I believe that the U.S. midterm elections were a caveat against democracy, as the American voters abandoned President Obama and his Democratic Party because of the bad economy, or in other words, because they expected the President to fix in less than two years, what George W. Bush and the Republican Party took eight full years to ruin. If the reader is to consult any map of the United States that shows the election results, he or she will see that the coastal states on both sides, i.e. the states that are adjacent to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, are blue Democratic ones, while the states in the middle and in the south are Republican red ones. This means, in general terms, that those who are more educated, earn more and are more familiar with the outside world have voted for the Democrats, while those who are less educated, earn less and are confined to live in trailer parks have voted for the pro-rich pro-war party that also opposes the health care plan. The military-industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower once warned against (Eisenhower's Republican Party instead became its representative), has replaced communism with Islamophobia to create a new enemy. Today, the Israel lobby and the defense industry lobby promote the idea of an Islamic tide, and subsequent the need for defending Israel and disarming Iran of a nuclear weapon that it does not possess. And then, having already accepted religious myths, Christian Zionists in the Torah belt take these political myths at face value. In the end, Barack Obama has paid the price for abandoning his electoral base that brought him into the White House, which is a left-wing liberal base. Not only did he continue George W. Bush's wars (the withdrawal from Iraq is incomplete, while the war in Afghanistan has intensified), he also followed in the footsteps of his predecessor in terms of further restrictions on individual freedoms under the guise of national security. Today, the U.S. intelligence agencies are free to eavesdrop on Americans on mere suspicion and to monitor their bank accounts, while the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is yet to be closed. Meanwhile, those who committed the crime of invading Iraq, falsified premises for it, and murdered thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, were neither charged nor prosecuted, and instead ended up leading the election campaign against the President who subsequently paid the price for accumulated mistakes. Barack Obama is extremely intelligent, and I hope that he will be able to learn from his mistakes in the next two years and win back the support of a majority of Americans for a second term in 2012. In the meantime, I am not worried much about the impact of these elections on U.S. foreign policy, specifically in the Middle East. The midterm elections focused first and foremost on the shape of the U.S. economy. Besides, while the Tea Party is known to be positioned to the right of the Republican Party, I have not seen a single unified position on foreign policy, and I do not believe that such a position exists. Israel's supporters who represent it in both houses of Congress are ever present and have returned, such as Eric Cantor who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “the president's proposed budget might have to be rejected outright if Republicans take power – after separating out U.S. aid for Israel, of course.” Of course, he represents Israel in the House of Representatives. This also applies to Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (a real catastrophe), who may end up becoming the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. When that happens, the committee will be as though it is headed by Avigdor Lieberman, since Ros-Lehtinen, who represents Florida, is an extremist Likudnik who endorsed every single Israeli war against the Palestinians, and every other war against Arabs and Muslims. But at least, the Republicans did not win a majority in the Senate, and the President will remain stronger, although I heard him saying that he is seeking a common ground in order to work together with the winners in the elections, and that he wants to hear useful suggestions from them. At any rate, the president will soon discover that he will be engaging a party that is divided between its traditional leadership and the winning Tea Party candidates, who, following the irresponsibility of their election campaign slogans, will find themselves in a position of responsibility and decision-making this time, and will hence bear the consequences of failure as did Obama before them. The failure of the Tea Party in governing is inevitable, if it does not change its declared positions. It is in favor of smaller government and lower spending, specifically on the armed forces. The Tea Party is also in favor of repealing the new health care law, and wants to continue Bush's tax cuts which only helped the rich. In this situation, the Tea Party leaders will find themselves confronting the rest of the Republicans when it comes to military spending and wars, before even confronting Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin will be less influential. I even believe that she is out of the picture when it comes to the presidential elections in two years, since the most prominent women candidates she had endorsed have been defeated, while her candidate Joe Miller was beaten in her state of Alaska by Senator Lisa Murkowski, even when the latter had fought the elections alone, mounting a write-in campaign for the Senate seat. In the end she won, and her victory is the first of its kind in fifty years. The midterm elections only decided one thing, namely, Barack Obama's unpopularity, and perhaps this will prompt him to return to his base, which he lost without winning over the other side. [email protected]
