[Skybird]

Die Zeit draws a preliminary conclusion and comments:
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Not every decision has been made, not all votes have been counted, and the "red tsunami" is probably no more than a gentle wave. But the success of J. D. Vance and many other extreme Republican candidates, regardless of the final outcome of these midterms, shows that the political foundation of the United States has shifted permanently.

Both parties had one central message during the election campaign: it was about saving America. But not both political camps want to save democracy anymore. Many Republicans see it at best as a decorative label, but otherwise they don't care about what constitutes a functioning democracy: accepting election results, for example. And some of those who think so are now entering Congress.

Even before the election, citizens expressed great concern about the state of democracy in polls. Four years of Donald Trump's presidency and a violent mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have left their mark on the country. There has been much debate about the resilience of American democracy since then. For Republicans, it obviously wasn't electorally decisive. It's not the attack on a Democratic institution that worries them, but an encroaching leftist government, the alleged Deep State.

Senate-elected Trump supporter J.D. Vance and others may not seem scary and radical at first impression, like radical right-wing conspiracy supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene - who defended her House seat - but they are no less nefarious. They just sell their nefariousness to their supporters as exactly what their America needs to be saved. Ron DeSantis, who was re-elected governor of Florida by a wide margin, shows how it's done. He talks about the dangers of a radical left, the crisis at the border, elections in jeopardy, woker indoctrination in schools, fake news media, and at the same time how he wants to help hard working people in the U.S. regain an American dream. They are buzzwords heard across the country.

For Democrats, however, saving their America means saving democracy. Only how to save a democracy from demise when their own supporters hear the message but don't act on it? In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump drew as a bogeyman. In recent weeks, Joe Biden and his party have also warned. And in doing so, perhaps prevented the worst, given only the current state of the results. But it has not been enough to trigger a "Democratic wave."

American politics has become exhausting, frustrating, an eternal struggle. It can be tempting to retreat into one's own daily routine, to hope that everything will work out, just as it did with Biden. That a Democrat will be president again and that the damage will be contained. Only, it's not really going well anymore.

Trump is about to run for president again. That would consolidate his power over the Republican Party. And the danger is real that the democratic institutions will no longer be able to withstand this right-wing movement because, at worst, the extreme would no longer sit in the White House. The extremists are now in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in important offices in the states. They may not yet have a majority, but they often have control of the committees and offices they oppose. And thus have a larger and more influential platform from which to spread their misinformation, further increasing citizens' distrust of these same democratic institutions.

It is then only a small step to simply strip away the ornamental label of democracy, because even their own voters no longer need it. And then armed insurgents in front of the Capitol and violent lone wolves attacking political opponents could also be seen quite openly as a logical continuation of this salvation. Not all conservatives in the United States want to go down that road. It's just that moderates are increasingly losing their place in the Republican Party.


Of course, the U.S. is not lost yet. The other voices are still there. They have been heard in many races this midterms. But to save American democracy, the answer can no longer be simply to return to something that has been lost in recent years. What the Founding Fathers once envisioned no longer works for the United States today. The political system must change fundamentally to preserve democratic processes. For example, via a federal law that protects voter rights. Or via term limits on Supreme Court judgeships to make the court more independent again. But that will require clear, bipartisan majorities that the country hasn't seen in years.

The anxious question about the stability of U.S. democracy has long ceased to be a theoretical one; it is more pressing than ever. And no one should be reassured by images of a Democratic president in the White House, a possible Democratic majority in the Senate, or one or two extreme candidates who didn't make it this time. There can be no peace after these elections.
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