ELECTION AND POLITICAL GRIDLOCK: Exposing the Innards of a Broken System
photo: Blaise T Nutter
During an election year the traditional pandering by political pundits and journalists is that the current state of government in America is as bad as it has ever been. This is a fairly logical result of the general cynicism that surrounds the political process, and is strengthened by both sides in their quest to rally their political bases by inducing a grave sense of fatal urgency into the outcome of the upcoming election. But the truth of the matter is that the present state, and likely future direction, of American politics is far from encouraging, and much and more indicate that - come the election in November – the United States of America will prolong its current two-year political stalemate and enter into another four years of perpetual political grid-lock. And the timing probably could not be worse. The election
photo: Gage Skidmore
08 A World in Change
Let us begin with a glance into the crystal ball to try and predict the outcome of the 2012 election. In many ways, this election is still a fairly open one, and any major event with the magnitude of the BP oil spill, Hurricane Katrina or Lehman Brothers could still turn the political landscape completely upside down in the following months. However, at present the following can be said: The Republicans – who are ahead of the Democrats in fundraising – will with all likelihood gain several seats in the Senate and secure a simple majority, but will at the same time almost certainly fall
shy of the 60 seat super-majority required for a filibuster-proof control over the upper chamber. Minor gains by the Democrats in the House of Representatives can also be expected, but the 25 seats required to regain control in the lower chamber of Congress is theoretically only barely possible. Finally, one must understand when it comes to an American presidential election that the actual popular vote of the people carries very little weight. The only thing of importance is that each state is given a number of electoral votes according to the size of their respective population, and the triumphant candidate in each state then secures all of these votes. To win the White House a candidate needs 270 electors. About four fifths of the states are from default already considered either solidly Republican or solidly Democrat, leaving the presidential candidates to compete against each other in only a handful of battle-ground states, called the swing states. In 2008, Mr. Obama succeeded in carrying several traditionally Republican strongholds such as Virginia and North Carolina, and polling suggests that they might still remain on the table for him in this election cycle. With several traditionally Republican states being up for grabs, but probably none of the Democrat strongholds, the amount of battleground states is unusually high. During the past decades, presidential elections have mainly been decided in Ohio and Florida, two populous and prominent swing-states, but this November Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney will in addition to these also be fighting over Virginia and North Carolina, as well as five minor states. And in order to secure the presidency Mitt Romney will have to score a full house. He will have to carry all four of the major swing-states, three of them together with most of the minor ones or be able to put currently solid Democratic states back onto the table. The electoral math makes a Romney win in November highly unlikely, but it remains a possibility. Change – not so likely Which leads us to the macroeconomic implications of an Obama re-election, with a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, which will with all likelihood serve to maintain the current dangerous status quo in two very important areas.