The world looked brighter in November as normalcy returned – Andreas Weitzer

Not all is good, far from it. Yet even pessimists have to admit that November brought some rays of hope. The US midterm elections, which replace – in the middle of a presidency – scores of representatives and senators, turned out less dystopian than feared. The Democrats lost the House, but they managed to hold on to the Senate by sheer luck.

This means that as from January 3, 2023, President Joe Biden will have a hard time getting any of his policies approved by law makers. Look closer, and it becomes apparent that democracy in the US is alive and kicking.

Confounding the predictions, voters by and large refrained from partisan party box ticking. They chose candidates according to their perceived merits, for the local policies they stood for, and not because they were Trump-endorsed, or ‘Make America Great Again’ cheerleaders.

Quite to the contrary: voters did not fall for contenders who based their campaign on bigotry and incitement, nor did they put Democrats on the stake for the hardship of inflation. Many female voters rallied against anti-abortion policies.

The electorate pleaded for normalcy. Who would have guessed? A telling example was the Pennsylvania senatorial...