Tag Archives: US politics

From election euphoria to the same gridlock…or?

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After the euphoria of president Obama’s his big election victory, it’s important to remember that the political situation in Washington is really virtually unchanged and that continued political gridlock is probably more likely than unlikely.

The new Congress takes office in January. It continues to be deeply divided with a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Republican rule in the House of Representatives.

The Democrats’ majority in the Senate is not large enough to withstand the Republican filibusters even though it seems that the Democrats will increase their majority and strengthen their position even more. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats had to pick up 25 new seats to get a majority, but they only managed to win six to eight new seats. So Speaker John Boehner will continue to control the House and continue to be a main opponent in the upcoming negotiations with Obama and Senate.

In spite of this past and, likely, future political gridlock, president Obama sounded hopeful in his victory speech last night when he declared himself prepared to reach out to the Republicans:

“Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over. And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you. I have learned from you. And you’ve made me a better president. With your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House determined more and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do, and the future that lies ahead. Tonight, you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of bothering parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together: reducing our deficit, reforming our tax code, fixing our immigration system, freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We’ve got more work to do. “

Much depends on the Republican congressional willingness and readiness to compromise with the president. We still do not know much about it. Tea Party supporters are still influential in the new House although several of their leading representatives were defeated, and in spite of the two prominent Tea Party Senate candidates, Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin from conservative Indiana and Missouri, both losing badly to their Democratic opponents.

But, as the Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus writes today, a president who gets the chance to another four years in the White House often it is not always so easy. On the contrary! Just look at Richard Nixon (Watergate), Ronald Reagan (Iran-contra) Bill Clinton (Monica Lewinsky). It is highly likely that the Obama administration can avoid the fate of his three predecessors — his administration has distinguished itself for being free of scandals — but his mandate is weaker than before compared to his election victory in 2008, with only slightly more votes than Romney – about 53.5 million for Obama against 52.8 million for Romney.

Time will tell, but there is a sense of great urgency in Washington the day after Election Day.

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As race tightens VP debate becomes more important

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Tonight’s TV debate between Vice President Joe Biden and his Republican challenger Paul Ryan will be exciting and important, although it will not affect the election outcome in any significant way.

That’s the belief, at least, of Gallup, whose recent report shows that none of the last eight debates between vice presidential candidates, between 1976 and 2008, had a major impact on the election results. In the 2008 election, for example, when Joe Biden debate Sarah Palin, support for the Republicans fell by only 1 percent after the debate, while support for the Democrats rose by 2 percent.

The race has tightened since Romney’s strong debate last Wednesday coupled with Barack Obama’s close to catastrophic performance. But, warns Nate Silver on his excellent political statistics blog FiveThirtyEight, in spite of Romney’s great success in the polls after the debate, he has not taken the lead in one of the ten “swing states” or “battle ground states”.

Romney, according to Silver, may have improved his chances of winning the election by 15 to 20 percent a result of his victory in the first TV debate, but:

”The more troubling sign for Mr. Romney, however, is that although he’s made gains, he does not seem to have taken the lead in very many state polls. That trend, if anything, has become more entrenched. Of the half-dozen or so polls of battleground states published on Wednesday, none showed Mr. Romney ahead; the best result he managed was a 48-48 tie in a Rasmussen Reports poll of New Hampshire.”

So Biden-Ryan debate tonight becomes very important for the remaining four weeks of the election campaign. For the Democrats the goal is to regain the lead and the momentum before Obama’s failed debate and for the Republicans it’s about not losing their new momentum. How will it happen?

I like Matt Miller’s advice to Biden in his weekly column in the Washington Post about what the vice president must do to win the debate. It will not be enough to accuse Romney of being a “liar” – more is needed.