Republicans Pin Hopes on Midterm Elections

[Beco]

Republicans Pin Hopes on Midterm Elections
November Votes Could Reshape U.S. Politics

By NEIL KING JR. and PATRICK O'CONNOR CONNECT
Jan. 1, 2014 7:36 p.m. ET
Voters are rarely kind to the occupant of the White House in the middle of his second term.

A war-weakened George W. Bush lost control of the House and Senate in 2006. Ronald Reagan suffered a similar blow 20 years earlier, when Democrats grabbed the Senate and strengthened their hold on the House. The big political question this year is whether President Barack Obama will face similarly rough treatment in November.

Mr. Obama's fading popularity and the rocky debut of his sweeping health-care law have given Republicans a big jolt of optimism that they can build on their 31-seat House majority and retake the Senate.

There's no doubt the year ended on a sour note for the president and his party. After riding high amid public backlash against the GOP over October's government shutdown, Democrats took a beating over the troubled debut of the Affordable Care Act. Voters in a rolling average of national polls went from favoring Democratic control of Congress to preferring the Republicans.

The outcome of the midterms will have an impact on the president's last two years in office. Democratic leaders in the Senate have ignored or killed a range of legislation emerging from the Republican-led House, while stifling GOP Senate initiatives. That has insulated Mr. Obama from having to veto bills to cut domestic spending, diminish union clout, increase abortion restrictions and alter or repeal the health law he championed. If Republicans capture a Senate majority, the party could apply pressure more directly on Mr. Obama and shape the environment ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304202204579256691296159568

 

[unregistered]

 

[warrior queen]

As a non-American..... can someone please explain mid-term elections?
What are they for?
Your current prez still stays, right?
It's all so confusing!

 

[wrant]

Our member of the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate get re-elected at this point. The President doesn't. That is why we call these mid-terms. It's at the mid-point of the presidential term.

 

[1sickbastard]

As a non-American..... can someone please explain mid-term elections?
What are they for?
Your current prez still stays, right?
It's all so confusing!

Our member of the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate get re-elected at this point. The President doesn't. That is why we call these mid-terms. It's at the mid-point of the presidential term.

Yeah, it's basically like this:
The POTUS is elected every four years (two terms maximum).
Representatives (the 'lower' house of Congress) are elected every two years, no term limit.
Senators are elected every six years, but like wrant said, only a third of the seats face election (or re-election) during any election cycle. Senators also have no limits on the number of terms they serve.

Mid term elections are often viewed as a validation or repudiation of whichever party controls the White House. However in historical terms, the president's party rarely gains seats during the mid terms in either house of Congress.

 

[warrior queen]

Seems terribly complicated, not to mention expensive.
Elections cost a bomb!

 

[1sickbastard]

Seems terribly complicated, not to mention expensive.
Elections cost a bomb!

It is, on both counts.
The basic idea was that the House was how the population at large could participate in the federal gov't so those representatives could and would be subjected to regular voter approval.
Initially, Senators were not elected directly, but by the legislators of the several states. The idea was that they would be a check on the passions of the people. Having only a third of them up for possible replacement was to insure the Senate was more stable. Nowadays they are elected directly by the individual voters, but only one Senator per state faces re-election at any one time.
And for the real tweaky part, the POTUS is NOT elected directly by the voters, but by the Electoral Collage, which is a body selected and appointed by the governors of each state. A number of states have laws requiring said Electors to vote the way the majority of voters from that state voted (first past the post), but very few of those laws have any criminal penalty attached. The idea was that the head of state be elected through discussion of 'wise and intelligent men'.
The whole system was designed to minimize direct voter involvement in national politics and make the Congress as inefficient as possible.

Good or bad, it's worked, more or less, for more than two centuries.