U.S. MIDTERMS — GLOBAL CONSEQUENCES POLITICO predicts Republicans will flip 15 or more House of Representatives seats to take control from Democrats. The Senate remains a toss-up. The election will not end Tuesday: Vote counting may take days in some races, while others will head to run-off votes in December. Five races that will tell you the national election trend Other potential global impacts: New faces: Kevin McCarthy replacing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House would be the biggest change. His two Republican predecessors were forced into early retirement by their rowdy caucuses, which were easier to control than the next batch of Republicans is likely to be. Don't get too comfortable, Kevin! America First: Democratic countries see an underlying trend — a shift toward protectionist policies, whether through anti-China sentiment, climate activism or Trump string-pulling. More from Suzanne Lynch on how the election is playing Europe . Ukraine and climate on the ballot: Europe's big countries have left the majority of Ukraine military assistance to Washington to fund (while preparing to fund Ukrainian reconstruction themselves). If Republicans limit Ukrainian military assistance, as McCarthy has suggested, that choice may leave the EU with no choice but to get more serious about funding Ukraine's war effort and the bloc's wider "strategic autonomy" (previous drivers of this kind of EU action: Brexit, the rise of China and Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate). Washington's perennial debt ceiling drama (the U.S. Government will hit the limit again in the first half of 2023) has the potential to disrupt the global economy. But this time it might come with a welcome side-effect for U.S. trading partners: driving down the U.S. dollar . Where's Trump? He's moving toward declaring a 2024 presidential run — even coming up with new insulting labels for rivals, such as Ron DeSanctimonious for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. (Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is out of the running ). Given Trump motivates Democrats to turn out to vote, declaring his candidacy may be a problem for any Republican candidates forced into a run-off vote, such as Herschel Walker, the GOP Senate candidate in Georgia. MIDTERMS REALITY CHECKS Other facts to bear in mind as you spend Tuesday night or Wednesday morning digesting the vote tallies: — The incumbent president's party has lost seats in 36 of the 39 midterm elections since the Civil War in the 1860s. — U.S. inflation is running at around 8 percent . Americans don't, in general, perceive this as being part of a global trend, one that's hitting other leading economies — including the U.K. — worse. Biden pays the price. — Each party has problems. There are many extremist Republican candidates (often dabbling in election results denial and sometimes in conspiracy ). If Democrats avoid those tendencies, they frequently navel gaze and dismiss the fears of non-Democrats (whether on crime or immigration or spending), helping to feed the superiority complex that fuels Republican voter enthusiasm. Breakout star — "Real freedom": The breakout Democratic star of this election may be Pennsylvania governor candidate Josh Shapiro. Republicans act like they own the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Leading Republicans want to punish the chamber's CEO Suzanne Clark. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said on an Arizona radio show last month, "We're trying to try to get them to come back to their roots." FRANCE — LE PEN HANDS OVER REIGNS OF FRENCH FAR-RIGHT: Jordan Bardella , the child of a single mother and raised in public housing projects on the outskirts of Paris is, at just 27, is now the heir to the Le Pen far-right throne in France. He's a member of the European Parliament and he took over the National Rally party leadership from his mentor Marine Le Pen over the weekend. RUSSIA CORNER U.S. ASKS UKRAINE TO SHOW IT'S OPEN TO NEGOTIATING WITH MOSCOW: "The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table ," The Washington Post reported," but a "calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come." Reality check: It's an easy thing for U.S. officials to ask, and seems reasonable at some levels. But what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot? Did the U.S. make a calculated attempt to show it was open to negotiate with Al-Qaeda after 9/11? WHO DOES JAKE SULLIVAN CALL WHEN HE WANTS TO CALL MOSCOW? President Biden's top national security adviser Jake Sullivan has been in contact with Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to Putin, in addition to Sullivan's direct counterpart Nikolai Patrushev, the Wall Street Journal reported . XI WARNS PUTIN NOT TO USE NUKES: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz can claim a positive takeaway from his trip to Beijing last Friday. Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, reported that Xi Jinping warned Russia not to use or even threaten to use nuclear weapons, calling on the global community to "reject the threat of nuclear weapons" and advocating against a "crisis on the Eurasian Continent." My colleague Stuart Lau has more . Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for a quick end to the war during a press briefing with Scholz. "Both of us hope very much that this crisis ends soon. We cannot afford any further escalation of this crisis, and we very much hope that we can move the parties involved to peace talks," Li said. THE RUSSIAN GAS HABIT EUROPE CAN'T QUIT: European leaders have boasted about cutting their reliance on Russian gas since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. While they have slashed pipeline gas purchases, liquefied natural gas imports from Russia are up 46 percent this year . By the numbers: EU's pipeline gas imports from Russia: Halved from 105.7 billion cubic meters in the first nine months of last year to 54.2 bcm in the same period this year LNG: 16.5 bcm up from 11.3 bcm over the same period TECH — REAL WORLD LAYOFFS AT META: The first mass layoffs in Meta's 18-year history are expected to start on Wednesday. CLIMATE CORNER THE INTENSE RHETORIC IS WELL UNDERWAY AT COP27: "Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish," said U.N. Secretary General António Guterres. "It is either a climate solidarity pact, or a collective suicide pact." If that wasn't clear enough, how about: " We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator." Reality check: Whatever the rhetoric, Global Insider lays our here why COP27 isn't going to get the planet on track . Here's all the news you can use from Egypt: Hot tip — don't download the official COP app: A slew of NGOs are warning it contains spyware. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the software "a cartoon super-villain of an app" and urged users to note the number of permissions the app asks for. The general rule of thumb: the more permissions a user grants, the more data the app maker is getting out of your phone. What's coming down the climate pipeline this week in Egypt? On Tuesday, former Canadian environment minister Catherine McKenna will deliver a U.N. report on greenwashing. U.N. Secretary General Guterres is likely to follow the announcement by publishing new standards for judging companies' green credentials. Watch for: A rainforest nations alliance led by Brazil "Loss and damage" officially on the agenda : But only after a 40-hour fight among government negotiators. CLIMATE BRAIN FOOD Populists vs. the planet: How climate became the new culture war front line The new West message on climate: Make China Pay 5 tensions that could derail the conference The COP27 LEADERS SPEAKING LIST: National leaders will speak starting Monday afternoon local time. See from page 13 at this link . New additions to the list include Italy's Giorgia Meloni. Activists are tipping Kenya's new President William Ruto to make one of the most significant speeches, with a push for African governments to embrace clean energy. Here's a guide to what's going on in national pavilions . h/t Felix Dodds
| 
Comments
Post a Comment