‘Not been this excited in a long time’: US expats ride the blue wave at Australian midterms watch parties
Özet haber: US voters, their Australian partners and British spectators crowd around pub TVs to watch the historic election results roll in
US voters, their Australian partners and British spectators crowd around pub TVs to watch the historic election results roll in
Democrats’ blue wave and a bad night for Trump: key US midterms takeaways
On the second floor of a Sydney pub, the mood shifts from nervous, browser-refreshing anxiety to champagne-popping within a matter of hours.
More than 100 US expats and election enthusiasts have packed into the function space at the Keg and Brew in the inner-east suburb of Surry Hills to watch the midterm results roll in.
They’ve followed a sign reading “Democrats Abroad” guiding them upstairs on Wednesday lunchtime as live reports began broadcasting on the pub television screens.
Early on, the American voters, their Australian partners and British spectators said they were “cautiously optimistic”.
Within a couple of hours, news of the Democrats’ historic win dramatically shifts the mood.
Katrena Henderson, from North Carolina, says she has “not been this excited about an election in a long time”.
Sitting with her Australian husband and adult son, the trio compulsively refresh their phones for results and celebrate when former governor Roy Cooper flips her state’s Senate seat to the Democrats.
“Nobody, I think, really believed that Democrats were going to do it. And they won decisively,” she says. “It just really points to the fact that Americans want something very different, because this administration is not working for us.
“I think what we didn’t have before today was a lot of hope … and at least now there is some hope.”
David Smith, an associate professor at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, says the midterms are a “referendum on Trump”. He says the writing was on the wall as voters went to the polls, with the president’s approval ratings at a “historically low” level.
“All year, I think Americans have been frustrated by Trump’s lack of focus on things that matter to most Americans,” he says.
“Whether that’s the war in Iran, which most Americans didn’t want and which have sent prices up in a pretty direct way, or whether it’s Trump’s constant beautification projects in Washington DC … All of this is just evidence to a lot of Americans that he is focused on the wrong things and he’s focused on his own self-aggrandisement rather than the country.”
Cindy Herman-Jones moved to Australia from Texas almost 15 years ago and has never cast a vote while living abroad. She says she was compelled to mail in a ballot because of “the stakes of this election” were too high.
“Democracy itself is being attacked by the Trump regime,” she says. “I just feel like they’ve done so many terrible things, and if he’s in power for another two years with no check on that, then it’s just going to continue to get worse and worse.”
In a list of the “many terrible things” to come out of Trump’s presidency, Herman-Jones points to the increased “brutality” of ICE immigration enforcement and the US war in Iran – which she calls “the worst thing” he’s done.
