As expected, the Republicans in the US have gained control of the Senate after they won seven additional seats in the country’s mid-term elections. Senate seats in Iowa, North Carolina, Montana, Colorado, West Virginia, South Dakota and Arkansas were all captured by the Republicans from the Democrats.
The Republicans, riding on a wave of voter frustration with Washington, now control both houses of Congress for the first time since 2006; they have had a majority in the House of Representatives since 2010, and last Tuesday they increased their majority there, to one of their largest since the 1940s.
Republicans also won key governors’ races, such as those in Florida, Wisconsin and Kansas, and they stunned observers by winning gubernatorial elections in the Democratic strongholds of Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois (Obama’s home state).
The results are a major victory for the Republicans and a setback for President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party; the political landscape for the next two years, the last period of Obama’s term in office, has now changed drastically. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is the new Senate majority leader, and the nation’s legislative agenda is now in his hands.
With a guaranteed bloc of 52 Senators (out of 100), the Republicans will now have the power to complicate Obama’s agenda in the last two years of his presidency. They also have the ability to reject Obama’s nominees for federal judges, ambassadors, Cabinet members and senior government officials, and will take on committee chairmanships in the Senate.
Obama, on the other hand, can veto legislation coming from Congress, and continue to make use of executive orders for certain areas of policy. Foreign and national security policy will largely continue to remain the prerogative of the President. McConnell and Obama, however, will have to learn to make compromises, and both stated that they were eager to work together.
McConnell said he would make the “ineffective” Senate function and pass Bills, while Obama said he was “eager to work with the new Congress to make the next two years as productive as possible”.
Although the Republican victory was expected, it does seem strange that a President who has turned around the economy, enabled millions of low-income Americans to get proper health insurance for the first time (this was a controversial issue, but nevertheless a landmark achievement) and presided over a reasonably successful foreign policy should be punished at the polls in this manner.
However, in this election, Republicans took advantage of voters’ frustration with politicians and successfully portrayed Obama as a weak leader incapable of securing the US border (where thousands of illegal immigrants have been crossing over to the US), stimulating the economy and projecting a strong image of the US overseas.
Exit polls taken on election day clearly showed that voters were unhappy with both Obama and the Republicans, but as President, Obama was the one to bear the brunt of voter frustration at the lack of co-operation between the White House and Congress over the past two years.
It is also likely that Obama will dedicate a lot of his focus over the next two years to foreign policy
Having a President and Congress from different parties is not uncommon in the US and does not necessarily mean that gridlock is inevitable. Republican Ronald Reagan had to deal with a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives throughout his eight years in the White House and a Democrat-controlled Senate in his last two years in office, yet he proved to be a successful President.
The same can be said about Bill Clinton, who had to deal with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate for six years of his presidency, yet he is also regarded as a successful President.
President Obama will now have to reach out to moderate Republicans and find common ground on a whole range of domestic issues, such as corporate tax reform, immigration reform and the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada. The President will also be under pressure to make changes among his senior advisers – a Reuters poll showed 75 per cent of voters want the Obama administration to ‘rethink’ how it approaches major issues facing the US.
It is also likely that Obama will dedicate a lot of his focus over the next two years to foreign policy, where Congress has little say, although we can now expect a more pro-Israeli Senate as well as one that would be sceptical at endorsing a nuclear agreement with Iran, which is not good news. Should a fair and balanced nuclear deal be reached, Obama will need to work hard at persuading moderate Republicans to support it, and to convince them on the significance of a rapprochement with Teheran.
Obama can indeed achieve much in foreign policy over the next two years. His legacy in this area could include defeating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, achieving stability in Afghanistan as a result of the new national unity government which Washington helped broker, as well as the security treaty agreed to between the US and Kabul, a permanent nuclear deal with Iran, a Trans-Pacific Partnership with a number of countries in the Americas and Asia-Pacific that account for about 40 per cent of world GDP and a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU – representing the largest free trade and investment agreement in history with the US and EU, accounting for over 50 per cent of world GDP.
I have not mentioned a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians as I am sceptical about such a possibility. But I have no doubt Obama will do his best to achieve it, and I hope that in his last two years as President he will find the courage to exert more pressure on Israel to come to its senses and show more flexibility in its dealings with the Palestinians.
Obama has no more elections to face and so should not worry about the pro-Israeli lobby in the US.