How can elections two years apart look so different? But Tuesday's vote seems to be the norm. Its center-right results fit into the main stream of the last 30 years far more than 2008's assumed lunge to the left.
Even the Democratic congressional sweep of 2006 was actually more in keeping with tradition. Democrats won Congress largely by recruiting centrist candidates - which created a time bomb that exploded in their faces this week, as voters in those right-leaning districts and states switched back to the Republican column.
This has me wondering if Barack Obama's election was merely an exception made possible by the alluring uniqueness of his personal history and appeal. If so, the biggest mistake Democrats made was in assuming that their recent successes were transformational, instead of merely temporary.
Craig blogs daily for CQ Roll Call
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It also would have helped if the health insurance changes were frontloaded + the high-speed rail/heavy infrastructure + green jobs had started as close to 21 Jan 09 as possible. Enough on the menu to feed the newscycle & get workers working.
The votes are "counted" by private corporations with political agendas. It takes a huge voter mandate to defeat this kind of horseplay. America is a faux democracy, at best.
The people would have supported him if he had only done two things: put the nation back to work on our infrastructure, and to allow Sheila Bair to shut down the banks which created the crisis. The benefits of either would have almost allowed him to retain Democratic majorities in the Congress and likely re-election in 2012. Instead, he wimped out, and the people rightly recalled their mandate. The only problem is that the cure will prove to be much worse than the symptoms.
It could happen again in 2012, but won't if the left shows up. It's entirely up to them to keep us from sliding further back down into the GOP governing abyss.
Blue dogs are all that can win in a red district. Therefore to get the numbers to make Democrats the majority you have to elect blue dogs. Then you work with what you've got. The plain fact is that rural red states are over represented in both houses and electing blue dogs is just a legislative reality.
So congratualtions for putting the GOP back in charge.