Obama: Lame duck president?
Republicans win control of the Senate as Democrats are punished in mid-term elections.
Barack Obama is facing the prospect of spending his final two years in office as a lame duck president.
His popularity had already fallen to new lows, as he lurched from crisis to crisis, at home and overseas. Now voters have dealt him a punishing blow in mid-term elections.
Republicans have seized control of the Senate from his Democrats. It means they now hold both Houses of Congress.
Republicans had described the vote as a referendum on Obama’s presidency.
He will now have to contend with a Congress controlled by a party firmly opposed to his policies.
So will the next two years usher in a new era of political conflict or a period of co-operation and compromise as both parties gear up for an all-out battle for the White House in 2016?
Presenter: Jane Dutton
Guests:
Simon Rosenberg – president and founder of the New Democrat Network, a leading US-based think-tank.
Bill Schneider – political analyst and Senior Fellow and Resident Scholar at Third Way think-tank.
Phillip Stutts – Republican Strategist and former Get-Out-The-Vote Director for the 2004 Bush/Cheney campaign.