That's my way of saying congratulations to the GOP for the win, I guess. Michael Kinsley once said 'Democracy can goof' after George Herbert Walker Bush won way back in 1988. I do think democracy goofed then and it goofed last night.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968907,00.html
Sorry, but I think my fellow American citizens made a very poor choice last night. Obama hatred is not
Ok, the big question is what did it mean? Was it a wave? It was a better night than expected for the GOP. The structural parameters of the board definitely favored the GOP, but they did do better than expected in the Governors' races and this was a surprise. Ok, but was it a wave?
I guess this depends on how you want to define 'wave election.' Republicans are certainly calling it that this morning. I remain very skeptical of that. It's only a wave if it 'has legs' and we won't really know this until 2016. My guess is that this is not what we'll see.
What I do know in watching elections over the years-and my first one I remember at all was 1980-I felt the day after Jimmy Carter got trounced about the same as I do today-is the GOP wins only wave elections. Republicans are many things but humble has never been one of those things.
Whenever they win they define it as a wave and declare that liberalism is dead, once and for all. They did it in 1980, 1994, 2004, 2010, and now 2014. As someone who knows a little bit about American electoral history this just sounds absurd to me. I mean we have an election every two years. We have just two parties. Most years one party will have a good night. Since 1980 the Democrats have had plenty of good nights-1992, 1998, 2006,2008,2012.
The GOP has had its good nights-1994, 2004, 2010, 2014. What we continually get in retrospect is not waves but just more split government-which in reality means gridlock.
Joe Kiernan is on CNBC this morning and he's Exhibit 1 of what I mean. Republicans are nothing if not arrogant. Kiernan is just blue in the face he's declared this a wave so many times. He insists that last night was a repudiation of:
1. Incumbents
2. President Obama
3. Progressive policies.
To the extent that it was a repudiation of incumbents, this is why I talk about democracy goofing. It's a pretty silly knee jerk reaction to just indiscriminately declare 'throw the bums out.' I do agree that this was a big part of it.
Was it a repudiation of Obama? I think this is way overstated. Obama's approval ratings are not terrible though the media keeps claiming that they are. In the low 40s is not great but it's not terrible. George W. Bush's second term numbers were terrible-in the high 20s as were Nixon's.
The level of Obama hatred we've been seeing has just been chronic, I mean forget Ebola, this is the real epidemic.
"Democrats have ceded the territory of reality to Republican fantasy. Need a specific example? The media of late have been touting the story of "Obama's droppingapproval ratings" noting that his "approval ratings have plunged to record lows" and have "plummeted" and are "sinking to historic lows." Only one problem with this narrative: it is factually and demonstrably false. Here is the verifiable truth: from January 1, 2014 to October 30, 2014, Obama's approval rating fell from 42.6 percent to 42 percent. The year's peak was 44 percent, and the low of the year was 41 percent. A drop of about one-half of one percent does not constitute numbers that are "plummeting" or "sinking" or even "dropping." Yet the Democrats sit by and let this nonsense flow forth with no fight."
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968907,00.html
Sorry, but I think my fellow American citizens made a very poor choice last night. Obama hatred is not
Ok, the big question is what did it mean? Was it a wave? It was a better night than expected for the GOP. The structural parameters of the board definitely favored the GOP, but they did do better than expected in the Governors' races and this was a surprise. Ok, but was it a wave?
I guess this depends on how you want to define 'wave election.' Republicans are certainly calling it that this morning. I remain very skeptical of that. It's only a wave if it 'has legs' and we won't really know this until 2016. My guess is that this is not what we'll see.
What I do know in watching elections over the years-and my first one I remember at all was 1980-I felt the day after Jimmy Carter got trounced about the same as I do today-is the GOP wins only wave elections. Republicans are many things but humble has never been one of those things.
Whenever they win they define it as a wave and declare that liberalism is dead, once and for all. They did it in 1980, 1994, 2004, 2010, and now 2014. As someone who knows a little bit about American electoral history this just sounds absurd to me. I mean we have an election every two years. We have just two parties. Most years one party will have a good night. Since 1980 the Democrats have had plenty of good nights-1992, 1998, 2006,2008,2012.
The GOP has had its good nights-1994, 2004, 2010, 2014. What we continually get in retrospect is not waves but just more split government-which in reality means gridlock.
Joe Kiernan is on CNBC this morning and he's Exhibit 1 of what I mean. Republicans are nothing if not arrogant. Kiernan is just blue in the face he's declared this a wave so many times. He insists that last night was a repudiation of:
1. Incumbents
2. President Obama
3. Progressive policies.
To the extent that it was a repudiation of incumbents, this is why I talk about democracy goofing. It's a pretty silly knee jerk reaction to just indiscriminately declare 'throw the bums out.' I do agree that this was a big part of it.
Was it a repudiation of Obama? I think this is way overstated. Obama's approval ratings are not terrible though the media keeps claiming that they are. In the low 40s is not great but it's not terrible. George W. Bush's second term numbers were terrible-in the high 20s as were Nixon's.
The level of Obama hatred we've been seeing has just been chronic, I mean forget Ebola, this is the real epidemic.
"Democrats have ceded the territory of reality to Republican fantasy. Need a specific example? The media of late have been touting the story of "Obama's droppingapproval ratings" noting that his "approval ratings have plunged to record lows" and have "plummeted" and are "sinking to historic lows." Only one problem with this narrative: it is factually and demonstrably false. Here is the verifiable truth: from January 1, 2014 to October 30, 2014, Obama's approval rating fell from 42.6 percent to 42 percent. The year's peak was 44 percent, and the low of the year was 41 percent. A drop of about one-half of one percent does not constitute numbers that are "plummeting" or "sinking" or even "dropping." Yet the Democrats sit by and let this nonsense flow forth with no fight."
"We can do the same analysis for past GOP claims about unemployment, the war in Iraq, saving the auto industry, bailing out Wall Street and the banks, instituting meaningful health care reform... just about anything major issue that has improved significantly over the past 7 or 8 years. You remember when unemployment exceeded 10 percent; that was Obama's fault. There was a daily drumbeat denouncing the president. But with unemployment now under 6 percent, Obama gets no credit, or the positive statistic is dismissed as unimportant (the same statistics with the same numerators and denominators that were critical when the numbers looked bad for Obama). Obama is responsible for all of our ills and deserves credit for none of our successes. This is a childish, bogus outlook, yet remains central to everything conservative. This lack of depth and nuance, and the absence of the art of compromise (actually praising Obama for something), is precisely what led to the extremism of shutting down our government and threatening default on our debt. This lopsided, one-sided, one-dimensional world view is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Hating Obama should not be an effective political organizing strategy, but is indeed in the absence of any effective Democratic backbone to counter right-wing absurdities. Democrats deserve their losses; they ceded the battle before it began. Hoping for failure has become the right's most effective political platform; creating the appearance of failure in the face of Democratic success is now a Republican sport played to victory by default because the opposing team never showed."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/the-price-of-failure-and_b_6099752.html
It's true-if Obama gets no credit for 5.9% unemployment why did he get savaged for 10% unemployment? Still, I must argue with just how much this is a repudiation of Obama. If it were, why didn't he lose in 2012 when he was on the ballot? I don't get why after the 2010 Wave he wasn't easily swept away in 2012. The American people didn't know how bad he was then?
One of the most absurd things I've heard is that the Dems will have to learn from the GOP in 2012 how to deal with a bad loss. The beauty of the GOP is they never learned anything from 2012-even the one thing they had thought they learned-they had to do immigration reform-they later decided they didn't learn. It seems to have worked. The blame for immigration reform being shelved has been dispersed, where in many places Hispanics and liberal groups blame the Democrats who voted for immigration reform. just as much as Republicans who voted against it.
My takeaways from last night:
1. You win some, you lose some. See my historical timeline above. How can last night have been a wave when the GOP hasn't begun to fix their Latino problem-the groups that support Dems are growing, the ones that support the GOP are shrinking.
2. So last night was not a wave.
3. When you consider how bad Democrats like Allison Grimes did while buying into the idea that Obama is toxic and has cooties, maybe they might as well have shown some balls and defended the guy and his clear achievements. I mean, would Grimes have lost by more if she had admitted voting for him?
4. The Democrats did not deserve to win last night. I mean they should have been willing to fight for liberalism or progressivism and a big part of that was Obama. You can't say you're a liberal but be afraid to say his name in public.
My last takeaway: Last night was not a at all a repudiation of progressive policies, even if the GOP won Governors' races in some blue states. If that were the case why did the minimum wage do so well in red states?
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/minimum-wage-increase-wins-in-four-red-states-112565.html?hp=r5
For good measure, we saw some pot legalization as well-which is a liberal Democrat issue as the polls show that two thirds of Dems support this while two thirds of GOPers don't.
This is why liberals get so frustrated. Americans are progressives, they just don't know it. But it would help if Democrats would actually admit they were progressives when running. In this election a progressive was defined as someone who supported President Obama. Most Dems showed themselves not needing any more 'Chicken soup for the Democratic soul.'
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/2014-elections-democrats-112477.html
After all, they're just plain chicken or that's how they ran.
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