The real winner at the US mid-terms? Hillary Clinton

Washington, DC

The American election cycle is beginning to resemble the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. In the film, you may recall, Bill Murray plays an egomaniacal Pittsburgh weatherman named Phil Connors who discovers that he’s stuck in a time loop in which the same day repeats itself over and over. He goes bonkers, driving a truck over a cliff in a suicide attempt, only to wake up again the next morning. Substitute the American public for Connors and you have a sense of the prevailing political atmosphere in the US.

Ever since 9/11 shattered its illusion of omnipotence, the United States has been unable to escape its troubles. Instead, it has been subjected to a series of psychic blows, large and small. The most recent ones have been the fumbling attempts of the Centers for Disease Control to contain Ebola and the spectacle of a knife-wielding Iraq War veteran vaulting over an iron fence past the Secret Service and entering the White House through the front door, until he was serendipitously tackled near the staircase leading to the Obama family’s private quarters by an off-duty officer.