatives will go down in history as having served as Trump’s enablers. There has been no check and balance or overall concern for the greater good. Instead we have been met with arrogance and self-righteousness. Their votes have been turned into weapons of partisan negativity while their voices have gone silent when President Trump speaks words of hatred, bigotry and untruth. Their actions and silence cannot be rewarded.
The respected statistics and analysis site, FiveThirtyEight, has created a section entitled, “Tracking Congress In The Age Of Trump.” This site enables you see the actual percentages of how often every member of Congress has voted with President Trump. Look up Senators and Congressmen and women to see the reality in numbers for yourself before you vote.
This midterm election is one of the most important in a long time. It’s the only opportunity we have to curb Trump’s abuses of power and change the direction our country is headed for two more years. Every day the stakes grow higher and the imperative to vote Democratic becomes greater. We have a president who knows no shame. He leaves the shame for us to live with every day as do too many members of Congress. It’s time to clean house.