Biden White House cheers ‘red ripple’ as Republicans underperform midterm forecasts

US President Joe Biden, who declared optimism about the midterm elections this week despite opinion polls predicting Republican wins, had reason to feel vindicated on Wednesday even though his Democrats could still lose control of Congress.

Republicans may eke out a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate was still up for grabs with key races in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada undecided.

But that was all part of better-than-expected news for the White House.

Democrats bucked dire forecasts in national races, clinched governors’ races in states seen as crucial to the next election in 2024, and passed left-leaning measures like codifying abortion rights in Michigan.

“Amazing,” said one stunned Biden aide as results trickled in at the White House.

Biden called three dozen Democrats who won their races to congratulate them, including Florida’s Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who at 25 became the first member of “Gen Z” — those born after the mid-1990s — to join Congress. Aides and allies believe Biden’s efforts to cast the election in terms of securing abortion rights, stopping right-wing political extremism and protecting health care staved off a Republican “wave”.

Republicans are likely to have big enough gains to take the House, meaning they could block Biden’s promise to legalise abortion rights nationwide or ban the sale of assault weapons, and launch possibly damaging investigations into his administration and family.

While Republicans cited high inflation and crime as top voting issues, Democrats said they were more motivated by abortion rights and gun violence, exit polls showed.

Democratic strategist Ben LaBolt, a former spokesperson for former president Barack Obama, said Republicans’ focus on potential investigations and takedowns was not in touch with governing priorities favoured by US voters.

“It’s not about addressing, at a substantive level, any of the top issues facing the American people,” he said. “And that really provides an opening for Democrats.”

White House advisers have begun preparations for a host of Republican investigations expected to be launched from a Republican-controlled House and are ready to govern with a more limited toolbox of issuing executive orders.

If Biden’s agenda is blocked in Congress, Biden will have veto power and the megaphone of being president to advocate for his and his party’s priorities.

He has two months until the end of the year during the “lame duck” period to pass legislation while Democrats still control Congress. White House officials have said he will focus on securing government funding bills and money to combat Covid as well as getting Senate confirmation for his judicial nominees.

Allies of former president Donald Trump, including US representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, who both won their races easily, could have greater influence under a Republican-controlled House, and political strategists say that party could overplay its hand.

A Republican-led Congress would “be the end of his legislative agenda in any meaningful way, but it’s certainly not the end of [Biden’s] political fortunes,” said Brendan Buck, a former adviser to Republican House speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner.

“Republicans have a very long track record of overreach with Democratic presidents, and it’s not hard to imagine that [Biden] will be able to have a very strong contrast with Congress and use that to his advantage.”

Biden turns 80 this month and has faced questions about his fitness to run for a second term in 2024. The president has said he intends to run again, and this week’s results could bolster his cause.

Early this year, Biden, his chief of staff Ron Klain, and other aides worked to frame the midterms as a battle of “levelheaded” Democrats against “extreme” Republicans in league with Trump.

They embellished that message in June when the Supreme Court struck down the Roe vs Wade right to abortion. In a stark September speech from the birthplace of American democracy in Philadelphia, Biden said: “MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Even as members of his own party declined to campaign with him, Biden stuck to his anti-extremist message, adding possible threats to long-cherished social programmes like Medicare under Republican leadership.

That framing helped many Democrats like representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman weather bad historical odds for the party in charge during midterm elections, Biden aides and allies believe.