I don't get what the big deal is. People want to give away their money to the rich and have their jobs shipped overseas, I guess that's ok. It's their choice afterall
I don't know if this has been posted here, but this except mirrors much of what I was thinking in the several weeks leading up to the election. Some of those thoughts I've mentioned here before. Part of an on-target Time Magazine take on President Obama's election performance: It could be argued that the Democrats, and the President, did better than they had any right to expect this year. They certainly did better than Bill Clinton in 1994, who lost both houses of Congress even though unemployment was a measly 5.6%. They had some stunning help from the Republicans, who experienced an internal purge comparable only with that of the antiwar, countercultural Democrats of the early 1970s. The Tea Party rebellion was, perhaps, a necessary corrective to the sloppy, inconsistent Republicanism of George W. Bush's presidency. But it raised up some of the least qualified — indeed, loony — candidates for high office in recent history, and it saved the Senate for the Democrats. Still, the Democratic performance this year was one of the more mystifying, and craven, in memory. Usually, a political party loses when it has failed to do its job. These Democrats lost because they succeeded in doing what they've been promising for decades. They enacted their fantasies, starting with health care reform, and then ran away from their successes. Why on earth would a political party enact major pieces of legislation and then refuse to take credit for them? It is too easy, though not entirely inaccurate, to argue that leaders like Nancy Pelosi stood too far from the mainstream — her forceful advocacy of cap-and-trade legislation certainly proved politically disastrous. Pelosi's myopia also allowed her party to lard the stimulus bill with a perennial Democratic wish list, much of which — like $2 billion more for Head Start — had little to do with the immediate economic crisis. House Democrats transformed the health care bill into a 16 million–person expansion of Medicaid instead of inviting those people into the more efficient health-insurance superstores, or exchanges, the bill created. But at the heart of that incoherent performance stands the President, as opaque a character as we've seen in the Oval Office in a great while. Here's an interesting, largely unknown fact: the Obama Administration has been wildly successful in reversing the tide of illegal immigration across the Mexican border. The number of illegal immigrants declined by an estimated 800,000 in 2009. This was partly attributable to the lousy economy — not so many jobs here anymore — but it was also a result of the Administration's amped-up security efforts at the border. This is the sort of progress that politicians routinely trumpet. This President didn't, even though illegal immigration is an issue that has gut-level resonance with the working-class Democrats and independents who turned against him this year. This is political malpractice of the highest order, as is the President's inability — or unwillingness — to tell 95% of the public about the tax cut he bestowed on them, or the prescription-drug doughnut-hole he filled for senior citizens. He never explained, in ways the public could understand, the restraints placed on Wall Street in the financial-regulatory-reform act or the new rights inherent in the health care reform bill. Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, who inserted the popular provision allowing children up to the age of 26 to remain on their parents' health care plan, faced a difficult re-election fight this year. The President never saw fit to campaign with her and thereby publicize her idea. Dahlkemper lost. "Some election nights are more fun than others," Obama said at the beginning of his day-after press conference. At the end, he said that getting a "shellacking" was a necessary learning experience, something most Presidents — he cited Clinton and Ronald Reagan — had to suffer. The casual tone was a not entirely successful attempt to establish the informality and intimacy that have eluded his presidency. He was contrite, without making any of the fulsome concessions his opponents and the press were looking for. Everything he said made sense, but it seemed grudging, perfunctory — and arid compared with John Boehner's tears. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2029353,00.html " ...at the heart of that incoherent performance stands the President, as opaque a character as we've seen in the Oval Office in a great while." The above sentence sums up my feelings about Obama's midterm election performance. Incoherent and opaque. No overriding, easily understood, easily used message in a dogfight of a campaign, where that, more than anything else short of war or a similar crisis, impacts the winning of an election. No feeling, after all this, that we really know the man. Members of Congress of his own party went way out on a limb for him and the people of this country, and he ignored far too many of them. Now dozens will soon be former members of Congress. Despite numerous significant accomplishments in two years, the American people just did not know of them. Pardon me for thinking that it was the President's job to see that they knew, just as it was his obligation to the Democratic Party to do everything he could to help them be reelected to office and to retain their governing majority. President Obama failed at two tasks fundamental to the leadership of a major American political party. Can he put this failure behind him? Can he fight back the forces of extremism running rampant in the United States? Win another term in 2 years? Win back that majority that seemed to either stay at home or declare, as the American people are so apt to do at the ballot box, that we don't like the job you are doing, so we are going to punish your party? He better. He's managed to hide his successes and magnify his failures, and it ticks me off, to put it mildly. I'm still waiting for the guy I thought I was electing, a man of passion and ideas, to show himself and, most importantly, make himself understood.
AP is declaring Murkowski the winner in Alaska. http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_new...parent-winner-in-alaska-senate-race?GT1=43001 Murkowski is apparent winner in Alaska Senate race ***UPDATE*** NBC News has now declared Lisa Murkowski the apparent winner in the Alaska Senate race. After a two-week count of write-in ballots, the Alaska Senate race has been called for incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski, who defeated Tea Party challenger Joe Miller, will be the first write-in candidate to win election to the Senate since South Carolina's Strom Thurmond in 1954. She opted to launch the write-in campaign after Miller defeated her in the state's Aug. 24 Republican primary. From the AP: Murkowski has a lead of about 10,000 votes, a total that includes 8,153 ballots in which Miller observers challenged over things like misspellings, extra words or legibility issues. It was not immediately clear how Miller will proceed. He and his advisers have vowed to take legal action over what they contend is an unfair tally in Murkowski's favor, but Miller has maintained he'll stop fighting if the math doesn't work in his favor. Officials say they have about 700 votes left to count.
and just like this article you are still totally clueless on how the dems lost. they got their agenda, no one cares because of 10% unemployment. so obama's supposed to go up there and say, yeah i got my stimulus plan passed, sucks you're still unemployed?
Obama and the Democrats messaging was poor but once unemployment didn't drop below 8% I think it was almost inevitable that they lose at least one house. Even if the Democrats had better messaging and ran on their record as long as people are still feeling miserable and uncertain about the economy they were going to take it out on the party in power.
Actually it kind of is. One less crazy to deal with from the other side. I wouldn't be surprised to see Ms LISA MURKOWSKI agree with Dems on a few issues next congress.
Any defeat of the tea party is great news for all of America, not just Obama. That much all sane people can agree on. I like libertarians, I don't like paranoid right-wing radicals.
With all due respect, you are the clueless one if you believe that the extent of the Democratic loses were due merely because of high unemployment. Would the party have lost significantly if Obama had had a clue, to use your words, about running a midterm election? Of course, but not to the extent that we witnessed, a defeat of historic dimensions. Making excuses for his election performance, which calling mediocre would be a kindness, is not only keeping your head in the sand in the face of reality, but is just the kind of reaction that will make the RNC rub their hands in anticipation looking towards 2012. I have no doubt that the President understands the failures of his team and himself much better than you do. Making excuses for President Obama is doing him no favors. Krugman came out with a column after my post saying much the same thing, but saying it far better. I would quote his column from the Times if I wasn't out of town using a damn iPhone. Perhaps someone will quote his column. Wake up, people, and realize that it's OK for Obama not to be perfect. It is NOT OK for his supporters to continue to believe that he is.
his peformance on what. its the economy stupid. people don't care about health care right now. is there a messaging problem on healthcare, sure, but that's not what people voted on. the democrats including obama oversold what the stimulus would do for the unemployment rate, that's when this election was lost. with all due respect, you are providing nothing but rhetoric, obama is weak, blah, blah, blah, i'm providing real life answers
Deckard, he's not perfect, at all. He's not connecting with people. But you've bought into the GOP narrative and the larger media narrative a bit too much, from my point of view. The media loves to create a personality and then destroy it, and you could see that coming a mile away. Meanwhile, it fits hand-in-glove with the FGOXP pre-conceived, October 2008 story that Obama is the WORST EVAR! president. WORSER THAN TEH BUSH!
obama was great in 08 on the campaign trail but now that he has to govern, blah, blah, blah there's a bit of truth to that no doubt but these midterms ran so much deeper than that
Actually, there was a pretty interesting post over at fivethirtyeight.com that suggests that voting in favor of the health care reform bill hurt a lot of Democrats and that the Dems underperformed relative to what you would expect if they were only being punished for the poor economy.
I have to agree with you. It's very predictable. Because of the economy, Dems got hammered despite passing a large amount of legislation. Yet some Dems prefer to blame it on messaging, saying (the very obvious) that party leaders could have been more coherent and unified. Duh, this is true but it wouldn't have stopped the landslide. Whenever a party gets slammed in an election, members ALWAYS blame messaging. It's just the way it is. Nobody is insane enough to argue Obama and Dems leaders ran a good mid-term campaign. But that is very hard to do when the economy is in the tank and you have no short-term answer to make things better. Obama was going to lose his luster no matter what. FACT: This is what happens to presidents in mid-terms, even Reagan and Clinton. Now it's on to 2012. I think you'll find Obama much more partisan and less conciliatory over the next 2 years as he sharpens his blade and uses it on Republicans. It's gonna get very nasty, make a lot of people uncomfortable, the electorate will be more polarized than we've seen in a while and cause more folks to become disgusted with politics in general. Bring your barf bags.
Good point. I remember after Obama's election, I pointed out the GOP would puncture and deeply wound him in the health care reform fight. Some Dems here said that was wrong becuase "the vast majority of people WANT health care reform". I told them their heads were in the clouds. We'll whadya know, health care reform hurt Dems in the mid-terms. Of course, some Dems here will argue that's because it didn't go far enough. You can't reason with some people. When Obama threw down the gauntlet over health care (which was his choice), he put himself in a political "no-win" situation. If he failed to get anything passed, he would be damaged severely (maybe irreparably). If he got something passed, he would be criticized both for going too far, not going far enough and neglecting the economy. Better messaging by Obama wouldn't have stopped the GOP from capitalizing. Again, to be clear, I agree the Dem campaign was pretty bad. But it's hard to make scrambled eggs when all you have is eggshells.
The President did what was best for the country, not his party. Eventually people will come to realize this.
And some Dems need to realize that accomplishing major goals can get you killed at the polls, especially when these legislative accomplishments don't do anything (short term) to fix what people are most concerned about. No amount of messaging will change that.
I do think he slipped a bit with the 'connecting' -- and I expect he'll improve and be fine in 2012. Branding how successful stimulus, or health care or other programs were wouldn't have let helped. Telling the guy in Detroit what a bang up job you've done with helping GM recover, introducing health care reform, and keeping unemployment at 10% nationwide won't appease him when he's personally struggling, his house is underwater, his neighbourhood is a mess, and he's feeling little hope. That guy wants to feel that he's listened to, and that Obama understands his plight.
