U.S. Midterm Elections
My father and I stayed up yesterday to watch the US Midterm elections. We watched until we knew the Democrats would hold the Senate and then went to bed. While we waited, we talked about what was going on and what we thought would happen if the Republicans had taken the House of Representatives (which they did), and that was a lot of fun.
Broadly, we seem to agree with the BBC's take on this. The article outlines three options: gridlock, co-operation and unpredictability, and it will be fascinating to watch how they unfold.
Gridlock is that the Republicans will use their position to completely stall all legislation. The U.S. government comes to a grinding halt and nothing happens. We felt it was the likeliest option, given how fanatical Republicans are and just how much they've played this card in the past - under Newt Gingrich and the Clinton administration. We also felt that they would only have this one chance to destroy the Healthcare reform, while it was young and vulnerable, before it became more accepted into the national psyche and then became impossible to remove, much like it has done in Europe.
However, as the article points out, voters are annoyed that Obama hasn't kept his promise to make Congress more bi-partisan and that it is politics-as-usual in Congress. If the Republicans drive the government into gridlock during a time of major national uncertainty, as the current economic situation counts to most Americans, then the Republicans could lose much support from the electorate and could seriously break their pledges to reform Congress. They could be punished quite heavily for this.
However, with the new Tea Party movement having risen up in the USA, something completely different could happen. The Tea Party could split from the Republican Party into a third party, or force a split in the Republican party that could be used by the Democrats to drive a wedge through them. The Tea Party side could drive moderate Republicans into the arms of the Democrats whether they want to or not, if they adopt a completely gung-ho no-compromise approach that the mainstream Republicans cannot afford to embrace, or the Tea Party could hijack the republican Party and declare the political equivalent of war on the Democrats, and things could get very ugly very quickly.
Apart from that, it was interesting noting the dynamics in the US that led to the Republican resurgence, despite the fact that everyone had written them off with Obama's election. Both my dad and I feel the Republicans were insane and needed rebalancing from the Democrats. This is why we feel that the voting in of Republicans again is insane and completely inexplicable except in a "well, they're Americans, they do that" way. However, even as I was surprised by this, I realised that I'd been open to a current that helped explain the resurgence, which is that the Democrats, for all their needed social reforms to help people get through the tough times and necessary adjustments, were adopting a more Keynesian spending-your-way out of a recession, which is fine - if you have money when the recession hits. Unfortunately, they don't, and just like in the UK, it's not going to work. As a result, people are appealing to the fiscal conservatives, whose home is the traditional Republican Party, to put things right.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party is still gripped by the lunatic fringe, who know that fiscal conservatism and right wing values are inseparable, and solving the deficit means removing every single program based on human decency. As a result, the US electorate might be in for a rude awakening if the lunatic fringe takes over. Seeing this dynamic makes me realise how extraordinarily lucky we were in the coalition government: we have a government prepared to cut the deficit without sacrificing the principle that we are a society and should look after each other. What was agreed was bad, but it could be so much worse, and we could have had our own Tea Party equivalent to "fix" things. Dad pointed out that, rather than being amplified, the Tea Party style voices in the Conservatives (as well as the left wingers in the LibDems who don't care that the country is broke) have been marginalised by the coalition, making the UK's policies about as sensible as they could be under the circumstances.
If I've identified the dynamic correctly (which we both thought I had), then it really does suggest that the electorate desire cooperation in tackling the problems of their country, a best of both, much as we have, and I've been hearing Americans talk enviously about our solution, something I hadn't thought that would happen (I had originally thought that they were lucky to have gotten new leadership to deal with the crisis while we staggered along under Labour for a while, whereas now I'm not so sure). Dad also pointed out that this is the last chance for the lunatic fringe to come out and try to put things back to the way they were, when times were the best they had ever been for them, despite all of the hard reality that had set in. Rather than this election being the moment when the Tea Party's time to rule has arrived, it could be the moment where the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party are finally being drawn out to the surface in preparation to be sucked out and removed, like a poison. However, if not, then it would be the moment when the US embarked on the path to sort itself out and then said, screw that, being sane is boring, let's have some more madness.
Broadly, we seem to agree with the BBC's take on this. The article outlines three options: gridlock, co-operation and unpredictability, and it will be fascinating to watch how they unfold.
Gridlock is that the Republicans will use their position to completely stall all legislation. The U.S. government comes to a grinding halt and nothing happens. We felt it was the likeliest option, given how fanatical Republicans are and just how much they've played this card in the past - under Newt Gingrich and the Clinton administration. We also felt that they would only have this one chance to destroy the Healthcare reform, while it was young and vulnerable, before it became more accepted into the national psyche and then became impossible to remove, much like it has done in Europe.
However, as the article points out, voters are annoyed that Obama hasn't kept his promise to make Congress more bi-partisan and that it is politics-as-usual in Congress. If the Republicans drive the government into gridlock during a time of major national uncertainty, as the current economic situation counts to most Americans, then the Republicans could lose much support from the electorate and could seriously break their pledges to reform Congress. They could be punished quite heavily for this.
However, with the new Tea Party movement having risen up in the USA, something completely different could happen. The Tea Party could split from the Republican Party into a third party, or force a split in the Republican party that could be used by the Democrats to drive a wedge through them. The Tea Party side could drive moderate Republicans into the arms of the Democrats whether they want to or not, if they adopt a completely gung-ho no-compromise approach that the mainstream Republicans cannot afford to embrace, or the Tea Party could hijack the republican Party and declare the political equivalent of war on the Democrats, and things could get very ugly very quickly.
Apart from that, it was interesting noting the dynamics in the US that led to the Republican resurgence, despite the fact that everyone had written them off with Obama's election. Both my dad and I feel the Republicans were insane and needed rebalancing from the Democrats. This is why we feel that the voting in of Republicans again is insane and completely inexplicable except in a "well, they're Americans, they do that" way. However, even as I was surprised by this, I realised that I'd been open to a current that helped explain the resurgence, which is that the Democrats, for all their needed social reforms to help people get through the tough times and necessary adjustments, were adopting a more Keynesian spending-your-way out of a recession, which is fine - if you have money when the recession hits. Unfortunately, they don't, and just like in the UK, it's not going to work. As a result, people are appealing to the fiscal conservatives, whose home is the traditional Republican Party, to put things right.
Unfortunately, the Republican Party is still gripped by the lunatic fringe, who know that fiscal conservatism and right wing values are inseparable, and solving the deficit means removing every single program based on human decency. As a result, the US electorate might be in for a rude awakening if the lunatic fringe takes over. Seeing this dynamic makes me realise how extraordinarily lucky we were in the coalition government: we have a government prepared to cut the deficit without sacrificing the principle that we are a society and should look after each other. What was agreed was bad, but it could be so much worse, and we could have had our own Tea Party equivalent to "fix" things. Dad pointed out that, rather than being amplified, the Tea Party style voices in the Conservatives (as well as the left wingers in the LibDems who don't care that the country is broke) have been marginalised by the coalition, making the UK's policies about as sensible as they could be under the circumstances.
If I've identified the dynamic correctly (which we both thought I had), then it really does suggest that the electorate desire cooperation in tackling the problems of their country, a best of both, much as we have, and I've been hearing Americans talk enviously about our solution, something I hadn't thought that would happen (I had originally thought that they were lucky to have gotten new leadership to deal with the crisis while we staggered along under Labour for a while, whereas now I'm not so sure). Dad also pointed out that this is the last chance for the lunatic fringe to come out and try to put things back to the way they were, when times were the best they had ever been for them, despite all of the hard reality that had set in. Rather than this election being the moment when the Tea Party's time to rule has arrived, it could be the moment where the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party are finally being drawn out to the surface in preparation to be sucked out and removed, like a poison. However, if not, then it would be the moment when the US embarked on the path to sort itself out and then said, screw that, being sane is boring, let's have some more madness.