The Democrats performed hara-kiri on themselves by electing as NYC Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a candidate who could make the Democrats unelectable in much of the US. What could preserve the Democratic Party would be the continuation as President of the US by Donald Trump.
In Frame: U.S. President Donald Trump (Image: CNN)
New Delhi: What would you call the leader of a country who has no compunction in giving a trillion dollars of tax breaks for the very rich, while denying a few billions for better healthcare for the economically disadvantaged? What would you call an individual who claims prices have fallen, while the cost to the buyer of almost the whole of the items sold in a grocery store has increased manifold? What would you call an individual who promised to wind up existing wars by exiting, but who opens new wars, such as with Venezuela?
What would you call an individual who claims jobs have gone up, when, actually, new jobs are getting scarcer and scarcer and joblessness is reaching the levels reached during a financial crash?
Why, President Donald J. Trump of the United States, of course. He had carried a substantial chunk of the votes of ethnic Indian Americans, ethnic African Americans, Latinos and the poor among the white population because of such promises, but much of this vote has been lost since the past six months. Mayhem in the stock market and mayhem in the streets have become commonplace, although the President of the US seems not to have noticed, but to claim the opposite.
And indeed, the level of luxury of the Mar-a-Lago resort and his suite of floors in the Trump Tower in New York has indeed gone up. After the wiping out of Republican candidates in the just concluded bypolls, the party leadership has become aware of a similar fate in the 2026 national midterms.
Hence the reason why even so ardent a Trump loyalist as House of Representatives Speaker, Mike Johnson, joined hands with the strong-willed Republican Senate leader, John Thune, to oppose an ending of the filibuster in the US Senate.
If the Republicans were to end the “filibuster” of a 60-seat threshold in the Senate and replace it with a 51-seat majority, they may find themselves at the mercy of the Democratic Party, which presently is on course to get a comfortable majority in both Houses of the US Congress during the national midterms in 2026.
As for the Trump Cabinet of the seniormost officials in the US Government, individually they are subjected to perhaps unintentional pinpricks by the US President.
An example is the brilliant Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who had to stand by as Trump ordered the unlocking of the files of a New York mobster whom he suspected of being close to then President John F. Kennedy.
Of course, RFK Jr has the private satisfaction of knowing that his father, Robert F. Kennedy was not in any way close to the mafia. On the contrary, he waged a relentless battle against them, which is why he was shot and killed in June 1968 when he was poised to wrest the Democratic Party nomination from President Lyndon B. Johnson, who thereupon went on to win the Presidency.
Indeed, by sheer coincidence, LBJ took over as President when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and in 1968, when the slain RFK cleared the way for his getting nominated for the US Presidency. LBJ went on to become a transformational President, getting the Civil Rights Act passed, which ensured an equal footing with whites a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by the US Congress, a law that was passed because of the vision of Abraham Lincoln for a US where for white or black there was equal treatment under the law.
The killing of Lincoln ushered in a slew of US Presidents who sabotaged the work of Lincoln and kept Segregation in practice despite the change in legislation passed under the prodding of President Lincoln. His Vice-President was a closet segregationist, Andrew Jackson, who approved several subterfuges to subvert the intent of Lincoln.
At that time before his assassination, it was the Republicans (to whom Lincoln belonged) who favoured equality of races and the Democrats who opposed it. The roles have since been reversed, with the Democrats being more liberal than the Republicans.
The Civil Rights Act of 1965 caused (in the private words of LBJ) a loss of the South to the Republicans for a generation, and so it happened.
In some locations such as New York, the Democrats again performed hara-kiri on themselves, by electing as Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a candidate whose candidacy could make the Democrats unelectable in much of the country.
What could preserve the Democratic Party would be the continuation as President of the US by Donald Trump, which is why the groundswell of voices within Republicans themselves against the US President is increasing, well before the midterms.
America cannot be made great again by racist and anti-Semitic voices like that of Tucker Carlson, but by those who embrace the policies of President Lincoln.
House Speaker Johnson had earlier championed even policies he knew were vote losers, such as steep cuts in healthcare subsidies, the issue on which the present US Government shutdown was triggered.
The handful of Senate Democrats who have cast their vote with the Republicans against reinstating healthcare cuts are on track to lose to Democrat primary challengers before the midterms.
Under President Trump, it has become permissible for Republican-backing celebrities to allow even anti-Jewish influencers on their platforms. Such voices are becoming more numerous and shriller, despite Trump having a Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Racism and anti-Semitism have no place in a democracy, which is why the US is shedding friends and allies across the world on a rising scale. Fortunately, institutions such as the US Supreme Court have begun pushing back against some of the actions of President Trump, including his indiscriminate levying of tariffs, mostly on friends rather than foes of the US, with India being an example.
Whether in India or the US, the two most populous democracies on the planet, voters have begun pushing back against graft and bad administration.
And when President Trump pushed India under the bus and coddled the military dictator of Pakistan, Asim Munir, he faced protests at such a switch and not just from Indian Americans but from other segments of US society.
The recent poll results have given a warning bell to Republicans to untangle themselves from the more toxic, vote-losing policies of President Trump. They seek a return to clean politics, mopping up of hate brigades, and to parties promising and delivering on better healthcare, housing, education and the environment.
President Trump had better keep ready a “catch all sins” pardon on his desk for signature when the Republican Party finally acts to rescue itself from the knocks that voters are giving it as a consequence of several of the policies of President Trump.
For seeing the fate of Gerald R. Ford, who as Vice-President became the US President when Nixon resigned and who pardoned Nixon thereby sealing his defeat in the US Presidential sweepstakes, it is unlikely that the Vice-President who succeeds Trump prematurely will repeat the error of Ford and pardon Trump once he takes over the Presidency of the US.
