Washington, Nov. 2: Days ahead of a visit to India, the US President, Mr Barack Obama, faces the prospects of a radically altered political landscape with a widely predicted rout for his Democratic party in Tuesday’s mid-term elections.
Mr Obama himself is not up for re-election until 2012, but polls and pundits alike suggest opposition Republicans are poised to gain control of the 435-member House of Representatives, which goes to the polls every two years, and make substantial gains in the Senate where 37 of 100 seats are up for grabs.
Latest polls suggest that Democrats would lose 40 to 55 of their 255 seats in the House, where Republicans need 39 seats to take control. In the Senate, where Democrats have 59 seats, Republicans may just fall short of the 10 needed to get the majority.
The last polls, in Alaska and Hawaii, won’t close until midnight Washington time (9.30 am IST on Wednesday), but it should be clear earlier in the evening whether the trumpeted Republican tidal wave has arrived, or whether Democrats have weathered the storm.
In either scenario, Mr Obama may lose steam, but not power as in the parliamentary system followed in India. As analysts have suggested he could well follow the model of the former president, Mr Bill Clinton, who lost majority in both chambers in his first midterm elections in 1994, two years after entering the White House.
Mr Clinton adopted a blow hot and blow cold policy, sometimes compromising with Republicans and at others daring the opposition as he did during the government shutdown of 1995.
Some of the issues Mr Obama has said he wants to pursue next year, such as deficit reduction and education initiatives, resemble the kinds of narrow and achievable priorities Mr Clinton embraced immediately after both houses changed hands in 1994, according to the Washington Post.
The Republican leader, Mr John Boehner, who would be the next Speaker should Republicans regain control of the House, has signalled he’s not planning to negotiate with the White House or congressional Democrats on his party’s top priorities.