The Guardian view of the US midterms: plenty to shout about

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/30/guardian-view-us-midterms-plenty-shout-about

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David Cameron’s government presides over a British economy that has grown by 3% in the past year, figures published last week said. Across the Atlantic, though, Barack Obama’s administration presides over one that is doing even better than that. Figures released on Thursday showed the US economy growing by 3.5% over 12 months. This followed Wednesday’s vote of confidence in the economy embodied by the Federal Reserve’s decision to end quantitative easing after six years. So is it celebratory diet colas all round?

Hardly. The prime minister and the president also have other things in common. Each in his very different way lacks the common touch. And neither seems able to leverage a strengthening economy into political popularity. In fact, quite the reverse. In the US, Mr Obama’s Democrats seem to be heading for a clunking defeat in the midterm elections next week. This disjunction between economic performance and political success would seem to upend one of the great cliches of modern politics. These days it’s the economy stupid – except when it isn’t.

There are, of course, plausible reasons why Democrats are failing to convert economic recovery into robust electoral performance. Just as in Britain, the strong US figures mask considerable economic uncertainty over whether such levels of growth can be sustained in the form of secure, well-paid jobs. And American voters haven’t actually gone to the polls yet, so the damage to the Democrats may turn out to be less sweeping than some of the current predictions. Yet opinion polls can never be laughed off. Right now, their message is that the Republicans will retain the House of Representatives next Tuesday with ease and will capture enough Senate seats to win control there too. The next two years in Washington are set to make the last four look like an age of mutual civility and respect.

It is tempting to say all this is a conspiracy against the citizenry – and in some ways it is. Some will highlight the Tea Party’s role in mobilising the Republican base far more effectively than the Democrats have done with theirs. Others will blame corporate money, the sluice gates opened by the supreme court, allowing half a billion dollars to be spent in the house races and more than $300m in the Senate contests, relentlessly targeted against Mr Obama and at candidates’ associations with him. Others will cite ruthless attempts to disenfranchise poor and minority voters. Many will lament the power of the talkshow trash talkers. All these are genuine grievances.

Yet Democrats, including this consistently aloof president, must accept responsibility too. The Republicans have no new plans on the economy, immigration or healthcare. Their agenda is a classic deregulatory platform, allowing banks, energy giants and large corporates do whatever they want. This is less a populist platform than a revived gilded-age politics of special interests which Democrats have failed to counter effectively.

It is not as if Mr Obama has a bad record. Quite the opposite in many ways, especially when Capitol Hill’s dysfunctionality is considered. Citing healthcare, financial reform, economic management and environmental policy, the economist Paul Krugman, often an Obama critic, recently called him “one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history”. No president gets to do everything his voters dreamed of. Yet whatever next week’s verdict, Mr Obama’s work is set to endure. That’s surely worth defending.