US Midterm Elections: Why You Shouldn't Care

If you read that next week's phenomenally expensive US elections will bring change to Washington, don't you believe it.

 

America goes to the polls in midterm elections that could shift the balance of power in Washington.

All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for grabs but no one expects the Republicans to lose control.
The interesting battle is over the Senate. Every two years, a third of its seats come up for re-election. This year there are 36 Senate elections. The Democrats currently control the Senate. But that may well change.
Nearly all the Senate seats up for grabs are either dead-cert Republican in their likely outcome or sure-fire Democrat.
Only a handful are 'in-play'.
And the Republicans only need a handful of seats, six to be precise, to take control of the Senate and full control of Capitol Hill.

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Not that big a challenge, you might think, given the general malaise gripping America and the unpopularity of the Democratic president.
Not so.

 

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The US economy may still be in a sputtering state of fragile recovery.
The president is tanking in the opinion polls.
The least popular US leader for more than half a century by some reckonings, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter included.
So you might expect a clamour for change.
By most standards the Republicans should be expecting to walk this.
Especially as many of the states that are contestable are in states where they traditionally do well.
But this is not a Republican shoo-in.
American voters remember how Republican hardliners took the US economy to the brink in the crisis over the debt ceiling.
Some also suspect the political gridlock that is paralysing this country and its economy has to a certain extent been engineered by the Republicans in an effort to destroy the Obama presidency.
So for some voters the challenge this election will be about punishing the Democrats with a protest vote while not allowing that to benefit the Republicans too much.
Voters have another reason to resent their politicians, every evening on their television.

 

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A tsunami of TV ads, many of them negative and nasty, paid for with an unprecedented amount of cash.
In North Carolina alone the amount spent on advertising has just topped $100m (£62m).
In just that one American state they have spent more than three times what all the political parties in the UK spent in the 2010 General Election.
Will it be worth it?
At this point in an election preview it is traditional to say how important it all is, what a difference it will make.
But if you read how these midterms will be a game changer, treat it with scepticism.
The truth is this election may not change very much.
Even if the Republicans end up controlling both houses of Congress, the US government continues in stalemate.
The president will have no allies with the influence to promote laws in Congress, and any legislation sent to him by Republicans on Capitol Hill, he can veto.
So a lame-duck presidency and more gridlock?
Well that's just more of the same.