Tea Leaves: Reading the omens of the 2010 midterm election

Looking for the underlying political lessons of the 2010 midterm is somewhat akin to finding the proverbial needle ... in a brick.

Much of the conventional wisdom suggests that the outcome reflects Democratic extreme liberalism. Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald, among others, explains what's wrong with this argument:

Ten minutes was the absolute maximum I could endure of any one television news outlet last night without having to switch channels in the futile search for something more bearable, but almost every time I had MNSBC on, there was Lawrence O'Donnell trying to blame "the Left" and "liberalism" for the Democrats' political woes. Alan Grayson's loss was proof that outspoken liberalism fails. Blanche Lincoln's loss was the fault of the Left for mounting a serious primary challenge against her. Russ Feingold's defeat proved that voters reject liberalism in favor of conservatism, etc. etc. It sounded as though he was reading from some crusty script jointly prepared in 1995 by The New Republic, Lanny Davis and the DLC.

There are so many obvious reasons why this "analysis" is false: Grayson represents a highly conservative district that hadn't been Democratic for decades before he won in 2008 and he made serious mistakes during the campaign; Lincoln was behind the GOP challenger by more than 20 points back in January, before Bill Halter even announced his candidacy; Feingold was far from a conventional liberal, having repeatedly opposed his own party on multiple issues, and he ran in a state saddled with a Democratic governor who was unpopular in the extreme. Beyond that, numerous liberals who were alleged to be in serious electoral trouble kept their seats: Barney Frank, John Dingell, Rush Holt, Raul Grijalva, and many others. But there's one glaring, steadfastly ignored fact destroying O'Donnell's attempt -- which is merely the standard pundit storyline that has been baking for months and will now be served en masse -- to blame The Left and declare liberalism dead. It's this little inconvenient fact:

Blue Dog Coalition Crushed By GOP Wave Election

Tuesday was a tough night for Democrats, as they watched Republicans win enough seats to take back the House in the next Congress and began to ponder life under a likely House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). But one group hit especially hard was the Blue Dog Coalition, with half of its members losing their seats.

According to an analysis by The Huffington Post, 23 of the 46 Blue Dogs up for re-election went down on Tuesday. Notable losses included Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-S.D.), the coalition's co-chair for administration, and Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.), the co-chair for policy. Two members were running for higher office (both lost), three were retiring and three races were still too close to call.

The Blue Dogs, a coalition of moderate to conservative Democrats in the House, have consistently frustrated their more progressive colleagues and activists within the party . . . .​

Half of the Blue Dog incumbents were defeated, and by themselves accounted for close to half of the Democratic losses. Some of us have been arguing for quite some time that the Rahm-engineered dependence on Blue Dog power is one of the many factors that has made the Democratic Party so weak, blurry, indistinguishable from the GOP, and therefore so politically inept, and would thus be stronger and better without them ....​

Rachel Maddow also made the point, in case anyone missed it:

While the loss of those pugnacious Democrats is lamented today on the left, the bigger story in the Democratic process is that - it‘s the conservative Democrats, the blue dog Democrats who were absolutely decimated in last night‘s elections.

Of the progressive caucus which has more than 80 members or the liberals, progressive caucus, more than 80 members, four of them were knocked out either in the primaries or last night‘s elections.

For the blue dog coalition, for the conservatives, they‘ve got 53 members. Twenty-four of them lost re-election bids this year. Nearly half of the blue dog caucus is now gone, including two of their co-chairs. That is the story of this year‘s elections on the Democratic side and in Democratic politics.​

All together, now: If the problem was Democratic "extreme" liberalism, why did the conservative Democrats pay the price for it while the progressive wing of the party emerged with only slight damage?

Responding to Maddow, The Nation's D.C. editor, Chris Hayes, offered a comparative example:

I was down [in] the Fifth District of Virginia with Tom Perriello, you mentioned.

You know, he ran a race in a district that McCain won. For two years, he was very boldly progressive, unapologetic. He lost by a narrow margin.

Miles away in Virginia Beach, Glenn Nye, in Virginia‘s Second District did every blue dog trick in the book. He distanced himself from the president. He voted against cap-and-trade. He voted against health care. And he got blown out of the water.

So you know, at the end of the day, it‘s very unclear whether distancing yourself from the president, sort of issuing these press releases about how you don‘t like Obama-care actually ended up rebounding to your benefit on Election Day.​

Hayes went on to suggest that because of how people view the parties and the House of Representatives, playing electoral politics and hedging your vote on legislation in exchange for votes at the ballot box doesn't work. Or, as Maddow summarized:

If you are a member of Congress and somebody says to you, “You‘d better vote no on this Democratic thing, because Republicans are going to use it against you,” ask yourself, “Are Republicans going to leave me alone or praise me if I take this advice?”​

Trying to appease conservative voters, in the end, only alienated many of the Democrats' liberal supporters. David "Goldy" Goldstein offered up his analysis not at his own blog, but for Slog:

Shit happens. Or more specifically, a shitty economy.

Yeah, Democrats would have lost seats yesterday regardless—that's the nature of midterm elections—but if unemployment was six-point-something percent instead of nine-point-something, we would have held control of the House and a couple more Senate seats. And does anybody really believe yesterday's losses would have been worse if Dems had the balls and/or the discipline to include a public option in the health care bill, or to extend the Bush tax cuts to the middle class while douching the rich? I don't think so.

And could the Dems have done a better job of putting together a coherent message? Absolutely. They suck at that. But then, they've always sucked at that. And yet they still managed to win a ton of House seats in 2006 and 2008, despite a sucky, incoherent message... seats by the way, without which last night's Republican "landslide" would not have been possible, because Democrats wouldn't have had the dozens of swing/GOP-leaning districts to lose back.

No, there's no message here from voters except the fact that they're angry, just like they were in 2006. That's what the exit polls tell us: voters are pissed off at both parties. But, you know, the Dems are the ones in power, so they're the ones voters took it out on. I can empathize with that, even while understanding it to be self-destructively stupid.

But any attempt to read a political mandate or trend from this election is just plain bullshit. While the teahadist infusion has certainly shoved the Republican party even further to the right, the same is not true of the nation as a whole, or the swing voters who determine the outcome of most national elections. They're not ideologues; if they were, they wouldn't be swing voters. No, they just want government to work—for them—and with our nation simultaneously fighting a shitty economy and two failed wars, they just don't feel like that's happening.​

The reality is that Democrats, long maligned as "liberals", lost this election because they were, well, Democrats. That is, they played middling politics, trying to make everyone happy, ended up satisfying nobody, and didn't even bother to bring a knife to a gunfight; instead, they showed up with salamis.

From the outset, President Obama neglected his liberal base. He argued the Bush line in terror detention lawsuits; he ignored LGBT issues as long as possible, making excuses about procedure and then accepting that Congressional Democrats didn't have the fortitude to force a vote on the Don't Ask/Don't Tell military policy. Meanwhile, the courts have taken up gay rights issues in several states, including Massachusetts, where a federal court handed the Defense of Marriage Act a Tenth Amendment defeat. Obama tried to compromise on economic stimulus, with the result that Congress enacted a measure that simply wasn't strong enough to achieve its intended effect. When congressional Democrats flinched on middle class tax cuts, President Obama did nothing to rally them to force the vote. The Guantanamo Bay detention center remains open; the president chose to defer to Blue Dogs and other electorally-frightened Democrats, and didn't try to rally them to force the issue. Given two opportunities to nominate Supreme Court justices, he offered up middle of the road candidates who were branded as liberal extremists, anyway. Obama stepped up the war in Afghanistan, expanded our operations in Pakistan, and only made things worse. Abuse of terror suspects continues on his watch. His leadership in the health care fight was to take the public option off the table in exchange for a pathetic offering from pharmaceutical companies. His leadership in financial reform was virtually absent.

And the Congressional leadership, who you might think were flaming Marxists to hear the conservatives bawl about them, sought compromise with unflinching opposition, bringing about watered-down results in the hopes of keeping voters happy on any given day instead of assuaging their fears about the economy, containing unemployment, or repairing our problematic civil and human rights outlook. Voters wanted "blue" solutions in 2008; between Obama and the Congressional liberals, they got "purple" at best.

The result is that many of the new voters he drew to the polls in 2008—young or minority cynics who weren't otherwise taking part in the political process—did not see any reason to come out in 2010.

The right wing screamed that everything was going too fast. The left wing wondered if anything was going anywhere. The self-interested "swing" vote accepted a tremendous amount of the lies coming from the right, and Democrats did nothing to fight back.

For Democrats, there is the conventional wisdom that they were too liberal, or the counterpoint that there is no lesson to learn from this election. Both of these are incorrect. Rather, if there is a lesson to be learned here, Democrats need to understand that incompetence or, at best, ineffectual piddling about just doesn't impress voters.

Meanwhile, on the right wing, conservatives need to understand that liberals and other Democratic supporters are toasting the Tea Party movement today.

Joel Connelly explained what many liberals figured out as the returns came in: It could have been much worse:

Republicans would control both Senate and House this Wednesday morning, were it not for Tea Bag wing nuts that cost the GOP at least two and possibly three seats in Congress' upper chamber.

The lesson, if Republican activists choose to accept it, is that similar extremism -- especially as espoused by a self-described "Mama Grizzly"" -- could cost Republicans the White House in 2012.

Is there any way Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could have won re-election against any candidate other than Sharron Angle? ....

.... popular moderate congressman and former governor. Christine O'Donnell changed all that, and began the mother of all TV spots by saying: "I am not a witch."

"Tonight, there's a tea party tidal wave," Kentucky Sen.-elect Rand Paul declared to cheers. He will be able to join Sens. Jim DeMint, Jim Inhofe, and Sen-elect Ron Johnson of Wisconsin in a caucus that might take its theme from Dragnet: Dum, de dum dum.

Look at who won Tuesday night. The Republicans' "freshman" Senators will be political veterans and insiders, men far more accustomed to the corridors of power than storming the barricades ,,,,

.... One race is still outstanding, appointed Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet vs. Tea Party hero Ken Buck. Buck defeated a more conventional Republican in the state's spring primary.

If Bennet survives -- a big "if" -- it will be thanks to such Buck-passing as the nominee's description of a rape victim's complaint as "buyer's remorse," characterization of global warming as "a hoax," and speculation that homosexuality is like alcoholism. Such stuff did not appeal to women voters in Denver suburbs.​

Brian Montopoli posted, for CBS News:

While we don't yet know the final results in some Senate races, we do know that CBS News projections show that Democrats will hold onto the Senate.

We also know that they might not have done so had two Tea Party candidates not won their GOP primaries. One is Christine O'Donnell, who rode the backing of the Tea Party Express to an upset primary victory over moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware.

Castle had been favored to beat Democrat Chris Coons in a general election, but Coons soundly defeated O'Donnell, keeping Joe Biden's old Senate seat in Democratic hands ....

.... The story isn't much different in Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won after a bitter campaign against Republican Sharron Angle. Reid's reputation as a Washington deal-maker has hurt his standing in Nevada, and he would have faced a tough fight against the woman who was expected to be his general election opponent, Sue Lowden.​

Or Steve Kornacki, at Salon:

As Justin Elliott just noted, results are still outstanding in three Senate contests, but it seems likely that Democrats will end up with 53 seats -- a loss of six from their pre-election total. As rough as this is for Democrats, it could have been much, much worse. That it isn't is entirely the result of the Tea Party.

Take Delaware, where Christine O'Donnell, previously a political gadfly who had attracted little support in two other campaigns for statewide office, was propelled by Tea Party fervor to the Republican Senate nomination. The candidate she defeated, Rep. Mike Castle, had been considered a shoo-in -- by political observers, by the Republican establishment, and even by the Democratic establishment (which decided not to put much effort into the contest after Castle emerged as the likely GOP nominee -- and led Chris Coons, the unknown Democrat who claimed his party's nomination by default, by double-digits all year. Until O'Donnell emerged from nowhere to win the September 14 primary over Castle, every Senate projection map listed Delaware as a bankable pick-up for the GOP.

O'Donnell's primary triumph immediately turned Delaware into a safe seat for Democrats. Coons went from trailing Castle by about 15 points to leading O'Donnell by at least that much. The closest poll of the entire general election campaign still showed O'Donnell losing by ten points, and Coons' final margin was 17. The bottom-line is obvious: With the GOP establishment's candidate, Republicans would have gained a seat in Delaware on Tuesday night, but with the Tea Party's candidate, they blew the chance ....

.... As we documented earlier this year, there was no reason to expect that Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader, would survive this campaign. He entered 2010 trailing his most likely GOP foes by double-digit margins; we could only find two senators in the last 30 years who had faced similar predicaments in their reelection years and gone on to win – Jesse Helms and Al D'Amato. All of the others who had faced Reid's numbers went down to defeat. Nevada voters, especially in this brutal economic climate, were eager to get rid of Reid.

But Angle, with her history of extreme views and her off-putting campaign antics (among them: literally running from the press, declaring that she'd answer questions only when she was elected, and telling a group of Latino students that they looked Asian) gave those voters pause. Did they really want to send someone so flaky to represent them in Washington? A bland, average Republican would have defeated Reid in a 15-point snoozer. But Angle's liabilities were so stark that voters rejected her – and handed Reid one of the most improbable Senate victories in history. As in Delaware, the Tea Party clearly cost Republicans a Senate pick-up in Nevada.

We may soon be able to say the same about Colorado, where Tea Partier Ken Buck now trails appointed Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet, with some votes (mainly from Democratic-friendly areas, apparently) still to be counted. Bennet was not as reviled by his state's voters as Reid was in Nevada, but he was hardly beloved, either -- and with the national climate poisoned against Democrats, he made for an inviting target for the GOP. A boring, non-threatening Republican candidate would have been well-positioned to take advantage of the climate and oust Bennet, handing the GOP a pick-up.

But Buck, a county prosecutor who once worked on Capitol Hill, had a penchant for generating headlines that made swing voters uneasy – particularly with his declaration a few weeks ago that homosexuality is akin to alcoholism. News of his insensitive treatment of a possible rape victim back in 2005 also unnerved the masses. Just enough voters, it seems, had just enough doubt about Buck to override their desire to vote against the Democrats.

With Delaware, Nevada and Colorado, Republicans would now be looking at 50 seats in the Senate – with results from Washington, where Democrat Patty Murray barely leads her GOP foe, still outstanding. Even without Washington, they'd be in position to bargain with Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson to switch parties and hand them an outright majority. Plus, if Angle hadn't been the nominee in Nevada, imagine how much GOP money, from national party organizations and from individual donors, could have been directed to other pick-up targets. Like, say, Washington.​

And to update that last, so far Sen. Murray seems to be surviving. The latest numbers show her lead increasing from 14,000 to 26,000 votes.

What the Tea Party accomplished—to its credit—was to rally conservatives in conservative districts against Blue Dog Democrats. But that conservative fire, for various reasons, did not carry into more liberal sections of the country. In Massachusetts, where the victory of Sen. Scott Brown was proclaimed to herald the new conservative movement, Democrats enjoyed perhaps their most successful outing. As Maddow explained:

It could happen all over America. And, yes, it could happen and it did happen all over America as we saw last night. It just didn‘t happen there. It happened almost everywhere, except for Massachusetts.
Massachusetts voters re-elected the state‘s Democratic and widely-thought to be in big trouble governor, Deval Patrick. It re-elected him by a healthy outside-the-spread seven-point margin.

Attorney General Martha Coakley, last seen losing to Mr. Brown in that special election for the Senate, she managed to get herself re-elected by a lot. In fact, all the statewide officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, thanks to last night‘s elections - all of them.

And then, there‘s the state‘s 10th Congressional seat, an open spot in the district that Scott Brown carried by 20 points just two months ago - 20 points. Surely, the Scott Brown effect would elect a Republican to that open seat. It‘s an open seat. It‘s Scott Brown territory.

No. Meet the new Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts‘s 10th District, Bill Keating. Not to mention, Congressman Barney Frank. Republican fascination with the possibility of unseating Congressman Frank got to a point where you can‘t talk about it before 10:00 p.m., even on cable.

Barney Frank is going down in a wave, people. This country is unsafe for liberals as of November 2nd. Well, as of the start of the 112th Congress, Congressman Barney Frank will be Congressman Barney Frank again, still. He will go back to Washington along with Massachusetts‘ other nine other representatives who are also all Democrats. Plus, Democrat John Kerry in the Senate and whatever‘s left of Scott Brown and his wonderful effect, I guess.

So yes, Tuesday was a big night for Republicans. Lots of blue states got much, much redder. It‘s just that Massachusetts was not one of them. Massachusetts liberals and Democrats and centrists, for the first time ever, say, “Thank you, Scott Brown.”​

Just to reiterate: All the statewide officials in Massachusetts are Democrats, and with the exception of Sen. Brown, the state's entire delegation to the United States Congress is Democratic.

The Tea Party could only do so much, and in the end it was not only not enough to win the Senate, but they also cost the GOP a chance to control both houses of Congress.

For Democratic supporters, that's not much of a bright spot. For the country at large, though, the news might be even worse.

Having declared their purpose as defeating Obama in 2012, the GOP now faces a conundrum. If unemployment remains high, Obama will likely lose. If, however, that number eases some, his chances improve. In pursuit of its stated mission, Republicans in Congress now have every reason to keep unemployment numbers up. Given the last two years of obstruction, and considering their focus on winning the White House, there is a strong chance that the GOP will go forward with its usual equation for compromise: We tell you what to do, and you do it. See? We both have a part. That's compromise.

Perhaps most telling is the attitude of Republicans who lost their election bids. As Lawrence O'Donnell explained, "OK, when you lose, you lose."

He was referring to Christine O'Donnell, who told supporters in her concession speech not only that they won, but that she called her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, and asked him to carry forward her agenda. Meanwhile, New York's Tea Party Republican gubernatorial candidate, Carl Palladino, went so far as to threaten Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo with a baseball bat.

The Republicans are not going to compromise. They are not going to work with Democrats on behalf of the country. Their stated mission is to defeat Obama, and even those who lost their electoral bids expect their triumphant opponents to carry forward that losing agenda.

We know what they are. We see where they are going. And we have no reason to expect that they will do anything different in 2012 insofar as they were successful at blaming Democrats for their own obstructionism. The stimulus didn't work? It was too small; that's what the Democrats got for compromising with the GOP—they gave Republicans enough of what they wanted to let them blame Democrats for the effects of the conservative agenda. And voters bought it.

Going forward, this is what Democrats need to remember. The conservatives are not interested in working with Democrats on behalf of the country. Rather, they are working against the country in order to blame Democrats for the progress the GOP forestalls. Don't pander to the GOP in a futile attempt to achieve bipartisan compromise; don't sell out to their agenda in a demnstration of bipartisan compromise; don't let conservatives blame Democrats for the effects of Republican behavior.

For Republicans, it's all about greed and the political scoreboard. For everyone else, it is about saving the nation from itself, because people don't want to spend another two years without a job just so the GOP can win the White House.

If there is any lesson to be learned from this midterm election, it's that Democrats need to wake up and recognize what they're up against.
____________________

Notes:

Greenwald, Glenn. "Pundit sloth: Blaming the left". Unclaimed Territory. November 3, 2010. Salon.com. November 4, 2010. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/11/03/pundit

Maddow, Rachel. The Rachel Maddow Show. MSNBC, New York. November 3, 2010. Transcript. Today.MSNBC.com. November 4, 2010. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40006925/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/

Goldstein, David. "Shit Happens. (Or, Don't Look For Meaning in Yesterday's Elections)". Slog. November 3, 2010. Slog.TheStranger.com. November 4, 2010. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/ar...dont-look-for-meaning-in-yesterdays-elections

Connelly, Joel. "Tea Party denies GOP Senate majority". November 2, 2010. SeattlePI.com. November 4, 2010. http://www.seattlepi.com/connelly/429497_JOEL03.html

Montopoli, Brian. "Did the Tea Party Cost Republicans the Senate?" Political Hotsheet. November 3, 2010. CBSNews.com. November 4, 2010. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021590-503544.html

Kornacki, Steve. "How the Tea Party cost Republicans the Senate". War Room. November 3, 2010. Salon.com. November 4, 2010. http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/03/tea_party

O'Donnell, Lawrence. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. MSNBC, New York. November 3, 2010. Transcript. Today.MSNBC.com. November 4, 2010. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40006867/ns/msnbc_tv/

 

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They're not going to try and keep unemployment up surely?

 

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Intentions and Effects

As a common-sense thing, yeah, it sounds crazy.

But when I stop to consider the GOP agenda, yes, suddenly I wonder.

What is the Republican jobs agenda? Tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and cutting entitlement programs.

• Tax cuts: Tax cuts do not, contrary to the conservative theory, automatically bring jobs. Taxes rose under President Clinton, the economy and jobs outlook did well. President Bush cut taxes; the economy and jobs outlook faltered. Certainly, there are many other considerations, such as the tremendous internet infrastructure needs that occurred under Clinton, but that's also part of the point—tax cuts do not, by themselves, equal jobs.

• Deregulation: Making it easier for American companies to move jobs overseas does not improve the employment outlook. Certainly, there is a chance that a company might move some jobs overseas in response to a tax increase, but those jobs are likely going overseas anyway. No amount of tax cuts can offset the difference in labor costs between the U.S. and China, or the U.S. and Bangladesh (or Pakistan, Malaysia, &c.).

• Entitlement: Cutting entitlement programs because they are disincentives to employment is a sad joke. To the one, we praise American fortitude when it is convenient to do so. To the other, we rail agains their sloth when it is convenient to do so. The fundamental argument is that subsistence money prevents people from wanting to prosper, and this seems a strange argument to me. As in: Ramen noodles, government cheese, and baked beans are good enough for my kids. Right. Okay, so, what happened to that American drive and determination for prosperity? You take a roof over your head if you otherwise wouldn't have a roof (e.g., housing assistance); you take food on your table if you otherwise wouldn't have it (e.g., food assistance). But I've seen Section 8 housing. I've seen food stamp meals. And, yes, most people want better than a run-down apartment; most people want more than baked beans and Ramen noodles.​

So now let us imagine a possible scenario for the next couple years.

The Republicans will forestall the middle-class tax cut extension unless they get a permanent cut for the wealthiest in the nation. The Democrats will offer a compromise in the form of a temporary extension for the upper class. But the GOP won't compromise—they've already said they won't. And since their argument is that tax cuts equal jobs, they'll argue that Democrats are responsible for high unemployment numbers because they won't permanently extend the lower tax rate for the wealthiest in the nation.

Next, the GOP will take on regulation. If we don't give big business everything it wants, they'll move jobs overseas. But that argument doesn't really work. So if the Democratic Senate and White House don't give the House Republicans everything they want for nothing in return, the GOP will simply stall out and say Democrats are responsible for high unemployment because they won't make it easier for American companies to move those jobs overseas while still enjoying all the benefits of being a company that employs Americans.

And as the unemployment troubles continue, the Republicans will propose entitlement cuts because Americans are lazy social welfare programs are a disincentive to gainful employment. People will be spending even less, not having that subsistance money, and unemployment will increase. And the GOP will argue that it's Democrats' fault because they fought to keep people unemployed.

Throw in stimulus, if you like. For all the conservatives complained publicly about how the stimulus didn't work, and government money doesn't create jobs, prominent conservatives like Mitch McConnell and Scott Brown (remember the Tea Party darling of Massachusetts?) filed requests for stimulus funds to create jobs in their home states.

They'll never actually admit that they're fighting to keep unemployment high. And most of them won't ever accept the results of their political actions. But we do face a possibility that the GOP quest for the White House over the next two years will, in fact, sustain the unemployment problem.

 

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None of that mattered. I dont think Obama lost anything as much as the rads took it away from him. I saw the handwriting on the wall though. If he hired me to advise him things would be different but i want 2K an hour or be put on the payroll for 500K a year. But seriously, that was the biggest nail in the coffin.

 

The reason the Democrats lost is that Obama didn't govern from the center, which is conservative, Obama made a hard left once He took office, and He let the Children loose in the house and the Senate to run with a even harder left agenda.

The message of the last three elections from the American People is Cut Spending, Lower Taxes, and Job's.

That is why the Democrats who campaigned on fiscal responsibility and lower spending and smaller government, were given the purse string in 2006, and Obama ran on controlling spending and reducing the debt, and creating jobs and keeping unemployment under 8%, and reining in government excess, and the Democrats didn't deliver on limited government, and cutting spending, limited government, cleaning up Washington, so this election saw a major shift in the power structure not only in the Congress, but also in the State Houses......

And it is still the same message, Limit the size of Government, Cut the Spending, Reduce the Deficits, Reduce the Debt, Cut Taxes, end Obama Care, end NAFTA, end GAT, and rebuild American Business.

Yes, the Democrats have had control of Congress since 2007, and they railed against the unfairness of NAFTA and GAT, and bemoan what it has done to employment, but since they took power did they do one thing to end those job killing agreements?

Did they introduce one bill to repeal NAFTA and GAT, or did they just let them roll on and destroy more American Businesses, and kill more jobs, and let the unemployment rates go beyond the 8% to a U-3 of 9.7% and a more real number reflected by the U-6 of 17.1%

Yes, Congress bailed out Wall Street, but they did nothing for main street were the actual money that drives the economy by purchasing hard good is spent.

In point of fact the Democrats took money away from Main Street, and shifted it to Wall Street with the Bail Outs, TARP, and then left Main Street with out any clear indication or direction of what the cost of doing business in the future was going to be, the Cap and Trade legislation, the cost of regulations to comply with all the new rules, what the taxes loads were going to increase to, the new tax increases needed for to support Obama Care, on and on and on and on.

The only thing that business knew was that it was going to cost more, much much more, and the Democrats and Congress, since 2007 did nothing to make the business climate in this country any more conducive to Business Growth, Creation, and keeping businesses from out sourceing over seas.

Yes, Democrats the working mans friend and they did nothing to create jobs for the Working Man of America, we have lost jobs that are gone for decades if we do something right now to reverse these loses, and if we do nothing they are gone forever, the same for business, if you don't have business, you have no jobs, and a service industry no matter how high tech cannot employ a available work force of aprox. 174 million workers.

High Tech Business are the cream of our businesses and employment, the top of the job market, but they are mostly service businesses and jobs, and just as when you have real cream, you need the milk to support the cream, you need the hard goods businesses and industries, production jobs, that produce consumable goods to support the economy and allow for the High Tech Business, and the purchase of the services offered by those high tech businesses, to improve our lives.

Both the Democrats and Republican are to blame for this, as both have allowed the idea of Free Trade to flow only one way, into our country.

The RINO for supporting this, and the Democrats for doing nothing to dismantle it.

 

I hope "Obama Care" goes through. Seems reasonable to me. There are big problems in industry providing health care AND trying to keep costs down. At least with unions your union dues or some kind of fund can pay for insurance.

 

TARP was the Republicans. Anyway, how can you cut the deficit and taxes at the same time? Republicans are selling snake oil.

 

Believe anything you want but it wasn't all republicans, Obama helped create TARP, and Voted Yea in it's passage.

In point of fact Obama and the Democrats wanted to do a Reload of Tarp to tune of another 600 Billion Dollars.

 

Did any republicans vote for TARP?

 

33 of them, and Bush signed it.

 

WTF did Bush sign it? Did he have a gun to his head? Couldnt he reject it or something? Or is that not allowed in the rules? Or maybe, he wanted it.

 

Because the progressives are from districts that, even in the biggest Republican wave since 1938, are basically safe. There are areas that wouldn't vote for a Republican if Satan himself were the Democratic nominee. Nevertheless, many Democrats in what would normally be considered safe districts, actually had competitive races this time around.

You should be very happy that the Tea Party was so horrible at vetting candidates for the Senate or things would be much worse for you.

I must say though, that if you think the problem was that Obama didn't veer far enough to the left, you're mistaken. The problem was more a general political incompetence on Obama's part and the part of the congressional leadership. They somehow managed to go far enough left to piss off much of the country without getting any credit for it from the left.

In the meantime, they never got around to even passing a budget or doing anything about the impending expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

 

Sure he wanted it, those are his buddies. You can't blame TARP on Obama, but they do anyway.

 

If that were true, the corporate Democrats (blue dogs) would have done better. But they mostly lost. So did the tea party people.

 

That fact that there are enough right wing authoritarians/ deluded people for the tea party to exist in the first place negates any cause for celebration.

So, what were these "far left" policies?

 

The Tea Party lost? only where Christine O'Donnel and Sharron Angle are concerned, and I would love to see a investigation of Tuesday Nights election in Nevada, power outages delayed poll closings?

Palin's a major voice in the Tea Party, bottom-line Tuesday, In races called, the candidates She and the Tea Party backed won 37 of 52 House contests, 7 victorious gubernatorial candidates, and in the Senate, went six for 10.

The reason the Blue Dog lost was exactly because of where Obama, Reid, and Pelosi took the agenda, hard left, and if they had gone any more left the ass whipping would have been even greater.

The pick of the Democratic Party fought tooth and nail to hold on to what they did.

Many so called safe districts fell, and the congressional leadership of the Democrats in the House took it in the teeth.

How many Chairmen did the Democrats lose Tuesday, voted out, out of their chairmanships and office all at once, the Democratic leadership in the House in shambles.

 

61.4% of the Tea Party candidates lost. Only five of 10 Senate candidates and 40 of 130 candidates from the Tea Party won their race. The numbers include any candidate either backed by, or associated with, a Tea Party group. Joe Miller will probably lose too in Alaska.

 

From what I understand this is the first time in the history of the US that war is being fought through debt and not by raising taxes, which is probably why the last 10 years of war have destroyed the American economy. Who is going to pay for these wars? When?

 

Wrong it was the first time in recorded history that any state went to war with out raising taxes.

 

Well its one way of shifting the burden of war to the lower socio economic classes. Raising taxes would affect the wealthier members of society while borrowing would cause inflation which would most adversely affect the poorer classes while also simultaneously making labour weaker in the market [poorer people will work for less pay and be willing to take wage cuts under threat of unemployment]

This is a rich man's war