LAST Tuesday, Americans held their mid-term elections in which state governors and legislators as well as federal legislators are elected into offices conventionally. The electoral outcomes saw the Democrats lose their majority in the Congress by polling a paltry 186 to the Republicans’ 239 in the 435-member House of Representatives while managing to retain control of the Senate with 50 Senators to the Republicans’ 46 in the 100 seat Senate. Hitherto, the Democrats had controlled the bicameral legislature with 256 seats to the Republicans’ 179 in the Congress and 57 seats to Republicans 41 and Independents’ two in the Senate.
These outcomes were as a result of many factors. One is the rising unemployment rate currently put at 9.6 per cent and an obvious frustration with the slow results of Obama’s stimulus package of about $787 billion with instruments such as federal tax incentives, expansion of spending in education, unemployment benefits, health care, and infrastructure to boot. This provided a fertile ground for the resurgence of extreme conservatism coalescing around the Tea Party platform and Independents who joined hands with the Republicans to undermine the electoral fortunes of the Democrats. Other marginal explanations have stressed the inability of Obama to retain and sustain the structures and coalition built around his vision of hope, change and unity that gave him the American Presidency in 2008 general elections.
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