Big Republican gains presage a nasty period of gridlock for Barack Obama
“TONIGHT,” exulted Rand Paul, the victorious Republican candidate for the Senate from Kentucky, “there’s a tea-party tidal wave.” And so, in almost all respects, there was. The Republicans, energised by the enthusiasm of tea-party activists, have picked up at least 60 seats in the House of Representatives. That exceeds even the Republican landslide of 1994 in scale, and gives the party its biggest majority since the 1940s. It more than undoes the Democrats’ gains of 2006 and 2008, and serves as a massive rebuke to Barack Obama. The president can no longer count on a Democratic majority in Congress to enact his agenda; he will now have to recast his presidency in the light of America’s abrupt jerk back to the right.
The Democrats did manage to hold on to the Senate, but by a much diminished majority, giving up at least six seats and perhaps a seventh once a recount is done. That constitutes the faintest of silver linings for the party in an otherwise dismal night. Senate races that had been considered toss-ups, in such states as California, Nevada and West Virginia, broke their way in the end. Despite Mr Paul’s exuberance, prominent tea-party candidates, such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado, did not do as well as expected.
But that was remarkable only because the election was otherwise such a resounding triumph for Republicans. They prevailed in almost all the close races in the House. Many of the Democrats’ newer members, who were only there thanks to two successive swings against the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, were shown the exit. Centrist “blue-dog” Democrats, many of them in Republican-leaning districts, fared especially poorly. Even stalwarts found themselves booted out of office: Ike Skelton, a congressman of 34 years’ standing and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Jim Oberstar, who had racked up 36 years in the House, the last four at the helm of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; and John Spratt, a 28-year veteran who runs the House Budget Committee.
Republicans returned to areas they had been evicted from two years ago, such as New England. Democrats, meanwhile, lost many of their toeholds in the Great Plains, the Rockies and the South. The rustbelt, from upstate New York to Illinois, was a particularly barren wasteland for American liberals. The Republicans picked up dozens of House seats in the region, plus Senate seats in Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, not to mention the governorships of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin and chambers in the legislatures of every state touching the Great Lakes save Illinois and New York.
In all, Republicans appear to have gained at least nine governorships, and won control of 11 state legislatures (see article). That will give them a big advantage next year, when the states redraw their congressional districts. They will now run the show both in most of the states that will gain seats, such as Florida, Texas and Utah, and in most that will lose them, including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That, in turn, could give them a further electoral edge that will last ten years, until the 2020 census prompts the boundaries to be redrawn again.
These Republican advances could also hinder Mr Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. The results in the rustbelt will cause particular consternation in the White House, as they suggest that a patch of the country critical to his election victory has moved clearly to the right. New Republican governors in the region may be able to help rally their states to the Republican candidate. The much-trumpeted Democratic get-out-the-vote operation in states like Ohio, which relied in part on the legacy of Mr Obama’s campaign there two years ago, did not prove nearly as formidable as Democrats had hoped. The Democrats performed alarmingly badly in other swing states too, slipping from ten out of 25 House seats to just six in Florida, for example, and from six out of 11 in Virginia to just three. These are all states that swung to Mr Obama in 2008 and ensured his victory.
However, Democrats may find solace in the fact that American politics is in the throes of its most volatile period in over 50 years. The House has now changed hands twice in four years—the most rapid turnover since the early 1950s. None of the five elections from 1996 to 2004 involved big swings in control of Congress (“wave elections” in the parlance of psephologists). But there have been big swells at all three subsequent polls. Voters without any party affiliation, it seems, are increasing both in numbers and in fickleness.
Exit polls suggest that it was the defection of independents from the Democrats that sealed the Republican victory. They made up almost a third of voters, according to CNN, a television network, and plumped for Republicans by a margin of 18 percentage points. The Democrats’ normal advantage among women evaporated, and their handicap among whites and the retired grew markedly. They retained a clear edge with young people and minorities, but relatively few of those bothered to vote. CNN reckons that 18-29-year-olds made up just 11% of the electorate, compared to 18% two years ago.
A few races remain so close they are bound to be the subject of painstaking recounts and protracted legal battles (one such battle lasted eight months last time). A Republican candidate for the House in Virginia who fell short by less than 1,000 votes is refusing to concede defeat. The Senate race in Washington, in which the two candidates are separated by barely a percentage point, will hinge on postal votes that will take days to trickle in. And in Alaska, the apparent victory of Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who was defeated in the primary by a tea-party candidate and who then ran as an independent write-in candidate, will not be confirmed for several weeks, as electoral officials pore over each handwritten vote in her favour.
None of that, however, detracts from the Republicans’ thumping victory. Even their likely gain of six Senate seats is fairly weighty by historical standards. Ms Murkowski, if elected, will vote with them. They would almost certainly have prevailed in Senate races in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada as well had tea-party activists in those states not saddled the party with unappealingly radical candidates. But that seems a small price to pay for the tea party’s resuscitation of the moribund conservative movement of 2008.
Time to triangulate?
Republican leaders, including John Boehner, the party’s presumptive choice as speaker of the House, and Sarah Palin, the most prominent standard-bearer for the tea party, have called on Mr Obama to heed the voice of the electorate, rein in his profligate ways and co-operate with Republican efforts to deflate the federal government. But they will not be able to force him to do so, since the Democrats still control the Senate, and the president retains his veto over new laws.
Analysts see two broad strategies that Mr Obama might now pursue: either tack to the centre, and seek to cut deals with the Republicans in Congress, or embrace the prospect of stalemate and reject Republican initiatives as too extreme. Both carry risks, of annoying the Democratic base and perhaps inviting a primary challenge in 2012 on the one hand, and of offending the electorate by appearing to ignore the popular will on the other. But both have worked for Democratic presidents in the past: Bill Clinton won re-election by embracing popular centrist causes such as welfare reform after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, whereas Harry Truman prevailed in 1948 by denouncing the “do-nothing” Republican Congress elected in 1946.
In a press conference the day after the vote, Mr Obama’s response to the Democrats’ drubbing was more businesslike than self-abasing (see article). He threw out a few pious phrases about bipartisanship, and suggested that energy policy and education might be areas for co-operation with the Republicans. He even signalled a willingness to set aside his desire for a cap on America’s emissions of greenhouse gases and to amend some elements of his health-care reforms.
But he also seemed to reject the notion that the election results constitute “a repudiation of big government”, as Mr Boehner had claimed the night before. Instead, he cited voters’ deep frustration at the state of the economy. That is plausible: after all, voters have been telling pollsters that that is their biggest concern for months, and the Democrats’ losses had a lot to do with their supporters staying at home out of anger at a government that has not done more to help them. The results look wonderful for the Republicans, but most soundings found that the electorate still has a slightly dimmer view of the Grand Old Party than it does of the Democrats.
Yet many of the new Republican congressmen argue they have a mandate to pursue dramatic reforms. Mr Paul, for example, is determined to balance the budget—no mean feat given the projected deficit this year of 8.5% of GDP. Mr Boehner, among others, has declared that the Republicans will not compromise about the need to cut spending and avert looming tax rises—issues that will soon come to a head (see article).
When the Republicans initiated a duel with Mr Clinton over the budget after their previous takeover of the House, in 1994, voters sided with the president, helping to pave the way for his re-election. More seasoned Republicans fear history will repeat itself if they adopt a similar approach this time around. And the new Republican cadres may alienate the independents who have just handed them such a big win in other ways too: many of them are eager to abolish whole government departments, crack down on illegal immigration, ignore global warming and resist advances in gay rights, among other controversial stances.
The Republican leadership will try to curb the most radical of their new recruits. But Mr Boehner has had trouble talking previous, less fire-breathing Republican caucuses out of doctrinaire stances. All Republican congressmen will be wary of showing signs of moderation for fear of prompting primary challenges at the next election. It will not help, of course, that so many moderate Democrats have lost their jobs. What is more, Republican grandees who see the election results as a sign of Mr Obama’s vulnerability in 2012, will soon start jockeying for the party’s nomination, with all the grandstanding that entails. The speaker-in-waiting, who wept with emotion at his party’s revival last night, may soon find himself overcome by the difficulty of marshalling his new troops
“TONIGHT,” exulted Rand Paul, the victorious Republican candidate for the Senate from Kentucky, “there’s a tea-party tidal wave.” And so, in almost all respects, there was. The Republicans, energised by the enthusiasm of tea-party activists, have picked up at least 60 seats in the House of Representatives. That exceeds even the Republican landslide of 1994 in scale, and gives the party its biggest majority since the 1940s. It more than undoes the Democrats’ gains of 2006 and 2008, and serves as a massive rebuke to Barack Obama. The president can no longer count on a Democratic majority in Congress to enact his agenda; he will now have to recast his presidency in the light of America’s abrupt jerk back to the right.
The Democrats did manage to hold on to the Senate, but by a much diminished majority, giving up at least six seats and perhaps a seventh once a recount is done. That constitutes the faintest of silver linings for the party in an otherwise dismal night. Senate races that had been considered toss-ups, in such states as California, Nevada and West Virginia, broke their way in the end. Despite Mr Paul’s exuberance, prominent tea-party candidates, such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado, did not do as well as expected.
But that was remarkable only because the election was otherwise such a resounding triumph for Republicans. They prevailed in almost all the close races in the House. Many of the Democrats’ newer members, who were only there thanks to two successive swings against the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, were shown the exit. Centrist “blue-dog” Democrats, many of them in Republican-leaning districts, fared especially poorly. Even stalwarts found themselves booted out of office: Ike Skelton, a congressman of 34 years’ standing and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Jim Oberstar, who had racked up 36 years in the House, the last four at the helm of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; and John Spratt, a 28-year veteran who runs the House Budget Committee.
Republicans returned to areas they had been evicted from two years ago, such as New England. Democrats, meanwhile, lost many of their toeholds in the Great Plains, the Rockies and the South. The rustbelt, from upstate New York to Illinois, was a particularly barren wasteland for American liberals. The Republicans picked up dozens of House seats in the region, plus Senate seats in Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, not to mention the governorships of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin and chambers in the legislatures of every state touching the Great Lakes save Illinois and New York.
In all, Republicans appear to have gained at least nine governorships, and won control of 11 state legislatures (see article). That will give them a big advantage next year, when the states redraw their congressional districts. They will now run the show both in most of the states that will gain seats, such as Florida, Texas and Utah, and in most that will lose them, including Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That, in turn, could give them a further electoral edge that will last ten years, until the 2020 census prompts the boundaries to be redrawn again.
These Republican advances could also hinder Mr Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. The results in the rustbelt will cause particular consternation in the White House, as they suggest that a patch of the country critical to his election victory has moved clearly to the right. New Republican governors in the region may be able to help rally their states to the Republican candidate. The much-trumpeted Democratic get-out-the-vote operation in states like Ohio, which relied in part on the legacy of Mr Obama’s campaign there two years ago, did not prove nearly as formidable as Democrats had hoped. The Democrats performed alarmingly badly in other swing states too, slipping from ten out of 25 House seats to just six in Florida, for example, and from six out of 11 in Virginia to just three. These are all states that swung to Mr Obama in 2008 and ensured his victory.
However, Democrats may find solace in the fact that American politics is in the throes of its most volatile period in over 50 years. The House has now changed hands twice in four years—the most rapid turnover since the early 1950s. None of the five elections from 1996 to 2004 involved big swings in control of Congress (“wave elections” in the parlance of psephologists). But there have been big swells at all three subsequent polls. Voters without any party affiliation, it seems, are increasing both in numbers and in fickleness.
Exit polls suggest that it was the defection of independents from the Democrats that sealed the Republican victory. They made up almost a third of voters, according to CNN, a television network, and plumped for Republicans by a margin of 18 percentage points. The Democrats’ normal advantage among women evaporated, and their handicap among whites and the retired grew markedly. They retained a clear edge with young people and minorities, but relatively few of those bothered to vote. CNN reckons that 18-29-year-olds made up just 11% of the electorate, compared to 18% two years ago.
A few races remain so close they are bound to be the subject of painstaking recounts and protracted legal battles (one such battle lasted eight months last time). A Republican candidate for the House in Virginia who fell short by less than 1,000 votes is refusing to concede defeat. The Senate race in Washington, in which the two candidates are separated by barely a percentage point, will hinge on postal votes that will take days to trickle in. And in Alaska, the apparent victory of Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who was defeated in the primary by a tea-party candidate and who then ran as an independent write-in candidate, will not be confirmed for several weeks, as electoral officials pore over each handwritten vote in her favour.
None of that, however, detracts from the Republicans’ thumping victory. Even their likely gain of six Senate seats is fairly weighty by historical standards. Ms Murkowski, if elected, will vote with them. They would almost certainly have prevailed in Senate races in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada as well had tea-party activists in those states not saddled the party with unappealingly radical candidates. But that seems a small price to pay for the tea party’s resuscitation of the moribund conservative movement of 2008.
Time to triangulate?
Republican leaders, including John Boehner, the party’s presumptive choice as speaker of the House, and Sarah Palin, the most prominent standard-bearer for the tea party, have called on Mr Obama to heed the voice of the electorate, rein in his profligate ways and co-operate with Republican efforts to deflate the federal government. But they will not be able to force him to do so, since the Democrats still control the Senate, and the president retains his veto over new laws.
Analysts see two broad strategies that Mr Obama might now pursue: either tack to the centre, and seek to cut deals with the Republicans in Congress, or embrace the prospect of stalemate and reject Republican initiatives as too extreme. Both carry risks, of annoying the Democratic base and perhaps inviting a primary challenge in 2012 on the one hand, and of offending the electorate by appearing to ignore the popular will on the other. But both have worked for Democratic presidents in the past: Bill Clinton won re-election by embracing popular centrist causes such as welfare reform after the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, whereas Harry Truman prevailed in 1948 by denouncing the “do-nothing” Republican Congress elected in 1946.
In a press conference the day after the vote, Mr Obama’s response to the Democrats’ drubbing was more businesslike than self-abasing (see article). He threw out a few pious phrases about bipartisanship, and suggested that energy policy and education might be areas for co-operation with the Republicans. He even signalled a willingness to set aside his desire for a cap on America’s emissions of greenhouse gases and to amend some elements of his health-care reforms.
But he also seemed to reject the notion that the election results constitute “a repudiation of big government”, as Mr Boehner had claimed the night before. Instead, he cited voters’ deep frustration at the state of the economy. That is plausible: after all, voters have been telling pollsters that that is their biggest concern for months, and the Democrats’ losses had a lot to do with their supporters staying at home out of anger at a government that has not done more to help them. The results look wonderful for the Republicans, but most soundings found that the electorate still has a slightly dimmer view of the Grand Old Party than it does of the Democrats.
Yet many of the new Republican congressmen argue they have a mandate to pursue dramatic reforms. Mr Paul, for example, is determined to balance the budget—no mean feat given the projected deficit this year of 8.5% of GDP. Mr Boehner, among others, has declared that the Republicans will not compromise about the need to cut spending and avert looming tax rises—issues that will soon come to a head (see article).
When the Republicans initiated a duel with Mr Clinton over the budget after their previous takeover of the House, in 1994, voters sided with the president, helping to pave the way for his re-election. More seasoned Republicans fear history will repeat itself if they adopt a similar approach this time around. And the new Republican cadres may alienate the independents who have just handed them such a big win in other ways too: many of them are eager to abolish whole government departments, crack down on illegal immigration, ignore global warming and resist advances in gay rights, among other controversial stances.
The Republican leadership will try to curb the most radical of their new recruits. But Mr Boehner has had trouble talking previous, less fire-breathing Republican caucuses out of doctrinaire stances. All Republican congressmen will be wary of showing signs of moderation for fear of prompting primary challenges at the next election. It will not help, of course, that so many moderate Democrats have lost their jobs. What is more, Republican grandees who see the election results as a sign of Mr Obama’s vulnerability in 2012, will soon start jockeying for the party’s nomination, with all the grandstanding that entails. The speaker-in-waiting, who wept with emotion at his party’s revival last night, may soon find himself overcome by the difficulty of marshalling his new troops
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