Reloading day

On Tuesday, American voters go to polling stations in order to vote for members of both chambers of Congress, governors, mayors and many other local election persons. The main thing is, of course, the elections to Congress. The entire composition of the lower house and a third of the Senate is subject to re -election. If in the House of Representatives Republicans firmly hold the majority (currently 234 out of 435 seats), then a desperate struggle was going on for the upper house.

After the 2012 elections, the democrats belonged to 53 of 100 Senate mandates, the Republicans - 46, and two senators are independent, but are blocked with the democrats faction on fundamental issues. Thus, the Republicans need to get an additional six votes to become a majority fraction.

If the democrats manage to hold 50 seats, having lost two, they will still remain a majority, because in this case the voice of the vice president, who is the president of the Senate, is put on the scales of the scales, but votes only if the voices are divided equally. However, if the democrats receive 49 seats, and the Republicans 50, it will be decided, which will receive the majority of the parties, one person will be one person - independent candidate Greg Orman from Kentucky. He will almost certainly win the current Senator from Kentukka Republican Pat Roberts. Democrats candidate Chad Taylor withdrew his candidacy in favor of Orman, although his name remained in the ballot. However, Orman answers the questions about which faction he will join the bloc. In addition, any of the independent candidates, Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Angus King from Men (they do not re -elect in this electoral cycle), can change party affiliation.

Such cases are not so rare in the history of American elections. In 2000, the Republicans received 50 seats in the Senate and became the majority faction thanks to the voice of Vice President Dick Cheney. But soon Senator Jim Jeffords, elected from Vermont as a Republican, declared himself independent - and most went to the Democrats.

Most likely, however, the majority in the upper house will receive Republicans. As the calculations based on the latest election surveys show, the probability of this is 73-75 percent. Then, in the next two years, control over both chambers of Congress will go to the Republican Party. This is difficult for the president, but by no means a dramatic situation. The separation of the authorities was invented so that the executive and legislative branches look for a compromise, and not stamped each other's decisions.

Starting from the second half of the twentieth century, the multi -partyism of the White House and Congress is by no means an exception. Only the Republicans Richard Nixon and his successor Gerald Ford during the entire period of stay in power were dealing with the opposition congress, and the democrat Jimmy Carter replaced them with completely loyal. But Carter is considered one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States. At the beginning of the first term, the Presidential Party, as a rule, controls at least one chamber of Congress. But this happiness ends quickly. The Republican of Bush Sr. all his 4-year term (he had one) worked with the Democratic Congress, Democrat Bill Clinton six years out of eight with republican. Ronald Reagan and Bush Jr. lost control of both chambers on the last two-year segment of the second period. So Barack Obama is the time to be in a situation of "divided state power", as is called in America.

This is the system of checks and counterweights - but not at all what President Putin had in mind in his Valdai speech.

The defeat of the Democratic Party is primarily the defeat of Barack Obama. Judging by the surveys, despite the revitalization of the economy and a decrease in unemployment, the Americans are still not satisfied with the state of affairs in the country. They have more trust in the Republicans in resolving issues such as a reflection of a terrorist threat, budget deficit, general state of economics, illegal immigration, foreign policy. Democrats ahead of health and education. Today, fewer democrats would vote for Obama than four years ago, and the Republicans who vote against him would have been added. The Americans, as a whole, are against the fact that members of the congress to sit in their places: 68 percent against the re -election of current legislators, and 35 percent say that they will not vote for a candidate who is re -elected. In total, 43 percent of voters know how the voices in Congress are distributed - the rest, apparently, do not attach importance to this.

The level of approval of the activities of the congress is currently an average of 12.7 percent, and the level of approval of the president is 41.8 percent. In foreign policy, this indicator of the president is even lower - only 35.2 percent. This is the worst result for the entire stay of Obama as president. Since March, he lost 24 percentage points, from August - 10 points.

What do the Americans do not like in the actions of the president in the international arena? They don't like just inaction. More than half of the voters (57 percent) believe that he reacts too sluggish to the threat emanating from ISIS. Half does not approve of his measures to combat terrorism. This is a sharp decrease compared to May 2011, when Osama Ben Laden was killed - then Obama’s counter -terrorist rating was 72 percent.

ISIS air strikes supported 57 percent of voters, but many doubt their effectiveness, and 62 percent believe that this military campaign does not have a clear goal. Ebola’s problem does not add popularity to the President: two -thirds of the Americans advocate the cessation of air communication with the countries of West Africa, where the virus is rampant, but the Obama administration stubbornly refuses to introduce this measure.

"Is Obama capable of rebooting?" - The authors of the article in Politico ask in the heading. This time, the word “reboot” is used-reboot, and not “discharge of data”, Reset, which for some reason was called rebooting in Russian. Noticing this mistake in due time, I suggested that a fundamentally different understanding of the concept of a new course in bilateral relations would still make itself felt. So it happened.

So is Obama is able to "reboot" or will it reach the rest of the second period "lame duck"? The authors of the article write that the president has become gloomy and irritable, that he was increasingly flying in his eyes: he could not defeat the Washington bureaucratic way, did not achieve almost nothing of what he wanted to achieve, lost the entire team of advisers who brought him to the White House. Nevertheless, the president, asserts his current environment, did not give up. If the Congress becomes completely republican, he intends to give him the last battle - to introduce the popular bills on immigration, education, and modernization of the country's infrastructure popularly popular. He still has time to go down in history with a positive track record.