George Will and pretty much every other commenter on the right is missing the point of Tuesday’s election. It was not a referendum on liberalism or progressive politics. At play were two factors: one, the economy had still not recovered and unemployment was still way too high; and two, lots more middle-aged conservatives came out to vote than in most elections – whereas the young and generally liberal vote stayed home.
If anything that means that the president and Democrats did too little to stir up the liberal base, not that Americans outright rejected liberal politics. A very large portion of the electorate votes based on satisfaction or dissatisfaction with very little regard to conservativism or liberalism.
The 2008 election was a rejection of Bush and the Republicans more than it was a rejection of conservatism. And it was a reaction to the economic collapse, perceptions of poor governance, and especially the wars.
The 2010 elections are a rejection of Obama and the Democrats more than they are a rejection of liberalism or progressive policies. If employment had recovered you would probably have a much bluer House today. It has nothing to do with voters appraising policies or thinking about political alignment and everything to do with not being able to find a job. Not everyone spends their days thinking about whether America is conservative or liberal, or whether we should reject or embrace one or the other of these political philosophies. Pundits think everyone must think like they do, but most people don’t. Mostly this was a referendum on incumbents, as elections so often are.
Sure, the Tea Party voters recoil at liberalism, and they were out in force, but they’re just one relatively small faction of the American electorate. All the rhetorical acrobatics in the world won’t change that.
New Yorker
One more factor, E.D.: midterm elections almost always go against the party that holds the White House, regardless of what’s going on elsewhere in the world.
fasteddie9318
ED, when are you going to learn? Every American election, regardless of office, candidates, or outcome, is further proof that the voters are rejecting liberalism. You could exhume Karl Marx’s dead body and have it elected president and that would further underscore just how much the American electorate rejects liberalism.
eric
Here is what happened on Tuesday: the Blue Dogs and “centrist” dems in the Senate refused to stand up for a larger stimulus bill and the Dems paid dearly for it. It is that simple. The GOP knew from day one that the economy would determine the outcome of the election and they made sure that nothing too big would get done, but that only worked because the Dems were collectively too weak. Not Obama per se, but the establishment blue dogs who would withhold support for a larger stimulus bill in the name of fiscal discipline. No other vote mattered: not health care, not the public option, not DADT, not immigration.
One could say that the Fed announcing a major change in policy just before the election is a major scandal. Why not do months ago? see above. The Fed knew it might help the economy (thus the reason it is doing it at all) and yet waited until its effects could not resonate before the election. Also, too.
If unemployment was at 7.5% and improving then it would have been lights out for the GOP. The die was cast in January 2008.
arguingwithsignposts
Amazing how a mandate in a national election is rejected two years later by a lot of local races.
Poopyman
A recoil against Liberalism? In the media, a resounding YES. In the voting public, not so much.
Jamie
No, George It’s more of a reaction against histrionics and ineffectiveness if the unemployment rate was below 8 this would not have happened.
Christin
Blech. Jane Hampsher (Firebagger) posts on this ;ast oasis of sanctuary now? I came here to get away from this whiny garbage. This is the same nonsense Daily Kos is screeching.
“The 2010 elections are a rejection of Obama and the Democrats more than they are a rejection of liberalism or progressive policies. “
Poopyman
And yes, the President did do too little to stir up the liberal base. He did that by not being nearly as liberal as a whole lot of his 2008 voters expected.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
My concern is not so much the conservative/liberal divide (though that is clearly a concern for a life-long liberal), but more the nature of today’s “conservativism.” It’s not an ideology, it’s not a blue-print for governing. It’s a series of bullying tactics that appear to work.
http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/in-which-i-finally-do-talk-about-the-elections/
Roger Moore
Only if you are trying to use a definition of conservatism very different from the vast majority of the people who use it. Yes, Bush and Company were not practicing conservatism as Burke, et. al. would define it. But they were definitely practicing conservatism as mainstream American parlance defines it. Feel free to redefine conservatism so it only applies to a few traditional conservatives, but don’t expect anyone outside of your tiny school of wankers to follow you. For most Americans, Conservative == Mainstream Republican, and by that definition the rejection of Bush and his policies most certainly was a rejection of the Conservative program.
Bubblegum Tate
This needs to be stated every single time the teabaggers are mentioned in the news.
Poopyman
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
In other words, a lifestyle choice.
MikeTheZ
And McConnell is already out there saying their goal is to defeat Obama.
Not fix the economy, not lower unemployment, not anything. Just defeat Obama.
Congratulations America, you’re an idiot!
FlipYrWhig
I think it mostly shows that if you try to use the government to do stuff, people actually might get more pissed off than if you _don’t_ try to use the government to do stuff. Kind of like how an unopened pack of baseball cards is almost always worth more than the combined value of the cards inside. The _idea_ of what you’re voting for always gets diminished by the grubby reality of how anything like it will ever come to pass.
Because if it’s true for at least some people that they voted for Obama and then as the months went by thought, “Hey, this isn’t what I voted for, it’s too liberal!” (sigh), does it not stand to reason that at least some of the people who just voted for Republicans, as the months go by, will think, “Hey, this isn’t what I voted for, it’s a bunch of flaming dogshit!”
Mike E
Conservatism is a fraud, failure, farce, but it is also the CW.
Any idea is as good as any other to a movement conservative. It’s about profits, cheap labor, and institutionalized idiocy. Everything else is PR, a means to their ends.
Conservatives are ruthless hacks who will say anything to have those that they regularly beat down carry their water. George Will is a fucking fraud, but you already know this.
Rich people are laughing/concern trolling all the way to the bank/orgy/cocktail party.
How did I do?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: No worries about losing the conservative idealogy. Nowadays that’s known as liberalism.
matoko_chan
There are only two lessons from the midterms that mean anything.
Lesson one: When the liberal base turns out we win. In Nevada, hispanics, in colorado, youth.
My recommendation: put legal marijuana on every ballot in 2012.
lesson two: Anti-meritocratic candidates cannot win general elections in a democratic meritocracy. cite COD.
My recommendation: every democrat buy a Palin/Bachman 2012 bumpersticker and proudly display it. if we can spoof them into running it will be a slaughter.
Suck It Up!
@Poopyman:
last time I heard a whole lot of his 2008 voters thinks he is liberal enough. And I believe I read recently that 50% of voters think he is too liberal. Can’t remember where I saw it.
Martin
This appeared to be more an election about simplicity vs complexity.
Both the teabaggers and the firebaggers have been arguing for simplicity – simpler financial policy, housing policy, health care policy. Obama and the Dems have been working on complex solutions. They’re complex because the economy is complex. It’s not little green ledgers and guys in suits with sharpened pencils – the economy is now directed by racks of computers running actuarial and arbitrage models.
The complex solutions carry complex messages, and ‘single payer’ and ‘small government’ are simple messages for those that don’t have the time to understand the detail. Those that don’t trust Obama (on both sides) are unwilling to take the time to learn what’s been done to give him their trust.
Both the left and right are still screaming for simple solutions. ‘Fire Geithner’ seems to be the solution to all of our financial ills. No need to really lay out a plan past that point. ‘Eliminate the deficit’ seems to be the solution to our economic ills. No need to explore the impossibility of that without raising taxes.
The voting trends were interesting. California, which has some of the worst unemployment in the nation went powerfully toward Democrats, bucking all of the narratives. We’ve got a complex state. We’ve known that for 40 years. We’re accepting of complex solutions, and we’re more trusting of Obama for obviously social reasons. Many places back east had similar trends like Mass. Again, used to complex solutions, and they don’t have a hangup with Obama.
I don’t mean this as a social commentary on ‘simple folk’ or any of that bullshit, but I think ‘trust’ comes from fairly deep social conditions that we are slow to overcome, and that hurts politicians that are outside the mainstream, like Obama and Barney Frank and even guys like Rubio if he weren’t in Florida. It’s not bigotry, it’s way, way subtler.
And our tolerance to understand complex problems and solutions is somewhat social as well. I would bet that the areas that held for Obama’s policies correlate well with areas that are more receptive to global climate change, and evolution, and other ideas that are inherently complex. It’s not easy to give over to thing that are really fucking hard to understand. If you aren’t able to do that, it must be like living in an alternate reality right now, where you understand none of the things going on. That’d drive me crazy.
Bob L
@eric:
It was the combination of the weak stimulus and the Wall Street wetdreams like TARP and what not the Democratic congress had voted in. It basically told the voters the Democrats could really careless about them. The welfare for the rich was just so obscene it made the rest of what they did look petty.
tweez
Watch out ED, them’s fightin’ words ’round these parts.
You are CORRECT though. That’s a big part of why many people didn’t come out to vote. They should’ve come out. They were WATBs NOT to come out. However, the Dems should’ve given their base some red meat to lure them out of their grumpy little caves
El Cid
@fasteddie9318:
This is correct. Had Democrats won 90 Senate Seats and 400 House seats, this would still be correct.
Erik Vanderhoff
Tuesday’s election was a referendum to confirm that the Republicans are really, really goddamn good at messaging. Just look at the polls: when you say things like “Are you for or against health care reform?” people are overwhelmingly against it. But when you break it down to particulars contained within health care reform, each individual component receives overwhelming support of the “Golly, I wish they’d done that,” kind. Well, guess what, America? The liberals fucking did, and you went and elected the motherfuckers who didn’t.
Poopyman
@Suck It Up!: Are you saying his liberal base thinks he’s too liberal? Because those are the people I was talking about.
Bill E Pilgrim
Not to mention half of the non-right commenters.
Every election is a rejection of liberalism according to the village, and anyone who claims otherwise is called a far left kook, even if he’s the resident conservative at BJ.
@eric:
Yep. I’m tempted to add that a lot of it was people being swayed by this joke of a media discourse we have with FOX running a full-time dedicated Republican propaganda network, but if the economy were improving more visibly, especially jobs, they’d have far less to exploit.
It’s also just people being naive and not understanding how time works, and just knee-jerk blaming the wrong party for what the other one actually did. But if anything could have helped to avoid this, it would have been tackling the economy differently.
gmf
One of the things nobody’s seriously talking about – and it’s really disappointing me – is that we’ve had a two year campaign of outright lies about what’s going on in the country & pre-election polling bears this out.
A minority of voters understood there was a tax cut in the stimulus plan, a minority of voters understood the TARP money is being recovered in full, a minority of voters said Obama was a “Christian,” Black Panthers, not an American citizen, the Dems are going to take your guns, terrorist-fist-bump, hates Americans, hates white people, socialist, communist, etc, etc…
This has been going on since the day after the election and probably accounts for 10-20% points on a number of ballots. This has very little to do with anyone being ‘too liberal’ and everything to do with a coordinated campaign of non-stop smears and lies.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
If the Republicans actually do what they say and hold up every bill, getting nothing done in the process, I predict in 2012 the same pundits will be talking about how the blue wave is a rejection of Boehner and tea-partyism.
This New York Times blogpost comment from an Australian just made me sad:
Suck It Up!
This is why I don’t understand why any liberal or progressive was gloating after the election. The GOP brought out their base + 1 by “smearing” every Dem as a liberal. Then they have the backing of the punditocracy who proclaim that this is a smackdown of liberalism. When you’re ideology is being portrayed as a shit stain on society, I wouldn’t be so smug.
Martin
@Erik Vanderhoff: And this is precisely my thesis.
But ‘messaging’ oversimplifies it. People aren’t willing to take the time to understand the many, many moving parts of ACA, and it’s really damn hard to boil them down into a single ‘no new taxes’ kind of message. It’s not that the messaging is bad – it’s that the solutions don’t lend themselves to bumper stickers and punchlines. Either we’re asking Obama to lie to voters with a ‘healthcare for everyone’ kind of message, or we’re asking Democrats to form policies that are simpler and probably less effective for the sake of winning a messaging battle.
The GOP is obviously willing to lie to their supporters. Deficit eliminated in 2 years with no new taxes? Bullshit. It’s fucking impossible, even if we had 100% employment and eliminated all the agencies they wanted to eliminate. I’m not willing to support Dems that go down that line. I rejected the GOP specifically because they did. It’s not that conservative ideas are bad ideas, when they’re honest about them, but I’m not going to stand there and be lied to in the first four words of the pitch.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Poopyman: Indeed.
mikefromArlington
All those young voters that didn’t vote recoiled against liberalism!
Culture of Truth
The elections were a referendum on my favorite issue. The key to winning elections is to address my issue. Proof of this is that my issue was not addressed and many politicians lost. Voters stayed home because my issue was not addressed. Not me, I voted. But other people, who are very, very interested in my issue, but who otherwise are generally apathetic about politics, did not bother to vote because no one is addressing what is really important to most people in America – my issue.
El Tiburon
This goes without saying…always.
I do agree this election and most elections have little to do with liberalism vs. conservatism. Most voters are ignorant on what these terms mean.
Conservatives don’t understand that what they are saying when they say, “keep your hand off of my dadgum medicare.”
Also, whereas 2006 and 2008 was against Bush (shit, we had 8 years of that imbecile) 2010 was not a rejection of Obama. It may have been a rejection to some extent of his perceived policies, but few of his policies have had any impact yet, not withstanding the auto bailout that worked and the limp stimulus that sort of worked.
The onslaught by the media combined with an ineffectual messaging by the administration is the problem.
Fear works and the Republicans certainly know how to do this.
Kryptik
But this whole election was based on rhetorical acrobatics of the exact kind that made ‘liberal’ THE four-letter word in politics. Fuck complex solutions to complex problems, we want our bumper sticker policies, and we want them FUCKING NOW!
Good god, fuck this whole shit.
JGabriel
@fasteddie9318:
No, you couldn’t! This is America, buddy! What are you, some kinda commie?
.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Suck It Up!:
So if Glenn Beck calls someone a liberal as if it’s a swear word, one should feel ashamed of being one, slink away, and think “Oh my god some extreme right wing nutjob thinks being a liberal is terrible so it must be true”?
I didn’t see anyone “gloating” much.
CJ
Not quite. I think 2010 proved that anonymous corporate cash, bold propaganda, race baiting, violence, childish obstruction with the hope that Americans would suffer and flat out lies managed to overcome the weak memory of the American people.
Even among those who did remember, the consequence free tsunami of ignorance was so disheartening most of them lost faith in the progress.
Shalimar
If the administration is smart, the next 2 years will be a constant stream of bills that will reduce unemployment and help people who are suffering. Nothing is going to get passed in the House, so it is time to play politics and do everything possible to make it clear Republicans don’t give a crap whether people can feed their families or not.
Kryptik
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I think it’s less about being ashamed to be a liberal, more so depressed that the whole country thinks you should fucking die in a fire because you’re SOSHULIZZZT!!!! Because apparently ‘soshulism’ is the root of every single fucking evil in this country, despite, you know, Republicans getting in all the fucking time while railing against this mythical ‘soshulism’.
It’s not shame. It’s sick of being a fucking Sispyphus and Cassandra all the fucking time, because no matter what you try and say, what you try and do, a platitude and a rubber stamping of “LIBERAL!!!’ on your forehead is enough to totally counteract you wholesale.
Anoniminous
Preliminary analysis says a 41.5% turn-out with the GOP supporters, across the board, turning out at higher percentages than Democratic Party supporters who reverted to the mean. This, in turn, suggests this election was decided in 2000 when the GOP captured state legislatures and were, thus, in control of drawing Congressional district boundaries, i.e. gerrymandering. Supporting evidence for this can be found in the failure of the GOP to capture the Senate.
With a 58.5% of potential voters inert, the Democratic vote reverting to the mean, and a successful mobilization of the GOP vote, within a political structure favorable to the GOP, it’s not surprising the GOP was as successful as it was.
Kudos to them.
Pangloss
It is not a recoil against liberalism. But if I repeat it 600 times on TV and in print and after a while nobody corrects me, people will BELIEVE it’s a recoil against liberalism. And that’s what matters.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think Tuesday’s election was a referendum on wetsuits and dildoes which is why I have a delightfully flexible snorkel shoved up my ass right now.
bozack
Facts are stubborn things, or stupid things, if you’re a right-wing apologist like George Will:
“An older and much more conservative electorate than in 2006 and 2008 propelled the Republican Party to a broad victory in the 2010 midterm elections. But the vote was more repudiation than endorsement. Views of Republican Party are no more positive than those of the Democratic Party.”
If there’s anything I’ve learned about political discourse in the last 10 ten years, it’s that facts don’t matter.
ADDED: that is, what Pangloss said a few comments up.
FlipYrWhig
@Culture of Truth:
Awe. Some.
Surreal American
Missing the point is a feature, not a bug, in wingnut punditry.
Allan
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that people are looking at this Rorshach blot and seeing different things in it.
JPL
@MikeTheZ: And
You did forget that during the Bush years, it was McConnell that passed tax cuts that were unsustainable and bills that were not paid for. He was the biggest deficit pusher of all times.
Kryptik
@Pangloss:
This.
It’ll work too, because it always fucking works, and it will always fucking work. Because America fucking hates ‘liberals’ too damn much to change it anymore.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Kryptik: Oh I don’t agree that there’s any shame involved at all, since being ashamed of being a liberal because Glenn Beck or some Tea Party Republican said so would be nuts.
I was responding to the idea that liberals are “gloating” and should rethink all this smugness since their “liberalism” was just rejected.
And of course the whole point of this post was that no such thing happened, as anyone other than the lazy DC pundits should be able to see by looking beyond just repeating what everyone else is saying.
The pundits, I’m really not sure they’re capable, in that fishbowl, especially when all that fish food is being dumped in.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Martin: I loved the way you put this. I keep wondering how politicians can learn to break down complex issues in a way that every voter can understand. California voters definitely learned the hard way. Massachusetts voters rejected a 50% reduction in state taxes because it would reduce the funding of education.
How do you get the voter in New Jersey or Texas to take a long-term view and see that American competitiveness hinges on an excellent education system and we’re slipping in that regard on a worldwide level? How to get many to understand that a mastery of the sciences and research innovation are partly what has produced America’s dominance. Now, 40% of American science PhDs are foreigners but many are going back to their countries of origin instead of getting green cards and becoming citizens, staying on in the US to work on research or teaching. How to get the average person who’s hurting economically to see that tax cuts won’t create new industries that remain entirely in the US and hire US-based workers/reduce unemployment?
Silver Owl
According to a tard that posted on my facebook wall the results of the elections means everyone that didn’t vote republican is a knucklehead. That is what the election really meant. lol
JPL
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
What about Georgia?
I love your name byw..
catclub
@eric:
Re-appointing Bernanke was an own goal of huge proportions.
morzer
George Will is wrong. The sun rises every day. Water is wet.
joe in oklahoma
it can’t be a rejection of liberalism, because Obama has not done anything liberal: he has Bush & Clinton conservatives running the economy, he has stepped up the war in Afghanistan, he has not addressed unemployment, he has catered to Wall Street, etc etc
He is Nixonian.
Kryptik
@morzer:
Fixed that for you. :/
@joe in oklahoma:
You act like actual policies and results actually matter. The media thinks he’s a Black Commie Secret Musli-Supremacist that wants to erect a giant golden shit in the shame of Osama Bin Laden on top of the Penatgon, thus he is so. Just like how the Tea Party is really a bipartisan grassroots natural outgrowth of real citizen outrage against Government Excess.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
In one respect this election was a rejection of, if not Obama personally, then his vision for the nation and where he wants to take us. And that what is summed up in his signature line “we are not red states or blue states, but United States…”
Obama campaigned during 2008 (and very heavily emphasized it too) on wanting to get Democrats and Republicans to work together in a bipartisan fashion. And then in 2010 the net result of 2 years work of earnest striving on the part of his administration to do precisely that has been to un-elect just about every last centrist member of Congress who was up for re-election. The Blue Dogs got creamed in the general election but don’t forget that the Republican so-called moderates like Charlie Crist also got creamed during the GOP primaries. And most of the surviving centrists are still with us because only 1/3 of the Senate was on the ballot.
Obama wanted to create a centrist coalition in Congress. American voters of both the left and the right have decisively rejected his vision. What we really want is civil war conducted by other less violent means.
Madeline
That column, and the rejecting liberalism meme was written to start bullying shellshocked Dems into doing everything Republicans want to do. Compromise, you know.
It’s not analysis, it’s lobbying.
It’s so predictable.
Anoniminous
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
If I had the money I’d do a 10,000+ responder survey, bringing the MOE down to something respectable, of the non-voting to get some insight into why they didn’t vote. When the average voter doesn’t there is something drastically and fundamentally wrong with the American system of government.
Allan
@mikefromArlington: More precisely:
The reason why the young voters who don’t vote in midterms didn’t vote in this midterm was a recoil against liberalism.
morzer
@fasteddie9318:
a) Marx is a furriner
b) He’s buried in London
So far, the upper limit for furriner zombies has been the governorship of California.
Allan
Also too, this survey of the people who voted tells me useful information about the mindsets of people who didn’t vote!
Poopyman
@Just Some Fuckhead: Win! We’ll have John Boehner come over to tweak that snorkel for you.
Mako
Just face it, we are a right-centrist-retarded country.
Did you know there is a show on TV called “The Biggest Loser”? Fat Americans go on there to be humiliated and called “looser”. This in not the USA! USA! USA! I remember from of those glorious Reagan years.
Pangloss
@Just Some Fuckhead: Do you have a Website?
Tsulagi
Yep. It’s the economy, stupid.
More than a quarter of those with mortgages are underwater in their homes. Deutsche Bank projects by end of first quarter next year that figure could be near 48%. A lot of those in that situation had thought their home was going to be their retirement money. That’s gone, plus a fair number are wondering if in coming months they’ll even have a job to make the monthly payments on the home now worth less than they owe. Near 10% wish they even had a job to be in that position.
That can put a serious damper on your mood. Didn’t help the enthusiasm level while they’re scrambling to stay afloat they see Dems going to great pains to make sure the “Too Big to Fail”s were getting their bills paid with taxpayer money and made whole. While occasionally hearing or reading stories about AIG continuing their corporate retreat parties or Goldman paying out over $16B in bonus money. Making their good times still roll while the Dems tout a $15B jobs bill for the others.
Losing the House big and almost the Senate wasn’t the fault of words written by the Jane Hamshers of the Left, gays pushing for DADT repeal or other bullshit. The Dems with office space, for some only until January, in Washington own it.
WyldPirate
@Suck It Up!:
When you’re ideology is being portrayed as a shit stain on society, I wouldn’t be so smug.
KG
@Martin:
Someone once said, “there are no easy answers, but there are simple ones.”
There’s a saying in the practice of law, “explain it to me like I’m a six year old.” It’s not to say you can’t have a complex solution to a complex problem, but you have to be able to explain both in some sort of simple way. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@JPL: Everywhere it matters, not just Georgia :). I’m a big Fela Kuti fan.
I was once told that a good communicator should be able to break down a dissertation to an eight year old. I wish someone would give Democrats lessons in that kind of communication. It’s a skill they badly need but lack. Heck, I’d take those lessons myself.
WyldPirate
@Tsulagi:
But it upsets people here when it’s said. And someone could read it and see –oh my–discontent on a Dem political blog.
c’mon on out little “thought police” and purity trolls—c’mon!
You know who you are…..
Allan
@Mako: Palin/Palin 2044*
*Tripp and Trig
Cris
I feel obliged to link to Turkana’s front page dKos post on the same subject:
Mako
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Just a quick note- we all really hate it when you do that with the bong.
Martin
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people):
Through education – and through trusted sources.
The left has the advantage on the education front. If you look at what conservative blogs tend to be respected from the left, it’s the ones that are educational – that will present a thesis, present a bunch of data to support that thesis, and then give you a conclusion and what it means to you as an individual. And the left has a much greater tendency to build their arguments around evidence, and to present them this way.
As for the trust part, well, that’s 100% Fox News and talk radio to shape. We don’t have time to learn all of this shit. Fuck, I spend hours learning this stuff, and I can’t possibly keep up – I have to resort to trusted voices on various issues. Conservatives trust Fox, and have embraced the message that everyone not Fox isn’t to be trusted.
So if the time isn’t there to learn this information, you have to trust someone to tell it to you straight. If NBC says ‘ACA will reduce the deficit by $150B over 10 years’ who trusts that? Conservatives won’t. Pretty much the only thing they’ll trust is what is said by Fox or a radio equivalent.
Remember that interview Maddow did up in Alaska? You have people willing to take hours out of their day to wave signs for a candidate, but if you probe them on a very simple issue that they apparently care about, it becomes clear that they’ve entirely skipped the education piece and are relying 100% on trust from Fox News (or equivalent).
Conservatives have got the trust metric down cold. Democrats don’t. Who do we trust? Nobody. We don’t trust Obama or anyone in Congress, we don’t even trust Stewart. Maddow might be the most trusted person by the left. Just look at the list of people that get bashed on here, for even the slightest infractions. That’s okay, skepticism is good, but skepticism comes at a cost – you have to take the time to do education, and people aren’t willing to do that. It’s not like Obama hasn’t done a lot to deliver that education, either:
http://www.healthcare.gov/
http://www.data.gov/
So, the only thing I can suggest is for liberals to educate themselves and deliver that education to people in a one-on-one basis. We’re all about teacher-student contact – embrace it. Find your moderate or not-wingnut conservative neighbor, find their pet topic, and educate them. To energize the left, stop shitting on Democrats and the media for trivial offenses. Yes, in a 15 minute segment they’re going to oversimplify – but that doesn’t make them a fucking douchebag, it makes them a guy with a producer. Get over it. Restore trust in the ones that are making genuine efforts. Give them a pass for the minor shit. Spending 2 days bashing the shit out of Greenwald for going on a bit of a rant is honestly, just batshit insane behavior.
FlipYrWhig
I think that “Obama didn’t excite the base, so they didn’t turn out, so Democrats paid the price” is a very elegant theory. The problem with it is that it’s very hard to sort out what “the base” is in order to gauge the truth of the statement. Did _liberals_ not turn out as expected? Did _youth_ not turn out as expected? Did _people of color_ not turn out as expected? Or, in reverse, were all of those groups, and more, swamped by a hyped-up mass of older, whiter, more conservative people?
I guess what I want to know is, did different segments of “the Democratic base” actually not turn out as usual, and why, and would the answer to that “why” be “Obama didn’t prioritize the issues and needs important to me”? The story that people on the left want to tell is one of liberals turning away or staying home. But if what really happened is that older moderates swung hard towards Republicans, or a new wave of older conservatives politicized themselves, the turn-away theory wouldn’t seem to hold up. I don’t know enough about the numbers to draw any conclusions.
As I see it, the relevant numbers aren’t really “what part of the people who did vote were members of different demographic groups,” which is what I keep seeing; but, rather, “what proportions of different demographic groups did vote.” For instance, with totally made-up numbers, if 65% of self-described liberals voted in 2006 but 50% did in 2010, that would suggest disaffection. But if 20% of the voters in 2006 were liberal and 12% were in 2010, that might be the effect of a surge in a different demographic rather than a drop-off in the liberal one. I hope that made sense to everyone else…
Martin
Can someone knock #73 out of moderation? Too many links.
@Tsulagi: But that doesn’t conform with CA, which has more underwater houses and foreclosures than any state, and has the 3rd highest unemployment. We didn’t even have patently insane Republicans running here. Whitman is distasteful, but not crazy, and she dumped a fuckton of money to win, and she lost by a mile. And we’re not a small state either. You can wave Delaware away as an outlier, but we had 53 House races here and elected 33 Democrats, won the Senate race by double digits and swept every state office, all but one by double digits.
Why did CA run left if housing and the economy were the issue? We’re the benchmark of bad economies out here and we put as many voters out as every state west of the Mississippi not named Texas.
Mako
@Allan:
At least “Dancing With The Stars” requires some practice and talent. Bristol Palin might look like a propane tank in a tutu, but at least she is learning to dance and is showing other unwed mothers a way out of rural poverty. This “Biggest Loser” show tho, really, how is that acceptable? Uhg.
Cris
Okay, I have to ask, really earnestly because I don’t know…. how exactly?
El Cid
The American people have speakened:
Remember, Rasmussen is the one which errs a lot and mostly on the side of favoring Republicans.
Cris
@El Cid: Holy meta-survey.
El Cid
@Cris: A way out of poverty for young rural mothers can now include being the daughter of a vice-presidential candidate and of a woman who was governor of a state for like 2 weeks or something, and then being a symbol for family values and abstinence.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@El Cid: Interesting…
Allan
@Mako:
This times 1000.
Except I’ve been watching Bristol dance for weeks now and have yet to see a pole.
El Cid
@Cris: To be honest, I’m sure that similar results would have been received in 2006 or 2008.
TheF79
I think this bit from E.J. Dionne explains things pretty well.
“Voters under 30 dropped from 18 percent of the electorate to 11 percent; African Americans from 13 percent to 10 percent, and Hispanics from 9 percent to 8 percent. Meanwhile, voters over 65, the one age category carried by John McCain, increased from 16 percent of the electorate to 23 percent.”
Holding voting patterns/ideology constant, this same group would have likely elected McCain in 2008. It’s weird to see the CW pre-election be that “this election is all about parties getting their base out” and then the CW post-election is that “this is a repudiation of Obama’s policies.” This same electorate group would have repudiated Obama’s policies in 2008 even before they were implemented.
chopper
@Martin:
this is why conservatism always fails in the long run, despite conservative politicians being so popular. they run on policies and messages that fit on a bumper sticker and then are forced to try to get those simplistic policies to work in the real world where they don’t. they still try either because they’re true believers or because they know they can’t get away with straying from the party line.
reality is nuanced. effective policy is nuanced. dummies’ thought processes are not. so you can be popular with the rubes or your policies can work.
sherifffruitfly
Fuck all firebagging ihateobama fucks. Either on fdl or here.
chopper
@TheF79:
this.
JGabriel
E.D Kain:
Even this overstates the case, just a little.
I don’t think it was really even a rejection of Obama and Democrats, either. It was just bitching about the economy and jobs, and someone had to pay and/or be punished.
The polls were pretty clear about the GOP being even more reviled than the Democrats, or at least equally so. This wasn’t about party, personality, or ideology. It was about people’s lives sucking, and who the media tells them to blame.
.
Calouste
The election wasn’t a rejection of liberalism. It was a rejection of conservatism. And an embrace of fascism.
KG
@El Cid: I’m shocked… no, wait, not shocked, what’s the opposite of shocked? Because that’s why I am.
@TheF79: ok, but then the next question is: did that drop in percentage of the electorate result because fewer of them (in real numbers) came out or because more of the other group (in real numbers) came out? My guess is that the answer is some of both. That’s the problem when you play with percentages. As an example, let’s say that this election had 100 people voting and 18 of them were from some category. In the next election, let’s say there’s 150 people voting and those same 18 turn out, they won’t be 18% of the electorate this time, instead they’ll only be 12%… their percentage of the electorate dropped because of higher turn out from another group.
Mako
@Cris:
Hollywood! Come on, you’ve never run away to the bright lights and the big city to make your fortune?
http://tinyurl.com/3ybnyey
Mako
@Allan:
They don’t do pole dancing on that show? To tell the truth I’ve only ever been able to watch 10 minutes of it before the remote control buttons activate. There’s usually something more strangely entertaining on one my 6 religious over-the-air channels.
policomic
@mikefromArlington: This is a point that needs more emphasis and analysis. I have a problem with the notion, implied by E.D. and others, that Obama needed to “fire up” the “liberal base” to turn out and vote. The nihilism and insanity of the GOP ought to provide sufficient motivation, to say nothing of the impressive-to-anyone-paying-the-least-attention accomplishments of the last two years.
I think the heart of the problem is that too many people–young people especially, but a lot of us–look upon voting as a form of self-expression, rather than a civic duty. Election Day is not Karaoke Night. You do not enter the voting booth to express your anger, or to lodge a meaningless “protest” by voting for a third-party candidate, safe in the knowledge he or she cannot possibly win; you do not choose not to vote because you are uninspired, or because you don’t have a “real choice”–these attitudes are not just naive, they are irresponsible. You vote because one+one=two, and the candidate who accrues the largest total number of votes wins the election, and thus has a chance to either move things in a direction you like, or make it more difficult for things to move in a direction you dislike.
Young voters (and some of us who should be old enough to know better) look at voting (and non-voting) in a way that is too romantic, too emotional, and too individualistic. I don’t think “firing them up” is a good solution, partly because of the simplicity/complexity problem to which Martin refers. The pep rally approach works great for tea-baggers and weekend anarchists, but anyone expecting that energy and excitement to produce the kind of clear-cut victory your football team might achieve in the homecoming game is bound to be disappointed. Governance is not a game. The president is elected to be a leader, not a cheerleader. And voters should think of themselves as citizens with rights and responsibilities, not fans with enthusiasms.
lethargytartare
@Culture of Truth:
you just saved me a lot of blog reading over the next few weeks.
brantl
A large percentage of the independent voters, of whom may are low-information voters, were stampeded by their original state of low information, augmented by a bunch of lying propoganda, much of it given to them by poorly informed, incompetent news media.
For Gods’ sakes, Cole, ditch E.D. Kaine.
liberal
@Martin:
Garbage. Single payer is better than the current crazy f*cked up system. Why is having a complex health insurance system good?
As for racks of computers: there’s zero evidence that all that complexity in finance buys us anything at all, as a society. It obviously buys the banksters bigger bonuses. But the purpose of capital markets is to allocate capital. The claim that all these financial “innovations” have improved capital allocation isn’t plausible. First, we know that the innovations enabled the housing bubble, which was a first order “bad” deviation from efficient allocation; it’s not possible that that effect doesn’t swamp gains from “innovation”, because they’re clearly higher order. Second, we know that GDP growth has slowed considerably in the last few decades, yet the fraction of GDP devoted to FIRE has increased. The claim that that already small non-FIRE rate of growth would be smaller yet without the innovations isn’t plausible.
Nonsensical. The only sense in which single payer isn’t a better solution than the status quote or the situation under Obama’s HCR is that it’s politically difficult. But the simplicity of the system itself is a feature, not a bug.
An absurd caricature. “Fire Geithner” more properly is understood to mean, “don’t appoint agents of kleptocrats to high posts,” and is clearly understood to be a necessary but not sufficient condition.
gene108
I think what most commentators fail to grasp is most Americans are somewhere in the middle, with regards to what they want the government to do and as long as something is somebody else problem or hassle to comply with regulations, they are more than happy to reap the benefits of the regulation.
On the first point, take something like the minimum wage, which is enormously popular with the American people and state referendums to raise it usually pass with about 70% of the state voting for it. The far right-wingers, WSJ editorial writers and some other on the right, keep arguing to do away with it. If Republicans try to go after the minimum wage, for example, as part of their “2010 mandate”, they will piss of at least 70% of the electorate.
On the second point, my brother works in banking and really is pissed at all the new rules banks have to work through with the new laws that were passed. On the other hand, he’s all for environmental laws and other regulations, which give him a good quality of life.
Part of his grouse is practical. A bunch of new rules will take time to be implemented and in the meantime banks really aren’t sure what will and what will not fly, so they do face some uncertainty about what to do. On the other hand, someone in construction, for example, would not want to be bothered with new watershed regulations, which are important to people down river because those rules screw their ability to do business as usual and add to their costs, but I think people in banking aren’t too worked up about those rules, especially if they are down river.
If anything, this election shows Americans may not really want sweeping reforms from the status quo, because change can be scary and will produce uncertain results.
The only problem is the status quo isn’t sustainable, but as long as the problems will be in the future and thus someone elses problems, I don’t see how people today can be convinced to get worked up over it.
bemused
@Martin:
I really enjoy reading your comments. You manage to articulate so well all the disconnected thoughts bouncing around in my head. I find your calm, thoughtful comment style oddly soothing.
Lawnguylander
@Anoniminous: @bozack:
Cut out this using freely available objective data nonsense to try and figure out what happened. What matters and is what feels true. Like, the President and Congress were too liberal or weren’t liberal enough. That sort of thing leads to a truer kind of true. Check out @WyldPirate for instance. There’s someone who understands that what he/she feels = facts and isn’t afraid to say so. Also, use buzzwords like “messaging” and “optics” to indict those you think should be blamed. I saw yesterday that a whole bunch of people were saying that a big number of Blue Dogs lost their seats for not being liberals while another bunch were saying that Feingold, Grayson and other liberals lost theirs for being too liberal. Just blurt it out is the way. No use taking a look at what sort of districts those Blue Dogs or Grayson represented or what extraordinary factors could have brought down Feingold. Here’s one guy who’s wasting his time by pointing out that only 10 of the 60 House seats the GOP picked up yesterday were in districts that had a Partisan Voting Index that favored Democrats. Using data to point out that this election was a reversion to the norm is not the kind of thing that gets traction when we’re turning into a nation of pundits.
liberal
@chopper:
I think “Out of Afghanistan now” is (a) a liberal message, (b) would fit on a bumpersticker, (c) would constitute the best policy action available.
liberal
@bemused:
Strange that you find a post full of misdirection soothing.
Tsulagi
Okay, like her mom she might be a little promise keeper challenged, but still I shouldn’t have laughed at that.
liberal
@gene108:
That’s a rather long way of saying “My brother is an asshole,” isn’t it?
Poopyman
@policomic:
It didn’t, it doesn’t, and I don’t recall any time that it ever did.
It would be nice if the world worked that way, but it doesn’t.
gene108
@liberal:
On the flip side, businesses are upset Obama hasn’t appointed anybody with industry experience to top posts, so some of the rules he’s making seem skewed to bureaucratic excess, in their opinion and don’t take into account how businesses operate.
Liberals usually don’t care what issues and problems businesses may face, but businesses have issues and face their own competitive pressures to survive.
Their issues aren’t inherently bad or contemptible and I think most people, who work don’t want rules to come down the pike that make their jobs harder or fills them with more paperwork to fill out. Making government regulations in the absence of business people seems to the business community, at the moment, that is what government is doing; making rules that fill them with more bureaucratic hurdles to cross, which may not exactly address the problems the government seeks to correct or improve the business environment. in any way.
Steve
@TheF79: Yes and no. The trends you mention are normal for a midterm. But the other factor is that when you compare 2010 and 2008 exit polls, some demographics swung more than others. Seniors swung much harder towards the Republicans than other voters, which probably had a lot to do with Democrats trying to get Medicare spending under control. So it wasn’t just a question of who showed up.
bemused
@liberal:
Martin has commented on many different topics on many other posts. You don’t say which one you disagree with or maybe you disagree with everything Martin says. Fine. Don’t get your panties in a twist.
gene108
@liberal: No, it’s pointing out that there’s a certain amount of NIMBY’ism in this country, with regards to more than just nuclear waste dumps.
Malron
Fixed.
FlipYrWhig
@Cris:
Cute, and probably true. But I also wouldn’t expect that a True Liberal Agenda would win a lot of votes just yet. It’s a good case for the Overton Window: if people were out there promulgating a bold liberal agenda — not making threats, not howling at Democrats for their stabs in the back and cowardice, just pumping out there What Liberals Want (the way Fox pumps out What Conservatives Want), American politics might well be a lot better. Certainly more lively.
I would just caution that _Democrats as they currently exist_ would not be that eager collectively or singly to implement every jot and tittle of the Liberal Agenda, and the people pushing it would have to take as a badge of honor the resulting dynamic tension between the party and the ideology, rather than squawking about the mean bad corporatists and what’s the use and homophobia and assassinations.
Malron
@Steve: Its not realistic to compare turnout in 2008 and 2010, not only for the reasons you mention but also because 2008 turnout was unusually high even for a presidential election.
By the way, has anyone noticed the fact that the farther away from the beltway you look, the worse the tea party did? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that Mountain and Pacific time zones don’t get bombarded with crappy reporting from the eastern seaboard the way us poor fucks in the East and Midwest do.
Martin
@liberal:
I didn’t say a complex health system is good. I said that the health system *is* complex. It is. That’s a statement of fact. Between what gets covered under what conditions, to what treatments doctors/hospitals will provide to people with what coverage, to what drug companies will charge for drugs in the US vs somewhere else, to what treatments work and don’t work, and so on. It’s complex. The industry made it complex and waving your arms and screaming ‘IT SHOULDN’T BE COMPLEX’ doesn’t make it stop being complex. And single payer *is* better than the current system for consumers. But are you willing to take another 3%-5% unemployment on top of what we already have to get it (more in certain states)? Because that’s how many jobs you’re probably going to wipe out, and how much additional deficit spending are you willing to tolerate to implement it, because it costs a LOT to get it rolling.
You’re precisely proving my point above, btw, by dismissing all of the complexity of single payer as not even existing.
Again, I didn’t suggest that it did. But the racks of computers exist, and we need to deal with the fact that they exist. Blame Phil Gramm for their existence, since his name was on pretty much every piece of legislation that created them, but that’s the financial economy that we now need to deal with, one way or another. I reject your reality and substitute my own isn’t a winning strategy for the left either. If you are going to ignore the reality of the economy then your ideas aren’t going to be taken seriously and you are going to be disappointed with the people that are offering realistic solutions.
I didn’t say single payer wasn’t a better solution. It’s a much harder solution though, and not a realistic one. It’s not even politically difficult. It’s economically difficult. Let’s take the simplest implementation of single payer – extending Medicare Part A to everyone. And lets leave all of the health coverage to the private market (doctor visits, prescriptions, that kind of shit). With just that one move, you’ve taken every hospital out of the business of negotiating on prices because the only payment they’re going to get for non-elective treatment comes from CMS. Their contracts are now all up in the air. Can they make payroll on CMS rates? Can they afford the service agreements on their equipment? Can they pay off the loans they too out to build the hospital? Can they meet their pension obligations? That’s every hospital in the United States. Almost every surgeon is directly affected, most nurses, many equipment providers, every medical school. I don’t think you really get how massive that is. In the long term that’s almost certainly where we need to wind up, but it’s a radical step to take from where we are, and the collateral damage would be enormous. It’s not a political battle – it’s an economic one for millions of people. Can those hospitals out in North Dakota that have high expenses because they have low population density survive it? What if they all went bankrupt? (They probably would, btw. Rural health care is an incredibly difficult problem for this country, with almost no parallels in Europe because we have so many places with such low population density.)
But what comes next? Spell it out. Put Krugman or Volker or Warren or whoever you want in there. Then what do you advocate? And tell me what the consequences of that act are. There’s going to be losers in any realistic plan. Tell me who they are – and don’t skip over the details.
TheF79
@Steve:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that the election results were solely a result of who showed up – but I think it does explain a sizeable chunk of it. Mostly I just wanted to highlight the disconnect in the CW pre and post election. Also, as an academic who does a lot of statistical work, it pisses me off when I see conclusions that do not consider the appropriate counterfactual (which of course implies that about 95% of all pundit commentary pisses me off).
Martin
@bemused: Thanks. I grew up in a household where the solution to every problem was ‘quit crying, figure out what’s happening and work harder’. Tuesday was a bad day for Democrats, but it wasn’t without its victories, and we don’t need to jump on the bandwagon of the media in turning everything into a simplified narrative. They do it because that’s their job and they get paid for talking, not for analysis. None of us get paid to write comments on a blog. We don’t need to simplify the narrative and lying to ourselves isn’t going to result in victory in 2012. Instead, we should take the time to look at what really is happening (even if its painful) and chart a better course and work harder.
Anoniminous
@Lawnguylander:
I apologize for using rational analysis and not engaging in emotive discourse¹ and vow to do better.
BETTER
I knew the Dems would collapse when the liver of the goat I sacrificed to Apollo had a malformed upper right lobe and during the sacrifice an eagle flew from left to right!
Everybody, of course, knows what THAT means!!!
And all during Mercury retrograded to a opposed Venus conjuncted with Sirius.
Thus, there was no hope and we should have jumped off a cliff rather bother to GO TO THE FUCKING POLLS AND VOTE.
¹ A little Logical Positivism for your enjoyment!
burnspbesq
@Martin:
All true. And all a waste of time. Liberal is too emotionally invested in his stupid, simplistic world view. He/she wouldn’t know reality if it jumped up and bit him/her on the ass.
Mike in NC
Around about January the media will begin trumpeting their next political narrative: “Can Democrats Retake the House in 2012?”
You know, just to offset the 24/7 noise about “Will Palin Run?”
bemused
@Martin:
Almost everyone has jagged nerves and the blogs are ramped up shrill with all the post election quarterbacking. I felt like I got hit by a truck yesterday losing Oberstar as our Rep along with all the other depressing news. Then today I woke up and it was as if I had shed several years of teeth gnashing anger and frustration. It’s weird. I have no idea why unless I have just reached a saturation point and needed to put it all in a different place.
Maybe that’s why your calm demeanor whether I totally agree with you or not is resonating more with me than the cacophony right now. A lot of your comments do make sense to me.
fasteddie9318
@Anoniminous:
Is that why my satellite radio stopped working?
ricky
A meme by any other name:
You were doing fine until your second point. Check the CNN exit polls. The percentage of young and liberal votes in 2010 was almost identical to 2006. What happened on the ideological front was self identified moderates dropped off in particiapation and those who voted switched from D to R. Voters over 65 came out in greater number and switched from evenly split to R.
Anoniminous
@fasteddie9318:
Your radio stopped working because the satellite hates you. It’s entirely personal and until you can get it to overcome its grudge your receiver may as well be used as a boat anchor.
Hart Williams
A recoil against Liberalism?
Stockholm Syndrome, more like.
gene108
@FlipYrWhig:
Republicans aren’t eager to implement every bit of the true free-market, conservative, “pro-business” agenda, which is why legislation to repeal the minimum wage has yet to be proposed.
I’m sure some really wish they could, but they know it would hurt them electorally for now.
Watergate hurt Americans faith in government so much that people became cynical and Reagan et. al. played into that post-Watergate cynicism by declaring government is the problem and cannot be trusted to do anything effectively.
People bought into it and handed those views down to their kids and now, I guess, their grandkids. The kids born around the time of Watergate vote more consistently Republican than the preceding generation and the subsequent generations. I really think a lot of it comes with the post-Watergate distrust of government and the fact Republicans feed into the notion government cannot be trusted.
Clinton really tried to shift the discussion about government to the left, by trying to prove government could be effective and government programs could be successful agents of support for Americans in times of need and to help the country. He got FEMA to be effective, after more than a decade of inefficiency and incompetence. He started AmericCorp to inspire young people to volunteer. The Republicans successfully blunted his attempts to inspire Americans, by bogging his Administration down in scandal.
Unfortunately eight years of Bush, Jr. incompetence undid whatever professionalism Clinton brought to the Presidency.
I really don’t know, if a Democratic President or Congress, can shift the politics of this country to the left, with the cynicism that Republicans have bread into the national discussion. I think if politics is going to shift to the left, it has to come from states, where services are expanded and become popular.
MKS
I hope that Barack Obama is the first of many African-American U.S. presidents.
I hope that Barack Obama is the last of many Democratic U.S. presidents.
DonkeyKong
Tuesday was a reminder that George Wallace still has a grip on most of this country.
Mooslims, illegal aliens decapitating white people after blowing leaves out of their yard, sharia law being beaten back in Oklahoma, death panels.
PS-The white youth vote in 1968 didn’t go to Humphrey, Kennedy or McCarthy, it went to Wallace. The teabaggers are just those fuckers grown old.
daveinboca
Obama was a poor winner and now that he’s lost, he is a horrific loser. “World-class whiner” fits this misfit very well and as he skates off to India, I hope the GOP has prepared a great reception for his return. Or maybe he should emulate Fujimoro of Peru and just stay in the Far East!
Lawnguylander
@dickheadinboca:
Obama didn’t lose. He’s still the President, hence his going to India in Air Force One. Still being the Commander in Chief, bands playing “Hail to the Chief” for him, etc. and LOL, wingnut.
Mako
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOLQkn0VvPc
Elie
@Martin:
Well said and thoughtful comment, Martin…
Elie
@Martin:
You are beyond patient. Hats off to you for jumping in with calm explanations…
I received a deer in the headlight’s look from some folks I know when I explained what it means to implement something as big as the health system changes — the new providers, the tasks of moving people into coverage and running the process for paying claims, etc. Man, they just want it to work just like you state: I go to the doctor and the doctor gives me a treatment and then I go home. Somebody pays.
We are struggling with the emotional consequences of being treated like children by our elected officials and the media. We are therefore unable to handle reality about anything… we do not understand process, we do not understand consequence. We DO however, believe in magic and therefore the mythology that facilitated many people to hock themselves up to their eyeballs and borrow against their mortgages or pay buy houses they truly could not afford, is part of the irresponsibility of prolonged childhood.
Bad news for them, and definitely bad news for our society.
Elie
@Mako:
LOL — fun times back then…
Little did we Peter Pans know that he were going to have to grow up someday…
Mako
@Elie:
Sigh. Always with the negative.