ONE WAY or another President Obama’s legislative challenge gets a whole lot more challenging next Tuesday. The midterm elections, his first electoral test, though not a candidate, appear certain to hand Republicans control of the House of Representatives. And whether the Democratic majority in the Senate also evaporates, now less likely than four months ago, Mr Obama will certainly lose the 60-seat cushion against filibusters. Washington’s gridlock and bitter partisanship will get a new lease of life.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report estimates that more than 90 Democratic House seats are at risk, while nine on the Republican side are threatened. Republicans need 39 House seats for control while 48 Democrats are defending seats in conservative districts that Senator John McCain carried in the presidentials two years ago.
In the 100-seat Senate 10 Democratic scalps would secure a Republican majority, but, with only a third of seats up for re-election, and only three or four losses likely, the current majority (57 plus two independents) appears unassailable. Nail-biting contests in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado are likely to determine the outcome.
Mr Obama has been criss-crossing the country in an uphill effort to reignite the disillusioned voters who put him in the White House. Democrats are now paying the price for the weak economy, an anti-incumbency mood, a highly motivated opposition, and a president whose popularity has waned severely – on the economy he was garnering only 38 per cent support in a CBS News poll last week. An Associated Press-GfK poll found that 84 per cent of likely voters say they are frustrated by politics, and 81 per cent disappointed.
Among young people under 30, who backed Obama by two to one, less than a third say they will definitely vote, according to polling by Pew. Enthusiasm for the Democratic Party is also slipping – 56 per cent of young voters this year say they are Democrats or leaning that way, down from 62 per cent in 2008.
The campaign has been ferocious, with a record spend likely to exceed $2 billion by candidates, more than the 2008 presidential, or $4 million for every congressional seat. And tens of millions of dollars are also being committed by outside interest groups, freed by a recent supreme court ruling that dubiously equated freedom of speech with the freedom to spend money campaigning. The rich man’s democracy is fast becoming a billionaire plutocracy.
Mr Obama’s difficulties will be compounded by the inevitability that the intake will also push the Republican Party to the right and make centrist members in Congress less willing to work across party lines. The election of several Tea Partyites determined to slim down federal government and slash taxes will make new stimulus initiatives difficult to agree, not least Mr Obama’s $50 billion infrastructure projects plan and his approach to the $1.3 trillion deficit. He will have to fight hard to protect his landmark reforms of both healthcare and financial regulation.