Well, was it a ripple, wave or Tsunami? My take from across this troubled pond is somewhere in between. Or, as Shaun Appleby put it, a mudslide rather than a landslide. (Though a mudslide, even if shortlived, can be pretty damn scary, as this video from Afghanistan shows)
The Republicans win control of the House, but the Democrats keep the Senate. Hey, it’s not good. But not as bad as 1994 when Clinton lost both.
How do you think this will pan out? And who should we blame the most?
As expected, I’m reading on some liberal blogs that Dems lost because they didn’t go for a public option on HCR.
This contradicts every bit of polling coming out of the mid terms, where it seems Dems were punished for paying excessive attention to HCR rather than the economy was the problem. The public option wouldn’t have made HCR less time consuming or easier to pass.
Personally, I blame both sides. The Dems got waylaid by fights over HCR and the public option. They were punished, as most parties are, for in-fighting. Here’s some of my thoughts on another Obama bashing diary on Dkos.
I doubt lefty bloggers demoralised too many people, but even on British TV the talk was about the demoralisation and dissent in the liberal wing of the party – Obama’s left flank crumbling, all that….
Seriously, infighting, meta procedural wrangles, division, bickering – that does put voters off as we in the Labour party discovered for 19 years during the Thatcher/Major reign.
Both sides of the debate should come to some kind of political compromise in the next two years, or you really will be screwed.
Obama expended a lot of capital to get HCR passed in some form. Though it is of partial benefit to most people (and a PO even more benefit IMHO) that’s not how this was perceived in a time of national economic crisis.
…yes, the elected politicians are primarily responsible. But don’t forget who elected them: registered democrats as a whole.
You can’t keep playing the blame game, and shuffle off responsibility all the time. Everyone should reflect and think how they could have done better to get across a coherent message and hammer out a JOINT policy you can rally round.
That’s everyone by the way, just in case you missed it. Every democratic activist has somehow failed.
But what do I know?
So that’s my CSI like report on this bloody scene. The Democrats were battered, mainly because they were in power in hard times (but not ‘end times’ please Sarah). They were further punched and kicked, not because they were hippies, or corporate blue dog plutocrats, because they spent too much time navel gazing and duffing each other up.
Thoughts?
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