Washington is bracing for a new era of divided government likely to bring governing showdowns, shutdowns, withering political investigations, and the opening shots of the 2024 presidential race. How American democracy will be shaped in 2023?
Here’s what we think will shape the year:
- A House Republican majority, in which radical conservatives now have disproportionate influence, will try to throttle Biden’s presidency and ruin his reelection hopes. By driving McCarthy’s speakership bid to the brink, pro-Trump conservatives have already shown they will not be stopped. Governing could therefore be impossible and a likely standoff with the White House over raising the US borrowing limit later this year could turn into an economy-wrecking disaster.
- Spare a thought for Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose decision on whether to charge Trump with a crime is one of the most fateful in modern politics. Trying the ex-President would tear open old political wounds and would further damage legal and governing institutions politicized by Trump. Yet a failure to prosecute could set a precedent that hands ex-presidents impunity and fractures the principle that everyone is equal before the law. How American democracy will be shaped in 2023?
- Like it or not, Trump has pitched America into the next presidential campaign. But his limp launch, bleating over his 2020 election loss and the poor track record of his hand-picked election-denying candidates in the midterms diminished his aura. Potential alternative Republican figureheads for populist, nationalist culture war politics, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are emerging. Biden meanwhile may give Americans a new piece of history in a reelection campaign from a president who is over 80. His strongest card is that he’s already beaten Trump once. But that might not help him against a younger challenger like DeSantis.
- Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed how global events can redefine an American presidency. But as the war grinds on, Biden’s capacity to stop it from spilling into a disastrous Russia-NATO clash will be constantly tested. He has his hands full: An encounter between a Chinese jet and US military jet over the South China Sea over the holiday hints at how tensions could boil over there. And nuclear crises are building with Iran and North Korea.
- In 2022, 40-year-high inflation and tumbling stock markets coincided with historically low unemployment rates in an odd economic mix. The key question for 2023 will be whether the Federal Reserve’s harsh interest rate medicine – designed to bring down the cost of living – can bring about a soft landing without triggering a recession.
