Rex Murphy: Mid-terms touch on American despair


The U.S. mid-term elections scheduled for Tuesday promise to yield a tectonic realignment of political forces in the world’s superpower as it struggles with economic decline, an unresponsive and incompetent political class, and a President largely out of touch with the concerns of mainstream Americans.

Polls suggest we will witness a vast repudiation of President Barack Obama’s first two years in office. Just to give one indication of how lopsided the results are expected to be: A recent poll highlighted nearly 100 Congressional seats in play, i.e. seats in which the incumbent faces a real challenge or likely defeat. Of those seats, 90% now are held by a Democrat.
These midterms are primarily a referendum on Barack Obama, his policies and persona. It is the man in the White House, the interventionist policies he introduced, and the bullying, defiant, and unseemly manner of getting them passed that have roiled a large part of the American electorate.

The passage of Obamacare was one of the most unsightly exercises of partisan willfulness, venality, and plain confusion in the history of American politics. Only the ideologues in Obama’s own party welcomed it — or at least tolerated it for the party’s sake. Obamacare may just be more unpopular now than it was when it became law. Obama made health reform his priority when the country instead was screaming — as it still is — about creating jobs.

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