A big loss in today’s midterms may be a blessing in disguise

Once upon a time there was a democratic President of the United States working with a democratic Senate and a democratic House of Representatives and he went in to his first midterm elections and was slaughtered – losing both houses of Congress and being written off as a one-term President.

That was a man called Bill Clinton who bounced back and out manoeuvred his opponents – so what fate awaits Barack Obama if , as today’s papers predict, his Democrat Party are going to crumble in the elections?

It seems fair to say that the losing of momentum that Obama was able to garner in 2008 has really began to show in Washington – whether it is people leaving his administration (Larry Summers, Jim Jones and others) or in this the general feeling/realisations of the public that ‘well this isn’t as rosey as we thought.’

But regardless of what today’s results come out like,  it’ll actually be quite good for the administration – allowing them to start focusing on actually governing the country and not running the elections. The White House seems to have been in paralysis of late. With Biden and Obama spending massive amounts of time flying around the country trying to convince people to continue supporting them, hugely important work has huge been left on the back-burner.

Besides, if these last two years have seen the best support Obama can get from a Democratic Congress it might actually prove better to work with a Republican House. At least he will have someone to blame.

The Vibe will be experimenting with various ‘live’ ways to cover today’s election results – do feel free to follow/join in/offer advice – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=145805472132471&index=1