Voters deal major setback to Obama

Republicans have ridden a wave of frustration and economic anxiety to seize control
of the US House of Representatives and shrink the Democratic advantage in the
Senate, dealing a major setback to President Barack Obama and sweeping a number of
"tea party" insurgents into power.
The result - a nearly coast-to-coast blowout - reordered Washington just two years
after voters shook things up and promised to change once more the country's
fundamental political dynamic, presenting challenges to both parties in a newly
divided government.
Obama, who pushed through the most expansive legislative agenda of any president in
generations, could spend the remainder of his term just trying to preserve what he
already accomplished.
Republicans, with a measure of power, will share some responsibility for governing
and may have to do more than simply thwart the president and his fellow Democrats -
or face a similar repudiation by voters in 2012.
Republican Majority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, who is in line to replace San
Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi as the next House speaker, struck a notably sombre
tone as he spoke to supporters in Washington.
"This is not a time for celebration," he said. "Not when one in 10 of our fellow
citizens are out of work. Not when we buried our children under a mountain of debt.
Not when our Congress is held in such low esteem."
Obama planned to offer his reaction at a news conference on Wednesday.
The election results, a minimum 53-seat gain for Republicans, were like a steam
release after months of building pressure and amounted to the biggest turnover since
they won 52 House seats in 1994 - the last time Democrats controlled both Congress
and the presidency.
Republicans won House seats in virtually every part of the country, gaining bunches
in the hard-pressed industrial Midwest and toppling incumbents in Virginia, Texas,
New Hampshire and Florida.
The Democrats fared better in races for the US Senate, hanging onto the majority by
a handful of seats.
Their leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, was re-elected by a surprisingly comfortable
margin over tea party favourite Sharron Angle.
The Senate contests produced mixed results for the nascent tea party movement. Rand
Paul, a founder of the Kentucky branch, notched a victory, Marco Rubio won in
Florida and Mike Lee won in Utah. In Nevada, Angle was also seen as the weakest of
Reid's potential opponents.
Voters also chose governors in 37 states, electing Democrats Jerry Brown in
California and Andrew Cuomo in New York. Republican Nikki Haley posted a tea party
victory in South Carolina, and the Republicans ousted Democrat Ted Strickland in
Ohio.
In some ways, Democrats were fighting political forces beyond their control. Midterm
elections are inevitably a referendum on the party holding the White House and
almost always result in congressional losses.
This year, Democrats were defending a sizable number of incumbents, having picked up
more than 50 House seats in the last two elections, including many in
Republican-leaning districts. That put the party on the defensive from the start.
On top of that, the economy was the worst it had been in more than a generation,
with unemployment approaching 10 per cent and bankruptcy and home foreclosure rates
soaring. The result was a combustible mix of anger, frustration, fear and anxiety;
about four in 10 voters said they were worse off financially than two years ago,
according to exit polls.
The party's problems were exacerbated by the ambitious - critics called it
over-reaching - agenda pursued by Obama and the Democrats controlling Congress. They
muscled through a massive healthcare overhaul, bailed out the auto industry and
passed an $800-billion economic stimulus bill, all in about a year.
The president and his allies said the measures were needed to rescue the economy
from its worst downturn since the Great Depression, and Obama argued right through
election day that the measures were working.
"Things have gotten better over the last two years," Obama said in a round of
interviews on Tuesday with radio stations in several key states. "We can only keep
it up if I've got some friends and allies in Congress and state houses."
But critics said the Democrats had exploited the financial crisis to wrench the
country too far left, expanding the size and scope of the government in ways most
Americans never imagined when they embraced Obama's promise of change back in 2008.
They urged voters to push back at polls.
Republicans were vague, promising tax and spending cuts without offering much detail
or explaining how they would reduce the federal deficit.
But that seemed not to matter. Unsettled voters were looking to vent their
displeasure and Democrats were the obvious target; more than one in three voters
said they cast their ballots to express unhappiness with Obama.
"The way American politics works is if you're in control of everything, you get
blamed for everything," said William Galston, a senior fellow at Washington's
Brookings Institution.
Losing the House could greatly complicate Obama's next two years in office.
Republicans have vowed to roll back the president's signature healthcare bill and
wield their subpoena power on Capitol Hill to launch a series of investigations.
Efforts to address immigration and climate change - the two biggest issues remaining
on the president's legislative agenda - could be exceedingly difficult, given the
vast gulf between Democrats and an energised, more conservative Republican
contingent.