AMERICAN VOTERS have delivered a powerful rebuke to President Barack Obama that leaves him with no option but to abandon much of his political agenda and to seek common ground with a Republican Party that has opposed his every initiative until now. Tuesday’s elections have reshaped the political map in the US, giving Republicans control of the House of Representatives, sharply reducing the Democrats’ majority in the Senate and reversing all the gains Mr Obama’s party has made over the past four years.
In a downbeat press conference yesterday, Mr Obama acknowledged that one of the messages voters sent in the election was that he must do a better job and that he had failed to change how business is done in Washington. But he insisted that the American people had no wish to see their politicians bickering for the next two years and appealed to both parties to work together in the national interest.
The prospects for such post-partisan harmony on Capitol Hill are grim. Many Republicans who were elected on Tuesday campaigned on the promise of reversing some of Mr Obama’s key legislative achievements, such as healthcare reform and have identified the president’s defeat in 2012 as a priority. Many of the Democrats who lost their seats were on the party’s moderate wing, leaving the Democratic caucus not only smaller but more left-wing.
The US constitution gives the president primary authority over foreign policy, so this week’s election will have a limited impact on America’s relationship with the rest of the world. Its outcome does, however, make significant US legislation on climate change unlikely and could complicate Mr Obama’s efforts to introduce comprehensive immigration reform.
Democrats can draw some comfort from their success in fighting off Republican challenges in California and in Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s surprise victory in Nevada. Republican triumphalism should be tempered by the failure of a number of high-profile “tea party” candidates to topple vulnerable Democrats as voters recoiled from figures they viewed as too extreme or eccentric.
It is Mr Obama, however, who faces the most formidable task as he seeks to regain the confidence of a country battered by economic misfortune, distressed by stubbornly high unemployment and disappointed in a president who promised to restore hope and effect transformational change.