Obama’s Slip-Up

The announcement of the defeat of the Democrats in the midterm elections is a retributive vote directed at the management of the weakened president, Barack Obama.

The end result, which gives control of the Senate to the Republicans and extends their majority in the House, may reconfigure the country’s electoral map in preparation for the most important event which takes place in two years’ time: the race for the White House.

In the American system, a third of the Senate was renewed in the midterm elections: 36 seats out of 100. Tuesday’s partial result gives the Republicans 52 Senators compared to 44 Democrats, leaving four seats undefined, which do not affect the overall majority. Meanwhile, the House will renew all of its 435 seats, of which 243 will go to the Republicans and 178 to the Democrats. In the gubernatorial races, the trend was no different: 31 Republicans to 16 Democrats. That is the size of the defeat in a campaign that spent almost $4 billion. Although most of the parties in power usually lose seats in these elections, on this occasion the Republicans saw their biggest victory in the last 70 years.

The reason? Currently, everything points to Barack Obama. Due to this damaging vote, his party has lost Democratic states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois. The truth is that despite the improving economy and falling unemployment in the six years he has been in office, young people, Latinos and African Americans (who gave him victory twice before) did not vote.

In contrast, the Republican opposition has been strengthened by the great uneasiness voters feel about social programs of a president of a leftist persuasion – like health care reform – whom they accuse of a lack of leadership and whom, in addition, they reject for being black.

The truth is that the Grand Old Party (GOP) managed to turn the tables on Washington, if you consider that in 2009 the Senate and the House were under Democratic rule. Hence, in a worsening situation, Obama has two choices which he can make: he can try to discuss and agree to laws with his opponents in the form of “gentle steps,” or he can see how the Republican steamroller imposes its own agenda and decisions. In that case, he can veto laws with which he disagrees, at the cost of getting into a war of attrition until the next presidential campaign. Currently, the reelected Senator Mitch McConnell, who will be the new majority leader in the Senate, was conciliatory: “Just because we have a system with two parties, does not mean that we live in perpetual conflict.” We’ll see what happens next.

Henceforth, the name of the game is the conquering of the White House. This Republican victory does not guarantee they will be victorious in November 2016. Out in the field are important figures like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie, to name but a few. On the side of the Democrats, the polls favor Hillary Clinton, with speculation that Vice President Joe Biden or Michelle Obama, who has higher popularity ratings than her husband, will become part of the campaign. The candidates will make themselves known in due course.

If the Democrats want to retain the presidency, they will have to campaign very hard in order to motivate an electorate that is skeptical as a result of unfulfilled campaign promises. Things are not rosy for the Republicans. Having control of Congress may put them on the bench in the face of marked legislative inactivity, and they will assume responsibility for repeatedly blocking Obama’s projects. An issue like the status of 11 million illegal immigrants, whose legalization is opposed by Republican legislators (especially the right wing of the Tea Party), might be a good gauge of public opinion. The political race remains open.