Mid-term jitters
At 11.00pm Eastern Australian Summer Time, the polls will open in the eastern states of the USA for what may be the most significant mid-term elections in decades. As a general rule, outside America only political junkies and American expats would take any notice of mid-term elections. Most of the world may not even have heard of mid-term elections and judging from the fact that the average voter turnout for mid-terms is less than 50%, it’s a fair bet that a lot of Americans don’t know about them either. This year, however, it’s different. This year the world waits with bated breath to see whether Americans will hand control of their legislative chambers to the opposition in a bid to curb presidential excesses. The governing Republican party, which holds both the Congress and the Senate, has effectively operated as a rubber stamp for Trump's decisions, regardless of how ill-advised, expensive or downright dangerous. The second Trump administration has...