MOSCOW, November 3 (RIA Novosti) —The "Obama issue" is at the forefront of the midterm elections to the US House of Representatives, with Republicans campaigning on "Obama is bad" and the Democrats disenchanted with the incumbent president, experts told RIA Novosti.
"The main issue in the elections is Obama," Bill Schneider, a Distinguished Senior Fellow and Resident Scholar at the Third Way think tank said. "Republicans are enraged because they strongly disapprove of his policies, power uses, his leadership, everything. And Democrats are demoralized because they feel that this president has not delivered what they expected him to do," Schneider added.
Jeffrey Feldman, author of "Framing the Debate" and editor of the Frameshop blog, even described the campaigns as issue-less.
"Right now I would say that this is an issue-less campaign. What I mean by that is: the Democrats are running a campaign complaining about the GOP being bad on women's issues and healthcare, while the GOP is running a campaign complaining about the President in general. Nobody is really talking about foreign policy, education, health, taxes. This is very different than the last election when there was a clear discussion of the Affordable Healthcare Act," Feldman told RIA Novosti.
Feldman added that immigration is the only exception, as people on the right are concerned about immigration from Latin America, even in states that do not share a border with Mexico.
"Political coverage in the US media has pretty much collapsed into a discussion of whether or not the President has high or low approval ratings. The GOP is running a campaign simply against Obama. They pretty much have no content other than to say Obama is bad," Jeffrey Feldman said. "In that environment, stories like Ebola or ISIS become de facto evidence for the political argument that the public does not like the President," he added.
Bill Schneider pointed out that on issue after issue, Americans doubt the competence of the "weak and ineffectual leader," Obama has proved to be. And that includes border crossings by young illegal immigrants, the Ebola crisis "which does not seem to have a very coherent policy," the threat of Islamic militants in the Middle East among others.
"All those issues raise questions about the competence of Obama administration and that's really become the main issue in this election," Bill Schneider told RIA Novosti.
MINORITIES
A lot of Americans are expected to abstain from voting with Democrats in particular losing a lot of votes, while women's issues are high on the agenda.
"A lot of minority groups will not vote. They don't generally vote in midterm elections. Especially, as these midterms are demoralized by Obama's problems. I think the minority vote will be diminished," Bill Schneider said, adding that it will boost Republican gains. "I do think that the minorities will remain strongly Democratic, but the turnout will be lower and the support for Democrats will be less than it has been."
Jeffrey Feldman noted that "the big demographic issue appears to be women."
"The GOP will lose overall on women's issues, as they always do, but I think the morning after might show modest GOP gains with women, particularly in the South and West. This could set up an interesting problem for the Democrats heading into 2016. The GOP has virtually no pull with Latinos or African Americans right now. And Democrats continue to be ineffectual at reaching Evangelical and Southern White voters," Feldman told RIA Novosti.
SURPRISES
The widespread expectation of the Republicans gaining the majority leaves no room for any unexpected developments, which results in an "I couldn't care less" attitude. However some surprises still may happen.
"We could end up with a Republican governor of Massachusetts and a Democratic governor of Kansas," Schneider said explaining that Massachusetts is a very strong Democratic state, and Kansas is a very strong Republican state.
On Tuesday, Americans will go to the polls to elect 435 members of the House of Representatives, 36 senators, 36 governors and 46 state legislatures in what is called midterm elections as they occur midway between the sitting president's four-year term. Barack Obama has another two years in office.
