In my classrooms at Drexel and Temple Universities in Philadelphia where I teach CPM Scheduling and Law for Engineers, we treat midterms as both teaching and learning experiences. Students are told that a poor midterm, followed by a better final, will not be counted against their final grade.  

The midterm is graded perhaps a bit more rigorously than the final. But students may learn from the midterm both gaps in subject matter content and the idiosyncrasies of the grading by this professor, hopefully leading to a better grade on the final. The professor learns where a number of students have perhaps not been properly instructed on some issue, hopefully leading to adjustments to the material and delivery.  

In a couple of weeks, many of our nation’s legislators will be getting their midterm grades. We citizens will have perhaps looked more closely in these next weeks at their performance during the past two years, so that we may better instruct them on how we desire they run our country. They will perhaps learn what we expect from them. Some may even find that we citizens are less forgiving at this midterm assessment than the professor from Philadelphia. 

My beliefs on this election, with which you may agree or not, are that a dramatic mandate in one direction or another, either reaffirming or disavowing the current administration, will lead to a better economy. A lukewarm response, changing a few seats either way, even possibly changing control of one chamber but not the other, will result in a continuation of our current economic condition. Risk takers will continue to hoard resources until the final rules–the Change–has been completed.  

So my prognosis is for an uptick in our economy if either party can claim victory after our midterm election, and unchanged or even a double dip downturn if neither or both parties claim victory.