2010 Mid-term Elections - Assignment Example

Topic: Mid-term elections Mid-term Congressional elections refer to the Presidential term of office, and as such are viewed as a referendum on the President who won the previous election. The mid-term elections are created through the constitutional system which elects a President for a four year term and Representatives to the House for two years. As U.S. Senators are elected to six year terms, one third of the Senate will also be standing for re-election during a mid-term election. Additionally, key states may hold governor elections on mid-term dates, and state legislature elections can also symbolize a political party’s national trends. In this structural context, mid-term elections can also change the dynamics of Congressional support enjoyed by a President for his or her legislative agenda. In 2010, the mid-term elections were a referendum on President Obama’s policies during the first two years of his administration. Standing for re-election on the President’s response to the economic problems of 2008-9, including the “Wall St. Bailout,” the economic stimulus package, health care reform, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives nationally and saw their majority in the Senate eroded by Republican gains. No third-party candidates made an impact in the 2010 mid-term elections; however the election did feature the participation of the “Tea Party” as symbolic of voter frustration over taxation and corruption in Washington. To summarize the electoral trends in the 2010 mid-term elections, the election can be generalized as representing popular opposition to President Obama’s management of the White House both from the Left and Right. On the Left, generally representing the socially progressive, activist wing of the Democratic party, third-party leaning voters, and independents who organized and voted for Obama in 2008, there was a general sense of disappointment in the first two years of the administration. Many from Obama’s own party developed doubts about his leadership. Many of the objections were related to the policies of Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, who largely governed in a manner consistent with the Clinton administration, but which illustrated Emanuel’s own close contacts with the banking sector. Popular association of the Obama administration favoring banking interests over “real” or “common” people was established in the Wall St. Bailout response, which essentially gave trillions of dollars from the public treasury to the richest sector of the American economy and the richest, most highly paid people in the world, Wall St. bankers. The public, especially the Left who had supported Obama’s “Hope” campaign, saw this transfer of public wealth to the bankers to cover gambling debts an essential tell to Obama’s priorities in governance. For example, global poverty and millennium goals have not been a priority of the administration, though global poverty remains a tragic problem of immense proportions, especially when related to Wall St. standards of living. That corporate welfare should be practiced in the context of the division between rich and poor not only in America, but globally, led to the popular perception of crony capitalism and corruption dominating the Obama administration from the Leftist critique. On the other hand, the Right tended to link Obama to the spectre of socialism, also outraged over the Wall St. bailouts but pointing also to the government’s take-over of General Motors and the TBTF banks through capital infusions as a sign of state socialism. The Republicans also opposed the Obama administration on health care, and despite the reform, considerable doubt over the actual results persisted, allowing Republicans to capitalize on this issue. In that Obama did not run the caricature of a “black power” administration as many on the racial Right may have imagined, and in fact plotted a course little different than Republicans themselves would propose, made the 2010 election one based more on image and perception rather than issues. Sarah Palin’s emergence as a national leader for the Right and her association with the emerging Tea Party are significant aspects of this election. In the end, the Republicans gained 5 seats in the Senate, 63 seats in the House, and 6 governorships nationally. The Republicans also gained majority control of 17 additional state legislatures, according to a post-election Reuters report, and over-all added more than 500 Republican lawmakers to state legislatures across the country. (Pierog, 2010) “The 2010 mid-term election was a stunning rebuke to the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress. Much of that rebuke was driven by Independents, who comprised 28 percent of the electorate and supported Republican congressional candidates by the overwhelming margin of 56 to 38 percent. That represents a dramatic 36-point turnaround from the last mid-term election in 2006, when Independents supported Democratic congressional candidates by 57 to 39 percent. Given that an equal percentage of Democrats and Republicans voted in 2010 (36 percent), these Independent voters clearly played a decisive role in the Republican gains.” (Swanson, 2010) This same article from the Huffington Post contains poll material taken on the night of the election nationally: State of the Country: 26% Right Direction, 65% Wrong Track (chart) Obama Job Approval: 46% Approve, 51% Disapprove (chart) Favorable / Unfavorable: Barack Obama: 47 / 42 (chart) Party ID: 37% Democrat, 34% Republican, 28% independent Source: Democracy Corps, 2010 The key statistic to this poll is that almost 2/3 of the people believed that the country was “on the wrong track,” as well as the President’s approval rating being below 50%. Before the election, the “Is Obama a one-term President?” meme was being heavily repeated in the media as talking points. In many ways, this is not surprising as Obama ran a semi-vague campaign on the keyword of “Hope,” allowing image and style to dominate over policy definition. When people had a chance to view his policies in action, including supporters who may have been first-time voters or first-time inspired by a political candidate, their “hope” quickly turned to disappointment. Symbolic of this, Newsweek published an influential article by Patti Davis in September before the election, where she writes, “We are all liberals, we all supported Obama, and we all remember how emotionally uplifted and hopeful we felt when he was elected… Yes, but now ... We all agreed that we felt betrayed. We’d expected so much; we’d believed greatness was ahead of us, leading us, guiding us into the future. Maybe we did fall in love too fast, and the person we thought was a godsend didn’t stay for breakfast and never called again.” (Davis, 2010) Davis identifies the Gulf Oil Spill as being a type of “Katrina moment” for Obama. She describes how for two months America watched the Gulf daily, and Obama did nothing, displayed no leadership, no empathy for the situation. When he finally acted, or at least spoke on the issue and addressed it, it was too late. “Where was our president?.. We saw photos of our president on the golf course... Actors know that perception is everything, along with timing. When disaster strikes, we want to hear from our president immediately, not weeks later. We want to know he’s hurting along with us, not heading out to the golf course, which is sort of the modern-day version of the Roman emperor Nero fiddling while fires raged through the city.” (Davis, 2010) This is important symbolically, because Patti Davis is the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, and in this article says that she was a liberal and supported Obama – until he became President. After witnessing his response to the Gulf spill, or after witnessing his leadership style, she lost her support for the administration. Apparently, as the mid-term 2010 elections showed, so did the majority of the electorate. Michael Medved of TownHall gives a good overview of Sarah Palin’s effect on the 2010 mid-term elections, writing: “Regarding Palin’s power as a king (or queen) maker, her 2010 record counts as mixed at best. According to the tally by the Washington Post, she endorsed a total of 64 candidates in the course of the campaign; 32 of them lost either in the primaries or the general election. Moreover, Palin’s victories include many lavishly-funded, front-running incumbents who easily crushed their opponents (like her former running mate John McCain, or Governor Rick Perry in Texas) while many of her riskier, anti-establishment choices (like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Clint Diddier in Washington) worked out badly for the party and undermined GOP hopes of capturing the Senate. Moreover, in her home state of Alaska, Palin’s embarrassing candidate, Joe Miller, won the primary by a narrow margin, then lost decisively in the general election to a write-in campaign for the more moderate Senator Lisa Murkowski.” (Medved, 2010) Palin’s appearance at the Tea Party’s convention as former Republican Vice-Presidential candidate legitimized that movement in many ways in the mainstream media, and also served to channel Tea Party dissent into mainstream election victories. Nevertheless, Rand Paul’s victory in the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky is seen as symbolic of the Tea Party’s influence in the mid-term polls. The curious aspect of the Tea Party was highlighted by Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, when he wrote: “In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will ‘take our country back’ from everyone they disapprove of. But what they dont realize is, theres a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement arent yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, its only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOPs campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation.” (Taibbi, 2010) As a footnote to the 2010 mid-term elections, the Green Party and other third parties such as the Libertarians had virtually no influence in the campaigns. In the states where the Green Party did have ballot access, they rarely fielded candidates for Congressional or Senate seats. In instances where the Greens did field a national candidate, such as where former Green Party Presidential contender Jesse Johnson ran with the Mountain Party for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia, they typically received only around 1-2% of the vote. (Townhall, 2010) The same was true in local elections, though the Green Party did win a few mayor and city council races in California and other states. Politically the Green Party has been incapable of communicating to the reform and discontent sectors of the populace or to make any inroads as a real political force nationally. It has been noted historically that Presidents typically lose seats in Congress in their own party during mid-term elections, as the populace swings from reaction to counter-reaction in cycles of political movement. This modifies the President’s agenda technically from what he wants to accomplish to what he can negotiate through Congress politically. Considering that the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress and the Presidency during Obama’s first term, there truly was no cause to blame the Republicans for anything but the Bush legacy. Whether two years was sufficient or insufficient for Obama to repair the economy, and indeed, whether or not a President can really do anything economically to stimulate an economy at all, are still open questions of debate. For example, according to some reports, the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package “saved or created” anywhere from 3 to 8 million jobs. However, there is no way to measure or test the validity of the statement and unemployment remains near 10% nationally as the officially recognized rate. Taking into consideration the people who have dropped out of the job race or are not counted in other ways, the actual unemployment rate is taken to be tacitly higher. This is the key to understanding American elections, as Clinton understood. If the American economy is booming, expanding and growing, the President will be popular. If the economy is weak, the President will be blamed. Through this same Clintonian analysis, economics determines elections. As 2008-2010 is now considered second only to the Great Depression in terms of the severity of economic contraction, the mid-term election results of 2010 cannot be seen as any surprise. “Essentially, most forecasters assume that were it not for stimulus funds provided under the Recovery Act, the economy would have continued to contract during the second quarter of 2009 at a rate roughly in line with the previous six months. A GDP report showing a notable slowing in the rate of contraction would indicate that the recovery package is working at least as well as expected, and perhaps even a bit better. Goldman Sachs has actually revised upwards its expectation of ARRA’s effect on second quarter growth, given that its implementation has been faster than initially expected. Unfortunately, the overall economy is in much worse condition than what was anticipated at the start of the year, when the Recovery Act was being crafted to create or save roughly 3.5 million jobs. Between President Obama’s election and the signing of ARRA into law in February, roughly 2.7 million jobs were lost. This means that the underlying deterioration of the economy was so rapid that it swallowed the equivalent of 80% of the positive jobs effects of ARRA in the four months before its enactment.” (Bivens, 2009) Whatever the actual effect of the economic stimulus, it is not the exact numbers that matter in politics but the impression, as Patti Davis pointed out. Obama has crafted his historical image as being the primary agent of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citi, AIG, and other TBTF banks in Washington, and his administration has given them unprecedented financial and economic support in relation to other sectors of society. American democracy in its good and bad is based upon the ideal of equality, and this applies in one direction to individual liberty and in the other direction to the application of public resources. If public resources are corrupted and used to fund bankers, hedge fund managers, and real estate speculators at the highest levels, then the public is not long fooled before reacting in various ways to express outrage. The Obama administration will likely not recover from the mistakes in public perception it has made in the first two years. Obama’s policies will be invariably tied to Wall St. banks and crony capitalism in the public mind, even if both parties support the same policies generally from a third-party critique. The backlash represented by the 2010 mid-term elections is a direct result of this image management problem that the administration likely cannot overcome in 2012, barring a weak Republican Presidential candidate. Sources Cited: Bivens, Josh (2009). GDP Preview: The parachute deploys as Recovery Act takes hold. Democratic Underground. Retrieved from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=367x21969 Davis, Patti (2010). Too Cool For School. Newsweek. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/09/patti-davis-our-disappointment-with-obama.html Medved, Michael (2010). Conventional Wisdom on Palins Power, McCains Weakness: It Just Aint So. Townhall. Retrieved from http://townhall.com/columnists/MichaelMedved/2010/12/15/conventional_wisdom_on_palins_power,_mccains_weakness__it_just_aint_so Pierog, Karen (2010). Republican election wave hits U.S. state houses. Thomson Reuters News. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0327902820101103 Swanson, Emily (2010). US-Obama Approval: 46% Approve, 51% Disapprove (Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic 10/2-3). Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/09/usobama-approval-46-appro_n_780963.html Taibbi, Matt (2010). The Truth About the Tea Party. Rolling Stone. Retrieved from http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-on-the-tea-party-20100928 Read More