Make no mistake, says Edward Luce in the FT. The US electorate rejected President Barack Obama on Tuesday. He will now spend his final two years in office "grappling" with a hostile Republican Congress, after they gained a Senate majority in the mid-term elections.
The defeat means that, like his predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, Obama has succumbed to the Six-Year Itch as "disappointed voters punish him for failing in his leadership at home and abroad".
There is often a "sneaking suspicion" that the mid-terms are irrelevant, says Gideon Rachman, also in the FT. The turn out was low, at around 40%. The Republicans have won the Senate and now control both houses of Congress, making it difficult for Obama to pass legislation, but "not much was happening anyway".
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Without control of the House or a super-majority in the Senate, Obama has had his hands tied for years. Even with this result, the Republicans won't be able to get much done either, since Obama will be able to veto any legislation they pass. This presents an opportunity for a "rare outbreak of cooperation".
For example, Republicans are more likely to support Obama on big new trade deals with Europe and Asia(the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, respectively) than Democrats.
"But don't count on it." It's not clear what sort of compromises Obama will be willing to make and the Republicans will be loath to give him "anything that looks like a victory".
These "dull" elections matter "not one jot", says Justin Webb in The Times. Americans "despise the whole political class" and don't trust them to "lift the mood of national gloom".
It's telling that despite the Republicans' gains, just prior to the mid-terms the party had an approval rating in an NBC poll of just 29%. The Republicans complain but don't offer solutions to health-care reforms, foreign affairs or any other issues.
Meanwhile, Obama is "electorally toxic"; such is his unpopularity that "very few" Democrats trying to hang on to their seats wanted him to drop by and campaign for them. He seems to be "genuinely semi-detached from the politics of the nation".
This was a mid-term poll that pitted "unloved politicians against other unloved politicians and a president who seems to feel as if he is the unloved-in-chief. A perfect storm of ennui in a nation where cheery problem solving is was its most attractive trait."
