The best result for America is if nobody wins the midterms

The Republicans, however, say that what really matters is who actually turns up to vote, and Trump’s people are whipped up and ready to go. That might be true, but where exactly are they? Geography is vital. Trump’s base is believed to be concentrated in rural areas, the south, the old industry towns. But many voters in the suburbs – and so much of America is one giant suburb – are sick and tired of (what they call) racism, sexism and unbridled corruption, and are just as determined to vote. The pollsters say this battle of two bases will likely see the Republicans cling on to the Senate but the Dems sweep enough districts to take the House of Representatives. The result: no one wins. And that might be the best outcome of all. A Democrat House will hold the President to account but a Republican Senate will stop the House from impeaching him, an act that could throw the country into something like civil war.

The Republicans ought to be a lot more popular than they are. The economy is breaking records and although the recovery began under Obama, Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation sure help. Yes, the rich benefit the most, but this is America, not Europe, and there’s a tradition here of seeing what’s good for business as good for the average Joe, reflected in factory openings and rising wages. This isn’t just a return to the Eighties, it’s a return to the Roaring Twenties, when the businessman Andrew Mellon ran the Treasury and President Coolidge stripped back the state.

The difference is that Calvin Coolidge was famously “silent” whereas Trump can’t shut up. His concrete successes – peace and jobs – are the stuff of the American dream, around which he could build a consensus, but his rhetoric cleaves the country down the middle. He’s tried, for example, to make the midterms about immigration, declaring war on a sad caravan of refugees trekking towards the US/Mexico border. He said: “Barbed wire can be a beautiful sight.”

On the other hand, Trump’s controversies deflect the media from scrutinising stuff that could really hurt him if voters heard more about it (he has sought to reverse more than 70 environmental rules), while anti-Trump hate has driven the Democrats further to the Left. The Dems faced a choice after 2016: occupy the centre or conjure up some progressive version of Trumpism? Many Dems have plumped for the latter. In Texas, a very conservative state, senate candidate Beto O’Rourke says he wants to bring Americans together and the media has gushed over his campaign like he’s the reincarnation of Jack Kennedy.

But listen carefully and you’ll notice that O’Rourke is pro-immigration; he’s pro-gun control; he’s pro-impeachment; he’s even pro-athletes who won’t stand for the national anthem. Beto isn’t trying to win Cruz’s voters, he’s all about energising his own – the Left-wing version of Trump’s “get out the base” strategy. And just as Trump’s radicalism has limited his appeal to moderates, so the Democrats could be creating a rod for their own back. Even if they do well in the midterms, that doesn’t mean they’re on track to win the White House in 2020, especially if Trump finds himself running against a socialist.

We can’t be certain about anything until the votes are counted, so I get on the subway and head to the National Gallery of Art, my favourite place in my favourite city in the world. Here I’m back with old friends: St Anthony and St Paul (by Sano di Pietro), David’s Emperor Napoleon in his Study, and Arcimboldo’s portrait of the Four Seasons, a human head comprised of vegetables and wild flowers. Several key pieces at the National, provided by Andrew Mellon, were purchased from Stalin in the Thirties. Thus, some part of DC remains forever occupied by Russian assets.

The gallery, like Washington, with its wide boulevards and neoclassical architecture, says to Europe: anything you can do, we can do better. That notion of uplift was always meant to be moral as well as material. But, with all the talk of barbed wire and violence, this aspect of the American Dream is disappearing down the drain with the afternoon rain.