So was it a referendum or wasn’t it, and if so on whom? On November 3rd the Republicans trounced the Democrats in governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia, kicking out an incumbent multimillionaire in the former, and winning in the latter by the whopping margin of 18 per cent after eight years of Democratic rule. The pundits of the right were swift to see this as a sign of the resurgence of their battered party, after heavy losses in the 2006 mid-terms and worse ones a year ago, capped by the triumph of Barack Obama. The augurs of the left noted that reverses in the “off-year” elections held by New Jersey and Virginia have a history of being predictive of nothing at all, having

sometimes been the precursors for drubbings for the ruling party at the mid-terms a year later (as in 1994) and sometimes precisely the opposite, as in 2002.

One thing seems obvious: a lot is likely to happen to Mr Obama’s fortunes between now and the 2010 mid-terms. The economy will either continue to recover or sputter again; health-care reform will either pass or collapse monumentally; Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran all contain the potential to wreck his presidency. And as for Mr Obama’s re-election prospects in 2012, it is far too early to say anything meaningful about those. Bill Clinton, after all, bounced back from the catastrophe of losing the House of Representatives to the Republicans in 1994.

And, despite the success in New Jersey and Virginia, there was fresh evidence that the Republicans nowadays are still a party with serious problems. In upstate New York internal feuding resulted in a House seat that the Republicans won by 65 per cent to 35 per cent a year ago passing to the Democrats. The Republicans could hardly have handled this contest worse. After the local party chose a moderate to run in the special election there, prominent conservative Republicans, led by Sarah Palin, took it upon themselves to campaign not for their own party but for the candidate of the tiny Conservative Party of New York State. The moderate quit in disgust, and endorsed her Democratic rival, who duly won.

... contd.