The backlash that Barack Obama is now experiencing seemed almost impossible when the
neophyte senator swept into the White House.
It was, in fact, predicted by some. In 2007 when Barack Obama was but an ambitious Illinois senator, American defence expert Kori Shake penned an essay called the Coming Crisis of High Expectations. It was about how the EU and the US would inevitably slide apart – but its message was broader. Beware of exorbitant expectations, she seemed to be saying. Reality hurts.
How much it hurts will become clear today. It looks like a House of Representatives-sized hurt but not a Senate-shaped one. Harry Reid clung on to his Nevada Senate seat, and California will be
Democrat-run. But the Republican Party succeeded in many other places – with the Tea
Party movement both galvanising the right but also preventing more mainstream candidates from winning.
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