Control of the US Congress hung in the balance on Thursday as ballot-counting dragged on and attention shifted to the next big election \u2014 the 2024 presidential campaign \u2014 and whether Americans could be faced with a Joe Biden-Donald Trump re-match.
\nWith 209 seats so far, Republicans appear poised to secure a slim majority in the 435-seat House of Representatives, but control of the Senate may come down to an early December runoff in the southern state of Georgia.
\nBiden, who turns 80 this month, on Wednesday celebrated what he said was the success of his Democratic Party in fending off a predicted Republican landslide in a stormy economic climate. \u201cWhile the press and the pundits were predicting a giant red wave, it didn\u2019t happen,\u201d he said.
\nBiden, already America\u2019s oldest president, insisted that he plans to run for a second term in November 2024 despite calls by some members of the party for him to step aside and hand the reins over to a new generation of leaders.
\nHe promised a final decision \u201cearly next year.\u201d A drubbing would have surely raised questions about whether Biden should run again in 2024. But instead he did better than his two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, who both took a hammering in their first midterms.
\nThe 76-year-old Trump has promised a \u201cvery big announcement\u201d in Florida on Tuesday that was expected to be the launch of his official campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
\nTrump\u2019s early entry into the race would appear designed to fend off possible criminal charges over taking top secret documents from the White House, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
\nIt may also be intended to undercut his chief potential rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who emerged as one of the biggest winners from Tuesday\u2019s midterms.
\n\u201c(Trump\u2019s) intention is to consolidate his support early and crowd out other potential candidates,\u201d said Jon Rogowski, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
\n\u2018Ron De-Sanctimonious\u2019
\nThe 44-year-old DeSantis, a Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer, notched up a nearly 20-point victory over his Democratic opponent in the Florida governor\u2019s race and took credit for a host of Republican victories in other races in the \u201cSunshine State.\u201d \u201cWe not only won election, we have rewritten the political map,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got so much more to do and I have only begun to fight.\u201d While DeSantis has emerged as Trump\u2019s main rival for the nomination, the former president continues to dominate in the polls when Republicans are asked who they want to represent the party in the 2024 White House race.
\nTrump clearly has the Florida governor, a one-time ally, in his sights, referring to him by a derogatory nickname \u2014 Ron De-Sanctimonious \u2014 and belittling his election victory.
\n\u201cShouldn\u2019t it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million?\u201d Trump said on his Truth Social platform. \u201cJust asking?\u201d Biden was asked by reporters on Wednesday about a Trump-DeSantis showdown. \u201cIt\u2019ll be fun watching them take on each other,\u201d he said.
\nIn the Senate, Democrat John Fetterman defeated Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz, seizing the Pennsylvania seat after the most expensive Senate race in US history.
\nThe final makeup of the Senate now hangs on three seats: Arizona and Nevada, where the counting of votes could take several more days, and Georgia, where there will be a December 6 runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and former American football star Herschel Walker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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