Publicité
Gridlock on the ballot
While the world’s focus is on Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Democrats and Republicans are fighting another crucial battle in the US Congress. A state by state battle that reveals deep fissures in the US, despite an economic recovery, a fairly robust stock market, a significant shift toward energy independence and less involvement in global conflicts.
A total of 469 congressional seats (34 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives) are up for election on November 8. The Republicans currently hold the balance of power in both the Senate and the House.
The Senate is made up of 100 Senators with each of the US’ 50 states having two representatives. To be in control of the Senate, a party should have at least 51 seats (the Republicans currently hold 54) with the Vice-President having a deciding vote in the event of a 50-50 divide. The House of Representatives is quite similar to the UK’s House of Commons: the US is divided up into 435 congressional districts with each district having the power to elect one representative. The Republicans currently control 247 of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, with 218 needed for a majority
<p style="text-align:center"><strong>***</strong></p>
Change does not and cannot happen on its own. It happens from the bottom up, not really at Congress level.
The 44th US President, Barack Obama, who was elected twice on a Change-agenda, has himself changed a lot. Less optimistic, he’s become fully aware that, in the real and nasty world of DC politics, it is way easier to talk the talk as opposed to walk the walk.
Whatever the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, analysts tend to agree that the best-case scenario for American politics “is not very cheering”. The American folks we are meeting over here strongly feel something is very off in their system. They fear that “real meaningful change” might not come that soon.
“Next year political divisions will probably deepen (...) even the best-case scenario – in which Hillary Clinton becomes president, acknowledges that she will need bipartisan support and woos congressional leaders over White House dinners and late-night whiskies,” writes Lexington in The Economist.
Matter-of-factly, the rules of battle in Washington, DC, have worsened over the past decades. Compromise is THE dirty word as outright obstruction is just another political tactic. People over here claim that Washington’s “utmost achievement has been gridlock”.
“Almost 100 years after Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison made mighty compromises to reject confederation and create these United States, Lincoln took it further, at our time of deepest division, exhorting us to work toward a ‘more perfect union’. There are times we need to emphasize our need to work for the common good. We cannot just look to our political class to move us out of this misgovernance. We have to unclench our fists and open our hands, roll up our sleeves...”, advocates Patricia Duff, a longtime political activist and founder of The Common Good, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks to inspire greater citizen participation in policymaking and end government gridlock.
<p style="text-align:center"><strong>***</strong></p>
For the past two years, Obama has faced a Republican-controlled Senate which sought to derail his agenda in general and hold up his selection of Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland in particular. Republican senators have been refusing to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia (February 2016). Now there are fears that their same principles may bar them from voting for anybody nominated by a Democrat, regardless of whether the American people chose Hillary Clinton to be the next president or not.
As the election race is coming to an end, Republicans countrywide have been coming under fire from the White House for suggesting they may not confirm any Clinton Supreme Court nominee – leaving the top court in the land with eight instead of nine justices. “Some are saying they won’t appoint a ninth Supreme Court justice at all,” Obama told voters in Washington, DC, yesterday. “The fate of the Republic rests on your shoulders. I am not on the ballot, but I tell you what. Fairness is on the ballot. Decency is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Progress is on the ballot. Our democracy is on the ballot.”
Par Nad Sivaramen (de Washington, DC)
Publicité
Les plus récents
