The midterm elections hold today in the United States. In this piece, Brian Brown, a former U.S. Consul-General in Lagos and The Nation columnist, contends that while President Barack Obama is not on the ballot, the elections are about him
Politics is a war of words fought on the battlefield of lies.
An eagle placed its nest in a high place as is the custom of his kind. Majestic is appearance, this eagle soared the highest skies. People marveled from the ground whenever he took to the air. Despite its rare skills and noble appearance, the eagle was possessed with the liver of a chicken. He quivered at the thought of hunters. Although he flew so high that neither arrow nor bullet could reach him, nightmares of being shot paralysed him with fear. Soon, he stopped flying. Though grounding himself, fear of the hunter persisted. He was struck by an idea he thought brilliant. He would clip his left wing thus rendering himself unable to fly. Upon seeing his sacrifice, the hunters would leave him alone because they would no longer see his high flights as an affront to their honor, the eagle reckoned. The one-winged eagle thus presented himself to a gathering of hunters.
After his heartfelt exposition, a hushed silence fell over the gathering. Silence was quickly broken by flinty laughter. Each hunter grabbed his weapon, rushing toward the eagle as if one great mass with many arms. The startled bird, grabbed its severed left wing. Holding the severed appendage, the eagle could not even flap its lone right wing. Death was ordained. Pierced by dozens of arrows and bullets, the bird swiftly expired. The lead hunter gathered his limp body. He sewed the severed wing in place and mounted the eagle’s stuffed corpse on his wall as his most valuable trophy.
Congressional elections take place in America today. While President Obama is not on any ballot, the elections are primarily about him. Because the elections will be a referendum on the President, his Democratic Party colleagues stand to lose most contests. Republicans anticipate winning enough congressional seats that they might capture the Senate and strengthen their stronghold on the lower House. Republican capture of the Senate would represent a harsh defeat for President Obama. He would have moved from a President in retreat to one under great siege with no respite and no clear escape except the expiry of his term.
That the President and his party have come to this point is a disaster significantly of their own making. After winning the 2012 election, Obama and fellow Democrats entertained themselves with the hyperbole that demographic change had resulted in a secular shift in American politics. This shift would provide Democrats a decisive advantage for the foreseeable future. Blacks, Hispanics, youth and women had coalesced to forever throw elections the way of the Democrat. Meanwhile, Republicans had thrust themselves so far to the extreme right on social issues, from immigration to gay marriage, that they had ceased being a saleable commodity to anyone outside their own White conservative base.
Folly is ubiquitous wherever one substitutes wishful thinking and fairy tales for sound policy and judgment. The Democrats’ belief that they had constructed a permanent winning coalition was more confection than cogent thinking. They dabbled in make believe and have been singed for this foolhardy excursion.
Believing they had secured the winning edge by courting the abovementioned constituencies, the Democrats did the incomprehensible. They turned their backs on those whose support gave them victory, especially Hispanics and Blacks. Figuring these minorities had no option than the Democratic Party, President Obama and establishment Democrats unnecessarily tugged themselves rightward along the political spectrum. Believing they had defeated and sealed the doom of the Republicans, Obama and his ilk in the Democratic Party did a silly thing. They sought to imitate the policies of the Republicans they had laid low. They did this without a thought that they might suffer in 2014 the fate the Republicans experienced in 2012. It never seemed to dawn on them that, if the choice were between Republicans in Republican garb or Democrats in Republican clothing, those willing to vote between the two obnoxious choices might just select the real thing.
Consequently, Obama and team did nothing material to advance the core interests of the voting coalition that kept him in office and secured the Senate majority for his party in the prior election. He rewarded those who voted for him with the gift of his indifference. On domestic policy, Obama made sounds about economic reform to revive the middle class and grow the type of jobs that would advance people into the middle class. He also made noise about gun control and immigration. Halfway into his term, he has done little on these promises. Speeches now ring hollow because the people can’t see, eat or clothe themselves in mortal words. They need action. On that front, Obama has seemed a lesser being. Most of his policy actions still lean toward appeasing his political enemies instead of helping his base. He continues mauling his left, most loyal wing.
He had the opportunity to present an ambitious jobs and infrastructure revitalisation program that would have cemented and inspired his political base into believing once again that positive change was possible during his watch. Even if the proposal would not have passed the Republican-controlled House, it would have served as a banner around which to rally support this election. However, he did nothing of the type. Thus, the most debated domestic issue remains Obamacare. Because the President forwarded the measure, Republicans now abhor it although years ago it was cooked in their kitchen. Their conviction against it is unyielding. Meanwhile, those who would vote Democratic are confused. They are undecided whether the measure helps or hurts them. They don’t rally to it as they would a flag. They peer at it as one does a complex puzzle. No one ever won an election by offering the voters a puzzle.
Regarding foreign policy, his efforts have been more disastrous. He has faithfully adhered to the advice of neo-conservatives Republicans and interventionist Democrats aligned to international Money Power and the war business machine. They have led him into the bog. This is half true. He knows their advice is terrible but their clout in Washington is immense. This makes their wrath as terrible as their advice. Afraid of incurring their anger, he accepts their counsel knowing full well where it leads. While they are pushing him, he also allows himself to be pushed. History will not provide him the minor solace of claiming he was guided astray. He has assumed the risk of taking advice of those from whom advice is not to be taken. As such, he cast himself into the arms of reckless danger abroad.
After Russian leader Putin rescued him from error in Syria regarding the chemical weapons dispute, Obama allowed the American hegemonic movement to buffalo him into ushering confrontation and crisis right to Putin’s doorstep in the Ukraine. Still, longing to wring the neck of Syria’s Assad, the neo-conservatives pressed Obama to wage war against a nation that presented no strategic threat to America and a nation that stood as a bulwark against violent jihadists gaining a territorial foothold in the Middle East. For more than two years, American intelligence services have been organizing, arming and equipping anti-Assad fighters in Syria. A good portion, if not the majority of these fighters, have flittered off to join ISIL, al-Nusra or other extreme groups. Without assistance from America and American allies in the Middle East, ISIL could not have grown into the marauding force it has become. Because of neoconservative legerdemain and Obama’s deficit of policy fortitude, his Administration is trapped in a situation where it helped armed a dangerous group in one nation, Syria, only to fight that same group to protect America’s fragile yet costly and diminishing diplomatic-military achievements in neighboring Iraq.
Last, the Administration’s desultory handling of the Ebola crisis allowed the Republicans to exploit the issue. They spread hysteria, making people believe the White House had fallen asleep in handling the matter although only four Americans have been affected. This reminded people of the clumsy roll-out of Obamacare and of the more recent chaotic influx of immigrants from Central America, casting a shadow of incompetence over the man and his manner of governance.
Faced with all of this, key aspects of the Democrats’ winning voting coalition were struck with a disturbing realization. They recognized the Democratic establishment saw them only as integral to their electoral coalition but not as key members of a governing pact. They needed Black and Hispanic numbers to win elections but did not think these same people and their interests were valuable enough to give them a place in shaping policy. Obama needed them to get him through the door yet wanted them to remain outside. This was tantamount to driving to the dance in a girlfriend’s car but asking her to remain at the wheel while you go inside to enjoy the festival with another. While engaged to the former, the man is making wedding plans with the latter. No one can blame the loyal girlfriend if she has departed by the time the philanderer emerges from the dancehall. He is left to walk alone.
This is what has happened to Obama and the Democrats. Since the 2012 election, they have largely ignored the voters who comprised their margin of victory. Now they ask these people to gear up and vote for them again. Not enough Blacks and Hispanics are buying the potion. Neither or young voters or women. Obama’s popularity with all these groups has suffered materially. Greater numbers of Black people are voicing disenchantment that two years ago would have been seen as racial treason by the very people now expressing resentment. More women will vote Republican than in 2012.
As it stands, Republicans will be uncorking champagne and toasting to their return from the dead. Democrats will be lamenting how swiftly victory has redressed itself as defeat. They will be left to eat the bitter gruel of their hubris. For they hated those who helped them and gave themselves over to those who plotted against them. Rarely has the leadership of an entire party been so complicit in the demise of its good fortune.
Should the Republicans capture the Senate and anneal their grip on the House, there is an even chance that President Obama will face impeachment proceedings before the end of his tenure. If a major crisis intervenes between now and then, the risk climbs to over sixty percent. While some Republicans want him gone now, mostly their intent will not be to thrust him from office but to make his last two years a living hell. Beyond the impeachment threat, Republicans will block even the little things he might have done and will seek to undo the one thing of which he is proudest and which bears his name. They want to attach to his Administration such a messy legacy that no one in his proper mind will contemplate another Black president for decades to come. The destruction of his Administration shall become their great trophy.
There is always a slight chance the election will not be as harsh for Democrats as predicted. If anything we must learn that electoral politics is dynamic; there are no eternal truths. To assume full knowledge is as foolhardy as to take for granted the blind loyalty of other human beings, especially those you have serially disappointed. No man stands still for long if the place where he stands is sinking sand. To win elections, one must create a decisive coalition. After establishing such a coalition one must govern in a matter that maintains it. The only way the voter maintains faith is for the office holder to remain faithful to the interests of the voter. Democratic governance is essentially quid pro quo. Obama took the quid but withheld the quo.
President Obama and the Democrats face a bleak Tuesday because they ignored basic principles. Guided by a strange admixture of haughty personal ambition yet fear of Republican conservatism, President Obama and his team came to believe that they could get away with inaction or even the tawdriest of deeds executed for the pettiest of reasons because of the sheer majesty and visible excellence of who they were. Everything becomes excusable because they meant well and are great people; it was just that superior force or irresistible pressure cause them to bend the untoward way. In their arrogance, they believed they could not be blamed for their shortcomings because they saw their failings as those of the great and the anointed. Obama and his group presented the people a false picture of who they were; then they believed the people would stick with them once they exposed their truer, lesser selves.
But the people did not vote for the Obama that existed, they voted for the Obama that was portrayed. Today, he has asked them to vote for his party once more. If they do so in numbers that will salvage the party in the Senate, it will not be an act of affirmation. It will be an act of forgiveness rivaling in dimension the one the carpenter’s son gave the woman at the well so many years ago.
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