Although telegraphed for months by pollsters, the brutal electoral results visited upon the Democratic Party yesterday - at least 60 seats lost in the House, and at least six lost in the Senate - still retained a dramatic oomph of surprise. Democrats of all hues, and from all regions, were swept from office; stolid, senior, centrist lawmakers, with long records of tending to their respective districts, were pitilessly deluged. At a stroke, the Republicans have captured a House Majority larger than at any time since 1928.
There is symmetry in this. The driving force of the GOP this year - the Tea Party - is at its root a kind of overcaffeinated repudiation of the governmental structures put in place by the New Deal. Reagan, of course, baldly declared government to be 'the problem'; and that has remained, broadly, the party mantra. Yet Republicans had made their own wary peace with the Federal welfare state: under Bush II, indeed, it was greatly expanded, and some now seek to portray themselves to older voters as its champion. Tea Party candidates, however, bristle with ideological urgency. Many view government programmes like Social Security and Medicare as frankly unconstitutional; most view the very notion of government spending as illegitimate, even in a recession. In jurisprudence, as in economics, redundant ideas are now brandished aloft as axiomatic verities.
All, of course, is not lost for the Democrats: the Senate has been held. In fact the Senate candidates who appeared most extreme - Sharon Angle, Joe Miller, Christine O'Donnell - were handily defeated (Miller, it appears, by a more moderate Republican). Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a creature of the New Deal, appeared to be heading into a cyclone of unpopularity - but he tenaciously held on to his seat, and to his majority. In California, West Virginia, Washington and Colorado, it appears Democratic candidates did just enough to retain their own seats. And holding the Senate is no mere crumb of consolation. It means that the vast legislative gains amassed by Democrats in the last session can be protected - for now.
That voters are variously indifferent to, or soured or enraged by some of these gains is something that should perplex nobody. Protracted and high unemployment, sluggish growth and a toxic political environment have, over the past two years, steadily eroded the popularity of the President and his party. The compounding factors that have produced the Republican gains - deliberate misinformation ventilated by hostile media, the persistent disengagement of a disciplined and recalcitrant opposition, and a sequence of missteps by the White House - are also well known. What remains unknown, for now, is the outcome.
The most obvious repercussion of last night's results is political: America's Federal Government is once again a house divided. How this division will manifest itself - truculent gridlock or uneasy consensus - is yet to be seen. Speaker-elect John Boehner, no doubt aware of the bilious and eager partisans in his caucus, must also be mindful of the public's expectation that some legislating might actually get done. 'Hell No', Boehner's signal intervention in American political life thus far, is not a platform on which to run a co-equal branch of Government.
The repercussions for the American - and therefore world - economy are even less promising, for Republicans, like Britain's Conservatives, ran on a repeated promise to cut spending. Peter Beinart puts it best:
The real loser [last night] is Keynesianism: the idea that when businesses and individuals stop spending, government must. That idea will not rebound; it's over for this period in economic history. First Britain, and now the United States, are responding to the worst economic contraction in 75 years by contracting government, despite the fact that the world's best economists are screaming that it's exactly the wrong thing to do.
More worrying is the perverse incentive offered to Republicans: the worse the economy does, the better their chances of reclaiming the White House from Obama. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell straightforwardly broached this before the election: 'The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.'
Which brings us to Obama himself. Two years of legislative achievement and economic distemper have been capped by an epic repudiation. How will his Presidency rebound? Both Clinton and Reagan, having taken office in recession, saw early defeat give way to growth-fuelled popularity. Obama inherited a much graver crisis than either man, and cannot afford to hope for a similar take-off. Having determinedly reset the foundations of American prosperity with sweeping legislation - in education, infrastructure, health, and innovation - he now chases the phantom of recovery. He once pointedly noted his preference for being a really good one-term president rather than a mediocre two-term one. Two years in, this welcome boldness is set for another test. 'The bell that just rang isn't the end of the fight,' said Harry Reid last night. 'It's the start of the next round.' (Sean Coleman)