The dome of the U.S. Capitol Building is reflected in a puddle on a rainy morning in Washington.KEVIN LAMARQUE/Reuters
The U.S. primary season ended Tuesday with an upset: A 35-year-old political novice and Iraq War veteran beat a sitting congressman for the right to carry his party's banner in the Nov. 4 midterm elections. The young veteran will face an openly gay moderate in what some pundits say will be one of the more competitive House races this autumn.
By the way, the former warrior, Seth Moulton, is the Democratic nominee in Massachusetts's Sixth Congressional District, which includes Salem. He overcame resistance from the Democratic establishment to become the first Democratic challenger to oust a sitting congressman in a Massachusetts primary in more than two decades, according to the Boston Globe. And the openly gay moderate is Republican Richard Tisei, a former minority leader in the state Senate.
One typecasts America at one's peril. Not even the country's rigid two-party political system can stifle the country's cultural diversity. There are "wave" elections. More often, the fight for Capitol Hill is decided by local or regional skirmishes. The November midterms matter because the Republicans have a good to very good opportunity to reclaim control of the Senate. With with less than two months of campaigning to go, it is clear that the outcome will be determined on a state-to-state basis, not a national surge of support for what the national Republican Party is offering.
The temptation to narrate the 2014 election cycle in sweeping terms has been great ever since Tea Party insurgents started raising noticeable amounts of money a year ago to wage war with Republican incumbents. But the flames that fed the Grand Old Party's civil war petered out, smothered by the tens of millions of dollars that poured into the coffers of incumbents from the Republican establishment.
In the end, four incumbents lost their primaries. None were senators. The Tea Party claimed an impressive trophy: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. But Mr. Cantor's defeat was the exception that proved that politics, ultimately, are local. Mr. Cantor was on no one's list of incumbents needing protection from Tea Party marauders. That's because he wasn't on the Tea Party's hit list. Yet he lost for the one reason that every elected representative should lose: he started spending more time in Washington than he did at home, even though his former district in suburban Richmond, Virginia, was barely an hour away from the U.S. Capitol.
The midterms have also been characterized as a referendum on Obamacare and an opportunity to punish the Republicans for shutting down the government a year ago. Neither of those narratives held, either. If anything, one cancels the other. Obamacare remains popular with only about half of the population, as one might expect of any new layer of bureaucracy that got off to a troubled start. The fact remains that enrolment numbers still exceeded expectations, including in Republican-leaning states such as North Carolina and Kentucky.
As for the government shutdown, while it remains a talking point for every Democratic campaigner, voters have moved on. Polls show they seriously dislike Congress. But it's hard to lash out properly at an institution. The U.S. public's mood colours perceptions of the president the way the moon reflects the light of the sun. A new poll published by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News this week put Mr. Obama's approval rating at 40 per cent, lower than George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at similar stages in their presidencies. In the past, Mr. Obama has helped get many Democratic lawmakers elected. This year, he is a liability, which is why he's staying away from the toughest Senate races.
Most election forecasters say the odds favour Republicans winning control of the Senate. Republicans need a net gain of six to take the majority. Politico lists 17 races it considers "competitive." All but three of those seats currently are held by Democrats. Politico, along with every other forecaster, already has awarded Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia to the Republicans. The publication says five races are toss-ups: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina. Again, all five currently represent Democratic seats in the Senate.
The election forecasts that favour a Republican victory in the Senate are based largely on Mr. Obama's approval ratings and the fact that so many Democratic incumbents are doing battle in historically Republican states. Yet many of these Election Day outlooks are being made with a significant degree of trepidation. Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist who helps Politico with its forecasts, says Republicans could gain four to eight seats in the Senate. That's an acknowledgment that local conditions are wreaking havoc with everyone's best cases about the outcome in November.
One has to assume Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will keep his seat in Kentucky, where Mr. Obama is unpopular. Yet Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes has distanced herself effectively from the President, in part by campaigning with Mr. Clinton, who is extremely popular in Kentucky. Polls suggest Mr. McConnell and Ms. Grimes are in a dead heat.
The midterm electoral math assumes Republican incumbents win. Yet upsets are possible. The Democratic challenger in Georgia, Michelle Nunn, is the daughter of a popular former senator. Kansas hasn't elected a Democratic senator since the 1930s. Yet the Democratic challenger in this year's contest recently decided to drop out, clearing the way for a popular independent candidate to take a run a Republican Pat Roberts. Prof. Sabato now says Kansas only "leans" Republican.
Local dynamics also are buffeting the Democratic outlook. No one was talking about New Hampshire as a race worth watching earlier this year. They are now, after former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown won the Republican nomination with 50 per cent of the vote. Same for Iowa, where the Democratic Party's chosen one managed to alienate farmers in the U.S. breadbasket. That opened the door to the Republican candidate, who grew up on a farm and is a military veteran.
Joni Ernst, the GOP hopeful, is also a woman, challenging the simplistic notion that the Republican Party is the preserve of men. The United States doesn't conform to type, and neither do its elections.