Midterm elections rarely deliver good news for the incumbent president and his party, and so it proved on Tuesday. The Republicans gained a majority of at least seven seats in the Senate and increased their majority in the House of Representatives to levels not seen since President Truman’s time. They also swept to victory in governors’ races across the country, holding on to key swing states in presidential elections and scoring upsets in several Democratic bastions, including Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois.
Some have described this as a “Seinfeld election” – all about nothing – but in the absence of grand ideas and policies the Republicans and their proxies worked hard to make it all about Barack Obama while the Democrats were seeking to distance themselves from him. Republicans see their wins as a powerful repudiation of the Obama presidency; in retrospect, some Democrats believe that running away from Obama made him appear even more toxic. There is no doubt that the American electorate is angry and deeply dissatisfied and wants law-makers to deliver on their issues.
What does this mean for the next two years? According to the new leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, it means that his chamber, which has been gridlocked for most of Obama’s tenure, will “go back to work and actually pass legislation.” The onus for gaining the Democrats’ cooperation has been placed squarely on the president, whom McConnell describes as “the only Democrat who matters.” But despite the magnitude of the Republican gains and the talk about future work agendas, the reality of the new political order will almost certainly be different from what McConnell professes to expect.
The voters in these elections were highly unrepresentative of the nation as a whole, and that means the nation is likely to become quickly dissatisfied with those who have been elected and re-elected. Turnout, always lower in midterm elections, was at unprecedented lows, and was estimated at less than 40 per cent nationally. Only twelve states turned out a higher percentage of eligible voters this year than in the last midterms. Older white Americans, who are most likely to consistently favour Republicans, made up 37 per cent of voters; voters aged under thirty, the majority of whom supported Obama in 2008 and 2012, made up just 13 per cent.
Many states with Republican governors have made increasingly blatant attempts to suppress minority voting using tighter voter identification requirements – which in some places are effectively an unconstitutional poll tax – and through shorter early-voting periods and limits on same-day voter registration. Minority voters are also disenfranchised in more subtle ways, with long waiting times caused by inadequately prepared polling places in precincts with minority populations. These issues matter when voting day is also a work day.
Despite the skewed voting population, there were some unexpected results. For the first time, more than one hundred women will sit among the 438 members of the House of Representatives. In Utah, Republican Mia Love defeated her Democrat opponent to become her party’s first black congresswoman; in South Carolina, Republican Tim Scott became the first black senator elected in the south since Reconstruction. And even in the so-called red (or Republican-leaning) states, support was strong for progressive ballot measures such as paid sick leave, minimum wage laws and the legal use of marijuana; radical anti-abortion “personhood” measures, meanwhile, were roundly rejected.
The Democrats didn’t just have a turnout problem; there was a persuasion problem, too. There is no denying that the national mood is uneasy and President Obama is unpopular. Republican senator John Cornyn of Texas summed it up when he said that this election occurred in the context of a loss of confidence in Obama among Americans, and the issues breaking decisively against him were national security, personal security and job security.
While economic indicators are improving, wages are stagnant and threats such as ISIS and Ebola loom large. A majority of voters still say they dislike Obamacare health reforms. Primarily, though, Americans are fed up with congressional gridlock and dysfunction and the overall direction of the nation. In exit polls, 34 per cent of voters said they voted in opposition to Obama and 61 per cent said they were dissatisfied or even angry with the Republican leaders in Congress.
It is not at all clear that this will change. With the election of Senate candidates like Cory Gardner from Colorado and Joni Ernst from Iowa the Republicans have turned further right. Many conservatives are suspicious of congressional GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, regarding them as Washington insiders who are too willing to negotiate with the White House or the Democrats.
Republicans should not mistake the general dissatisfaction with Obama’s leadership as a mandate for right-wing remedies in key areas such as immigration, energy and taxation. Obama says he is willing to find areas of common agreement with the GOP, but he has also said that “the principles that we are fighting for will not change.” He still wields the right of veto and will certainly use it, and congressional Democrats still have the Senate filibuster available to block legislation they don’t like.
With climate change deniers in charge in Congress, Senator John McCain as the new chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican support for Wall Street unwavering, and Republican governors proliferating, issues likely to be contentious include environmental protections, the Keystone XL pipeline, a more aggressive stance in the Middle East, corporate taxes and Medicaid expansion to provide health insurance to poorer Americans.
The optimistic view is that Republicans will move on from just saying no, that President Obama will overcome his dislike of the dirty business of congressional deal-making, and that together they will tackle the issues Americans care about. But it is equally possible that Congress will become even more polarised, between and within the parties.
The 2016 presidential election is also a major factor. The promised compromises between Republicans and Obama are only possible if the GOP’s potential presidential candidates – conservative Senators Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, and others such as Wisconsin governor Scott Walker – don’t pursue policies designed to appeal to the party’s conservative base and enhance their individual chances in the primaries. Conversely, the Republicans will likely push a congressional inquiry into the Islamic militant attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, as a way of undermining Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances.
The 2016 Senate races will be far more favourable for the Democrats, so the Republicans will need to act to cement their gains. Demographic changes, meanwhile, particularly the growth of the Hispanic population, are slowly driving the electorate away from the right. This is especially the case in the south; expect the red states to push ahead with further voter suppression laws to counter this Democrat advantage.
President Obama’s last two years in office will be tough. As a lame-duck leader he will become increasingly irrelevant as the 2016 presidential campaigns begin and it is likely that Democrat presidential candidates will increasingly seek to distance themselves from him and his policies. Regardless of how cooperative Republicans decide to be, he will inevitably be held responsible for Congress working effectively.
Obama has already begun to respond to this, saying that he hears not only the message voters have sent, but also the message sent by the two-thirds of Americans who chose not to vote. “It doesn’t make me mopey, it energises me,” he said. “It means that this democracy is working.”
In Washington, the dome of the US Congress is surrounded by scaffolding and under renovation. It’s symbolic of what needs to happen under the dome in the next two years. •
