Message from the Editor: the enduring influence of Barack Obama

It may be too soon to assess the legacy of Barack Obama’s two-term presidency, but one of the striking features of the midterm election campaigns in the US this autumn has been the emergence of a clutch of millennial Democratic stars who have been so clearly shaped by the man who sat in the Oval Office when they were teenagers or young adults. Some members of that succeeding generation, such as Pete Buttigieg, share Obama’s centrist instincts. Others, such as Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate candidate in Michigan, sit well to his left. But Obama’s influence is evident in the political styles of all of them, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through to James Talarico and Jon Ossoff, Senate candidates in Texas and Georgia, respectively.

Obama himself has hit the road in the closing stages of the campaign, lending his enduring star power to candidates who carry the Democrats’ hopes of a clean sweep on Tuesday. Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan and video journalist Chris Maddaloni went to see him at a venue outside Atlanta, where the former president campaigned along with Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta’s former mayor, who is aiming to become the state’s first black governor.

“One of the difficulties for the Democrats in every single election cycle lies in how and when to use their most beloved political figure,” Duggan writes. “Obama retains the capacity to generate, in supporters, the fervent optimism and good feeling that marked his first coming. The danger is that he is so good at this stuff that those running for election risk being eclipsed in his presence.”

At stake on Tuesday are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, 36 governorships and thousands of local positions. Some 140 local state referendums are also being contested, including the contentious California Proposition 40 proposing a one-off wealth tax of 5 per cent on the state’s billionaires.

Opinion polls suggest the Democrats will have a good day, with public anger over corruption and the cost of living likely to mean the Republicans will lose their majority in the House of Representatives and even, if everything falls the Democrats’ way, the Senate. But the polls have understated Donald Trump’s support before, and the Republicans will benefit from heavy gerrymandering of electoral districts and record-breaking spending in key states (Elon Musk alone has given $276 million to political funding groups since July).

“It’s inflation, stupid,” says David McWilliams in a column that argues the midterms are in effect a referendum on Trump. “If he loses, US politics could become even more divided, which is almost impossible to imagine,” McWilliams writes. “The divisions will be most acute within the Republican Party, which would undergo its second civil war in a decade. The first war was fought to get Trump in; the next one will be fought to get him out.”

Liz Carolan looks at how attitudes towards corruption have shaped the midterms – just as it did in Serbia, where the opposition last week unseated long-time autocratic leader Aleksandar Vucic.

You can follow our coverage of the election counts late on Tuesday into early Wednesday morning, with on-the-ground reporting from Duggan and Maddaloni. For a recap on the key facts and figures in the meantime, take a look at Paul Scott’s visual guide.

In Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine, children are subjected to a relentless campaign of indoctrination, and young men face conscription to the Russian army. Some risk everything to escape. This weekend Daniel McLaughlin, who is in Ukraine for us, speaks to some of those who managed to cross back into free Ukraine about their experience of life under occupation and the extraordinary journeys that they took to get out.

Data centres are a big story in Ireland, but as the AI revolution creates ever more demand for these energy-hungry complexes, they are also the focus of popular protest across the United States and elsewhere. London Correspondent Mark Paul reports this weekend from Fife in Scotland, where a community of 600 people is fighting a large construction project that would be larger than the village itself.

In Ireland, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is locked in a dispute with solicitors over his attempt to reduce the costs of criminal legal aid. Wait until he hears about the cost of civil litigation, writes Legal Affairs Correspondent Mary Carolan.

As you will no doubt have noticed, everyone is wearing headphones all the time. Some of them are listening to music or podcasts; others just feel awkward without them, or want to shut themselves away from the world. I enjoyed Jack White’s piece on the phenomenon. He looks at the health implications of blasting endless noise into your ear but also at the psychological costs of overstimulation and loss of distraction. “It’s not just that we’re listening to lots of stuff, we’re missing our own lives,” says psychologist Sarah Cassidy.

The domestic political saga of the week was what Political Editor Pat Leahy calls the “soap opera of accusation, intrigue and speculation” that has played out in Fine Gael, the junior Coalition party. It’s an odd story – Leahy thinks Minister for Culture Patrick O’Donovan’s behaviour was ill-judged and Tánaiste Simon Harris’s “plain peculiar”. Whether anyone cares, he suggests, is another matter.

We also have a thoughtful review by Diarmaid Ferriter of Vincent Browne’s new biography of former taoiseach Charles Haughey.

Finally, take some time over three very different interviews: with rugby coach Ronan O’Gara; actors John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi; and currach racer Micheál Ó Maoilchiaráin.

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