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Special Report
Harjap Singh Aujla
History bears testimony to the fact that every two term American president loses big in his sixth year in office. The American public has been a silent spectator to the tug of war being enacted in the House of Representatives between the Republican majority and the Democratic minority. In the upper house, the senate, the roles were reversed, but nothing tangible could be achieved in both houses of the national legislature. The Democratic Party enjoyed a slender majority in the U.S. senate and whatever was being passed by the Republican majority in the house was reversed by the senate. In the stalemate nothing was being achieved. The president did not like what was happening at the Capitol Hill and he rejected most of the Republican legislations, but even he was helpless in pursuing his favorite agenda. Minimum wage could not be increased.
The man on the street did not like a political stalemate. They were angry at the ugly state of affairs. But they did not know which party’s fault it was. In the midterm elections, the polling percentage is always low. But in 2014, not even one third of the voters exercised their right to franchise. The Republicans generally have a very strong line-up of committed voters. Their core supporters seldom fail to vote. The Republican campaigns were very well financed by the Wall Street and by the special interest lobbyist groups. They out spent the Democrats by margins of 2 : 1. The media this year was covering the Republican viewpoint more forcefully. Although the job-less rate is down to historic lows of below 6%, inflation is rather low, the stock market is booming, the oil prices are at record lows and the public spending is rising, the president did not get any credit for it. In fact in his sixth year in office, Barack Obama is a president much maligned by the media and the politicians. The underdogs, the Democrats also preferred to shun the president. They did not request him to campaign for them or to raise funds for them.
This president, in spite of being much maligned, is still very popular in the African American community and the Hispanic American community. When most of the Democratic candidates shunned the president, the minorities did not like it. The African Americans and the Hispanic Americans became disinterested in the election. That is why the poll percentage was very low and the Democratic support base remained dormant. After the election, some of the defeated Democrats did soul searching for their massive failure. Most of them now agree that shunning the president was a dumb idea. The president was capable of raising substantial amounts for his party’s candidates, which would have lessened the imbalance in election funding.
Now, the Republicans have increased their majority in the House of Representatives and they have taken control of the senate too. This has rendered the president lame-duck. May be he can do something by executive actions, but in most of the crucial matters, he will be powerless.
