American political institutions (1): the mid-term elections
This autumn, I am doing a six week (five session) evening class at London’s City Lit on the subject of “American Political Institutions”. The lecturer is Malcolm Malcolmson who is also the Principal of the City Lit (good to see someone leading from the front) and I have heard him lecture before (see this posting). He is incredibly knowledgeable about American politics and a very clear presenter.
The first two sessions will be about the context for the institutions and the last three will look at the executive, the legislature and the judiciary respectively. So this week, after a broad introduction to the three institutions and the notion of the separation of powers, we looked at the results of this week’s mid-term elections when all the House of representatives, one third of the Senate, and a clutch of State Governorships and other local officials were up for election.
Whichever way you look at it, the Democrats did very badly and the Republicans now control the Senate as well as the House. But our lecturer pointed out with long-term data that the party of the incumbent president usually does poorly in mid-term elections, especially in the second mid-term elections if the President is serving a second term (as Obama is). The only real exception in recent times was in the case of Bill Clinton’s second term when Democrats did well in the mid-terms, probably as a reaction to the fierce Republican hostility to Clinton over the infamous Lewinsky affair.
Malcolm made it clear that the 2016 elections start now and, of course, the focus will be on the Presidency. He is convinced that both Democrats and Republicans will have a woman on the Presidential/Vice-Presidential ticket. He expects Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential candidate and he speculated that Susana Martinez could be the Republican vice-presidential candidate.
I know that this course will help me give more depth and colourt to my web site guide to the American political system.