Australians Weigh the US Midterm Elections · Global Voices
Kevin Rennie

A horse named Americain won our biggest race the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. Just for the record, it was bred in the U.S.A., has a French jockey and trainer, but is Australian owned.
Despite this distraction there have been immediate responses to the Congressional elections in the Oz blogosphere. We’ve become used to a volatile Australian electorate in recent times.
Annon at Public Opinion, a progressive blog, sees one central theme for the next two years:
A gridlocked Congress isn't going to help address the America that has a sick economy, a looming lost decade, millions of people out of work and millions more fighting to keep their home. The economy is going to dominate the next two years and the Presidential elections. To survive Obama has to turn the economy around. Can he do it?
Obama’s got problems
Steve Kates at Catallaxy Files, self-styled as a ‘libertarian and centre-right blog’, has a similar view from a very different perspective:
There were other issues of course, with health care reform at the very top of the list.  But at the end of the day, the palpable damage to the American economy of the “stimulus” package has been the core problem. Had the US entered recovery after a short sharp recession, there may have been lost seats here and there but not the rout we have seen. But with the American economy floundering, having no momentum and unemployment at deep recession levels with no sign of a return to more prosperous times, this was the result.
US Election a Referendum on Keynesian Economics
Nasking at Café Whispers wonders why Health reform hasn’t worked politically for Obama:
Maybe the American majority will truly WAKE UP oneday…see thru the cons…learn to have the patience  to wait for long-term plans to work? Perhaps the jobs will come. In time. And Obama will rise again. As people are not kicked out of their health funds due to pre-existing conditions…and they see the benefits of having their young adult children remaining on their health insurance packages…and older people realise that Medicare “donuts” have been filled so they pay less…and university study becomes more affordable…and that in fact Obama did have a vision…and even tho it seemed too much of a compromise…it still took one helluva fight to prosecute & implement it. And that there is more, plenty more to come…if given half a chance.
US Election…slightly saner than it could’ve been…but
Writing at New Matilda, Aron Paul sees a divided country:
America is split down the middle between white/non-white, small town/city, old/young — and in this election the old white small town America is still in the majority and lashing out at a president it is all too willing to blame for unwelcome “change”.
Old White Small Town America Is Back In Charge
Giles Parkinson, at business website Climate Spectator, focuces on climate legislation. However, he couldn’t avoid the inevitable pun on Obama’s 2008 slogan in his post title:
US President Barack Obama’s plans for climate reform look dead and buried by the widespread Republican victories in the nation's midterm elections.
He sees it in a gloomy global context:
In many ways, the US is a proxy for what is happening in global negotiations – a complete inability to generate a top-down approach to coordinated action on emissions reduction and clean energy, contrasted with vigorous “bottom up” efforts on an individual or a regional basis.
However, he does see some hope in California’s rejection of Proposition 23:
…a measure put forward by US Big Oil to put the state’s climate bill and clean energy acts on hold.
It means that California’s Clean Air Act of 2006 remains in place and will now begin to do useful things.
No, they couldn't
Hillary Clinton is headed our way next week so bloggers will be busy with other pressing U.S. related matters.