Good Kopp: The 2014 Midterm Elections

By basically any metric, President Obama took a shellacking in the 2014 midterm elections.

The Democrats lost nine seats in the Senate, 24 of 36 state governorships, and gave up so many seats in the House of Representatives that the GOP won its largest majority in that body since 1928, the year Americans elected President Hoover—damn.

Just how bad did these midterms look for President Obama? Well, in a press conference the day after the elections, he claimed that he would “enjoy having some Kentucky bourbon with Mitch McConnell.” This is the same Sen. McConnell, mind you, who A) has a chin not quite differentiable from that of a turtle and who B) once said that “the single most important thing [Republicans wanted] to achieve [was] for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Point being: Getting bourbon with Mitch McConnell is just not something many people—and in particular President Obama—would claim to “enjoy” under ordinary circumstances.

So, with the GOP taking control of both houses of Congress—so badly that the president offered to get drinks with McConnell—the 2014 midterm elections must have been borderline detrimental to Obama’s presidency, right? Wrong. They were exactly what he needed.

I could point to the president’s recent climate deal with China as evidence of something that reflects positively on his post-2014 midterms presidency. Or I could look at his decision to end America’s embargo on Cuba. But, obviously, while those things happened after the midterms, it’s impossible to prove that they wouldn’t have happened anyway; as Harvard students say far too often, correlation does not always mean causation. For the same reason, I am not going to tout the statistically significant uptick in the president’s approval rating in the last month or so. Who knows if the midterms caused this in any way? And I’m not going to focus on his executive actions on immigration, which will improve the lives of millions of young immigrants, though I view all of the aforementioned things as legitimate accomplishments for POTUS.

Instead, I’m going to focus on something far more subjective—a decision that would have Nate Silver, not to mention The Crimson's Data Science Team, livid. Here’s my piece of highly empirical evidence: The president’s got his mojo back—with a vengeance.

Many political thinkers have argued that these elections essentially make it impossible for the president to pass legislation through Congress, and therefore, he’s become a lame duck. So, regardless of his so-called mojo, the argument goes, he can’t be effective. What these pundits leave out is the fact that Obama has basically been legislatively crippled since the GOP took the House in 2010 anyway—losing the Senate in these midterms didn’t change that. If anything, the most recent elections put the onus on Republicans to pass legislation, which allows Obama (for the first time in nearly 8 years) to play the role of underdog—a role he kills. Want proof? Just ask Hillary.

From this position, almost any policy the president enacts seems like a long shot, borderline miraculous accomplishment. And with each new populist policy he advocates for—from two years of free community college to increased access to high speed, low-cost broadband—the president is building momentum. With the economy growing at the fastest rate since 1999 and gas prices down over a dollar since last year, Obama suddenly has some semblance of a benefit of the doubt from the American people, as evidenced by his climbing approval ratings. This is why he was able to take repeated jabs at the GOP during the State of The Union, while maintaining a confident, wide-smiled demeanor. Ironically, by losing Congress, for the first time since he became president, Obama is in control.

As the great Austin Powers once said, “You found my mojo? Groovy, baby.” Who knew it would take a shellacking?

Sam H. Koppelman ’18, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Hollis Hall.