LETTER: The United States midterms election produced a genuine political earthquake, yet the structural forces that produced the current brand of divisive politics remain largely intact.
Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress but the uncomfortable part for anyone expecting a clean break is that the Democrats won without a fixed, unified programme.
International reactions suggest a cautious, conditional yes — but with low expectations of transformation post-US midterms election.
European leaders welcomed the result primarily as a relief: a signal that American voters had rejected the war and the climate denialism and the contempt for alliances.
The European Parliament’s vice-president voiced the prevailing mood: optimism “not because everything will suddenly get better, but because this could be good for support for Ukraine, the green transition, and relations with the rest of the world”.
The qualifier is doing the heavy lifting.
Iran’s supreme leader was more cynical, saying anyone expecting US policy to shift based on party changes is “sorely mistaken”. Russia shrugged.
The world, in other words, has learned to distinguish between American rhetoric and American continuity. Allies will take the tonal shift. They are not betting on a structural one.
America changed its government. It did not change its politics. The midterms were a rejection of one man’s governance, not a ratification of an alternative vision.
The new leadership inherits the same polarised electorate, the same money-soaked machinery, and the same structural veto points that make dramatic change nearly impossible in a two-year window.
The world can accept this version of something different — a less belligerent Washington, a Congress that takes oversight seriously — because the bar is low and the relief is genuine.
But if the expectation is a fundamental reset, the answer is the one your friend the dinosaur-hunter might not want to hear: the species survives. It just changes its skin.
There’s a seductive simplicity to the story: voters spoke, the old guard fell, and renewal is on the march. It’s a story both sides of the Atlantic are telling themselves.
But before we applaud the extinction of the “dinosaurs,” it’s worth asking who exactly gets to define a dinosaur — and whether replacing the old faces has ever, by itself, produced the change people are hungry for.
The frustration is real and legitimate. But here’s where the argument needs to get honest.
History is littered with “new guards” that learned the old tricks faster than anyone expected.
What would a genuinely different politics look like? It would mean being precise about problems rather than dramatic about enemies.
It would mean politicians who can articulate what they’re for rather than only what they’re against.
It would mean voters willing to reward competence and punish unseriousness, not just reward the loudest voice.
And it would mean accepting that pluralism is not a disease to be cured by one decisive victory.
PROFESSOR DATUK DR AHMAD IBRAHIM
Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy
UCSI University