US Midterm Elections
Republicans made gains across the board in Tuesday's midterm elections. Most importantly, with their gains in the Senate, they now control both houses of Congress. The Democrats' get-out-the-vote effort failed to overcome the dark money, the voter suppression laws, and their own inadequate and defensive explanations of their policies.
Democrats failed to motivate their base, particularly the young.
Voter turnout was 36.6% - 4 points lower than in the 2010 midterms and 21 points lower than in the 2012 Presidential elections. In exit polls from Tuesday's midterms, only 13 percent of voters were under 30. Nonvoters are also more racially diverse than the voting population....More than 40 percent of likely nonvoters in the 2014 elections identified as Hispanic, black or other racial/ethnic minorities, compared with 22 percent of likely voters...On average, the populations who are likely to avoid the polls are also the populations likely to vote for a Democrat. [US News & World Report Data Mine, Nov. 5]
Voter suppression played a key role in close races.
The voter restrictions passed in Republican-controlled states were aimed to reduce the minority and youth vote. For the most part, the restrictions worked. The Brennan Center for Justice examined the results from North Carolina, Kansas, Virginia and Florida and concluded The Republican electoral sweep in yesterday’s elections has put an end to speculation over whether new laws making it harder to vote in 21 states would help determine control of the Senate this year. ...A quick look at the numbers shows that in several key races, the margin of victory came very close to the likely margin of disenfranchisement. [Brennan Center for Justice, Nov. 5]
Republicans controlled the political conversation and framed the terms of the election.
Stirring up their base with a vigorous anti-Obama campaign, Republicans motivated them to come out and vote. Democrats did nothing to counteract it and, for the most part, "ran away" from the President. Jeff Schweitzer, blogging at the Huffington Post, has one of the best analyses of the election . Speaking of Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell's absurd statement that the way to end gridlock was to put Republicans in control of the Senate, Schweitzer writes: This story highlights the major failure of the left. Democrats have not defined the agenda or narrated the story. This capitulation creates a void of reason such that absurdities like McConnell's claim can take hold without everybody doubling over in laughter. Like frightened children Democrats run from Obama's record, as defined by the right, rather than championing his amazing successes as defined by fact.
Although the rampant, fact-free antagonism to the Affordable Care Act was a major factor, the economy was the issue most on people's minds. In spite of a recovering economy (unemployment down to 5.8% in October), exit polls indicated that 45% of the voters chose this as the #1 issue. What's the deal, then? As President Obama alluded to in Wednesday's press conference and the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien explained Tuesday on Wonkblog, the recovery of the economy as a whole has not created wage or income gains for most people. In fact, those gains have gone almost exclusively to the "1 percent" folks you might have heard about. The beauty of the Republican campaign was that they somehow convinced the American public that this uneven recovery was Obama's fault! Voting for a party whose representatives in Congress are proud of opposing every Obama proposal to increase public-service spending or raise taxes on high-income individuals isn't necessarily the obvious way to address this issue. [Slate, Nov. 6] But then, as H. L. Mencken said many years ago, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
Money wins elections.
SCOTUS's Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions unleashed virtually unlimited money to be spent on the elections - much of it in the form of dark money (i.e., money from undisclosed sources) . The combined totals for both parties for the most expensive midterms in history was nearly $3.7 billion. Even in some places where Democrats had an advantage in donations, they lost - although in some states voter suppression may have played a part. Counting all forms of spending — by candidates, parties and outside groups — Team Red is projected to have spent $1.75 billion, while Team Blue’s spending is projected to ring in at $1.64 billion. CRP’s analysis of last night’s results finds that in House races, the candidate who spent the most prevailed 94.2 percent of the time; the Senate figure is slightly lower, 81.8 percent. [OpenSecrets.org, Nov. 5]
In Brief / Related Links - What will Republican control of the Senate look like?
"Republicans Just Took Over the Senate—Here’s Why That Sucks" From staffing the executive branch through keeping the government open, The Nation describes eight reasons why this new alignment is going to be hugely problematic for progressive governance—perhaps for governance, period. [The Nation, Nov. 4]
"The Pressure to Escalate: The Phantasmagoric World of Washington" Tom Englehardt asks us to think of this otherwise drab midterm campaign as the escalation election. Republican candidates will arrive in Washington having beaten the war and disease drums particularly energetically, and they’re not likely to stop. [TomDispatch, Nov. 4]
"A Red Tide Swamps the US Political Landscape" What do we have to look forward to from this extremist Congress and a ham-strung moderate President in the next two years? [The Left Bank Cafe, Nov. 5]
"How a Republican Congress could Entangle the US further in the Middle East" [Informed Comment, Nov. 5]
Europe's recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 has been much slower than that in the US. Unemployment remains above 10% for the region as a whole, ranging from a low of 5% in Germany to a high of 26% in Greece. One of the reasons for the slower recovery has been the austerity (deficit reduction) measures demanded by the European Central Bank. The Guardian reported on Thursday's labor protests in Brussels: About 100,000 workers marched across Brussels on Thursday to protest against government free-market reforms and austerity measures, and the demonstration ended in violence when people set fire to cars and threw cobblestones and police responded with tear gas and water cannons. About 50 people were injured and 30 detained, police said, in one of biggest postwar labour demonstrations in Belgium, a country long vaunted as a shining example of an efficient welfare state. The violence overshadowed a raucous but largely peaceful march for better protection of workers during the economic crisis. The workers were angry at government policies that will raise the pension age, freeze wages and cut into public services.
Ukraine
Elections were held in the separatist Donbass region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday November 2 - two weeks after the general election in the rest of Ukraine. Kiev refuses to recognize the elections in eastern Urkaine – but has not provoked any hostilities either. The Donbass elections resulted in a predictable outcome, bringing victory to Alexander Zakharchenko, head of the Oplot battalion, who scooped more than 70 percent of the votes. Turnout varied from 65 percent to 100 percent at 350 polling stations, where 1,148,000 people had registered to vote...Not a single shot has been fired in Donbass since November 2 – a situation unseen since spring, including the ceasefire declared in early September after the Minsk talks. [Russia Times, Nov. 3] Russia has backed the vote and called on the elected representatives "to hold negotiations with central Ukrainian authorities." Russia has given cautious backing to a vote in separatist regions of east Ukraine, which local rebels said proved they would never again be ruled by Kiev. Russia has not recognised the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” as independent, but said the vote should be respected. Kiev said it would open criminal cases against the organisers. Most other countries have dismissed the vote as illegitimate and there were no recognised international observers present. Nevertheless, the poll was one more step in the de facto separation of the region from the rest of Ukraine. Moscow’s talk of negotiations between the separatists and Kiev, however, was at odds with comments from the separatists' electoral committee. [The Guardian, Nov. 3]
Occupied Palestinian Territory
East Jerusalem remains tense, and the International Criminal Court ruled on the Gaza Flotilla incident.
In an Al Jazeera op-ed, Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris professor of journalism at Princeton University, describes how "a silent intifada" is taking place in Jerusalem due to Israel's policy of denying Palestinians their natural rights. After forty seven years of occupation, physical isolation, and weakening of leadership structures, the Palestinians of Jerusalem are totally stateless. The few Palestinians holding any sort of symbolic leadership position, such as members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or religious leaders are regularly hauled to the Israeli police station for questions, short-term arrests and are sometimes forbidden to enter Islam's third holiest mosque, Al-Aqsa Mosque....Palestinians seeking housing permits are routinely denied because the requests are not based on an approved zoning plan. Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhoods have purposely not been planned, leaving the local communities to build illegally and then to suffer regular house demolitions for violating city laws. At the same time, Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem in violation of international law.This has led to the rise of groups trying to fill the political void. In several locations around Jerusalem, local groups have sprouted attempting to organise their own community in defence of the Israeli onslaught that attempts to move them out of their homes and city with the goal of making Jerusalem an even more Jewish city. While Israel regularly denies it, these Judaisation attempts are synchronised by the Israeli government, police, courts, Jewish settlers, radical groups and Knesset members, with each group doing its part.
The Guardian reported on November 6 of the International Criminal Court's decision on the Gaza Flotilla incident of 2010. The international criminal court (ICC) will not prosecute over Israel’s raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010, in which 10 Turkish activists died, despite a “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes were committed”. The chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said there would be no investigation leading to a potential prosecution because the alleged crimes, including the killing of 10 activists by Israeli commandos, were not of “sufficient gravity”....Nine Turkish nationals died when Israeli commandos staged a botched raid on a six-ship flotilla seeking to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on 31 May 2010. A 10th activist later died of his wounds. The air-land-sea blockade, now more than seven years old, has devastated the economy of Gaza, and combined with Israeli sieges since 2007 have commentators warning that Gaza will be "unlivable" by 2020.
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| Gaza photo appeared in Al Jazeera/photo credit AFP |
In Brief/Links
China
China's gross domestic product grew 7.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the weakest rate since the first quarter of 2009, adding to concerns the world's second-largest economy is becoming a drag on global growth. [Reuters, Oct. 21]
Ebola
WHO released its data for the period up to Nov. 2 saying that Ebola has now been blamed for 4,818 reported deaths. The group said that the weekly incidence of Ebola seems to be stable in Guinea, rising in Sierra Leone, and declining in Liberia [NPR, Nov. 5]
Syria
"Syria: Mapping the conflict" According to the Syria Needs Analysis Project (Snap), IS jihadists are now in full control of the eastern region of Raqqa and hold significant swathes of territory in Aleppo to the north and Hassakeh and Deir al-Zour in the east. [BBC News, Nov. 7]
"US plan for proxy army to fight Isis in Syria suffers attack": Syrian opposition leader blames Washington for rout as air strikes on Isis seen as aiding Assad crackdown [The Guardian, Nov. 2]
"US Dilemma in Syria: Moderate Stronghold Falls to al-Qaeda, Fighters desert to Extremists" - Juan Cole analyzes the chaotic situation in Syria and potential consequences of arming and training so-called moderate rebels: a present Syrian moderate is all too often a future al-Qaeda member; many of these affiliations are not particularly ideological, but have to do with who is winning and who has more money. [Informed Comment, Nov. 3]
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| Map sources: areas of control and border crossings from the Syria Needs Analysis Project; all other geographical detail from humanitarian organisations and Google |
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