Official midterm elections thread

[Shroom Man 777]

Dennis Kucinich is a class act (and his wife is hot). It's nice to see he's made it, but it's kind of sad that people just kind of look down on him and craps. Which state is he representing, anyway? Must be an awesome state to vote for him all the time (who ran against him?).

[Stravo]

Obama reacts here.

Compromise, huh? You tried that for two fucking years and where did that get you? Oh well. I guess we have two more years of gridlock served up with a side of hate coming our way.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The election went boringly as expected. There were no surprises. What did two years of democratic control of the entire government bring us? A hate crimes bill, and a couple minor parts of the health care legislation (increasing medicaid eligibility, capping premiums, banning dropping people for prior conditions, banning lifetime coverage limits), with the rest of the health care legislation being a nightmarish farce which we can almost say will make things worse rather than better. Nothing else substantiative has been accomplished in the past two years, nothing else was looking to be accomplished as the democrats ran out of steam on every single issue they had claimed to respresent, and nothing was done except allow the neoliberals in the Fed and Treasury to continue the wreck the country as if Bush was still in office.

There is, no expected change whatsoever. No substantiative legislation will be passed by the new congress, neither for good nor ill, and nothing will be done to rein in the Fed and Treasury department which are destroying the nation. We will probably briefly suffer as retarded Clinton-era government shutdowns take place each year over the budget bill in the House, and we might see a minor blip of reduced spending as some Tea Partyers are actually genuinely fanatical enough to forgoe earmark pork for their districts, but that just means they won't last into the next Congress. No further progressive agenda would have been enacted under Obama if he'd had a democratic majority in the House, so, functionally, nothing will change in terms of the course of the nation. Following this election you can expect essentially more of the same as you got the past two years, except with even grander and more retarded theatrics in the House.

[Mr Bean]

The best two progress voices in the US are now out of power, we lost Allan Grayson and Russ Feingold. Who's our number three guy?

Dennis Kucinich has been fighting the good fight for over a decade and is *still there* and still fighting for single payer, against the bailouts, against the wars, for the poor, for civil liberties, and so much more.

Bernie Sanders is still in the Senate, still fighting for single payer, still fighting against civil liberty rollbacks.


And maybe this election will show the Democrats that failure is punished. I expect it to be a good thing in the end.

Thank you for reminding me about Kucinich and Sanders I had forgotten those two. Ok so we have three... or two and a half, Dennis, Bernie and Barney gets half credit. So we have one Senator, one Representative and half a senator.

The problem was that of progressives Allan Grayson was the best because he was the one most likely to generate news stories with his house floor speeches. Those great speeches of his. Bernie is low key as all hell and I don't think they let Dennis on to any TV shows which leaves only Barney to go on MSNBC every one in awhile to tell us how much we should distrust the banks and trust the all knowing federal reserve.

[Simon_Jester]

When I voted (I live in a solid republican House district and my senator that was up for election, but the seat didn't change party so that's a wash), I was voting on State issues. First among those was getting even a run of the mill bland, (and probably slightly corrupt) republican in the Ohio AGs office and in the Ohio Secretary of State's office. Why? So that we don't have a repeat of 2008 when the Ohio Secretary of State (who runs elections in Ohio) Jennifer Brunner tweaked as much as she could to increase democratic turnout (Including preventing local election boards from reviewing voter registrations, and not enforcing the law that says you need to be registered for 30 days before you can vote*).

Very well.

I assume that the predictable redistricting to divide up Democrat-heavy parts of the state to ensure a more uniformly red distribution representing Ohio in the House of Representatives will be an acceptable alternative. And hopefully we will NOT see the new Secretary of State gaming the vote in Republicans' favor as the old one did in the Democrats' favor... I'm not optimistic about that. But then, I'm cynical and just got an anonymous robocall last night about how I didn't need to go vote, one that turned out to be a voter suppression attempt in would-be governor Ehrlich's favor.

Also, several people here have said that Obama shouldn't have focused all his energy on health care. While agree the reform didn't go far enough and that it should have been done faster and less drawn out, true health care reform, meaning a single payer system, is one of my primary political goals right now. People who aren't American or who have always had cushy health care through their jobs don't understand what a tremendous hassle and pressure and difficulty the current American health care system is. I HATE it. A universal health care system would simplify my life tremendously and remove a lot of stress.

I agree. My take on Shep's remarks is that the Dems had a choice between going for broke with UHC, trying to compromise to get some kind of health care bill, or doing nothing. Tactically, compromising was the most damaging thing they could do. Personally, I think going for broke would have been a better plan- openly rallying around UHC and shoving the party into line behind it as best they could, gambling on the idea that people would support cheaper, simpler health care if that were on offer.

Instead they wound up compromising away their ability to offer the public anything really new and valuable, while at the same time angering people like you who supported them because they expected something new and valuable. They got the worst of both worlds.

Some of us tried to explain this, but all we got was flamed for our trouble. Myself and others have been saying Obama and Reid were terrible leaders for years now, but no one ever listened. It boggles my mind that most people on this site are actually cheering for Harry Reid to win his election. Hell, his victory my greatest regret of the day.

What about me? I wanted him to win but lose his seat as Majority Leader. Though, hell, that's probably unrealistic...

In Illinois, at least, the Green Party actually had things like a solid plan for the state budget, workers' rights, reviving the state economy, ways to eliminate waste/corruption, plans to help the environment, and otherwise govern effectively. Given that the Illinois GP is part of the US Greens, I imagine that they have similar enough ideas on how to make this country far more functional than the Democrats have and would probably have much better leadership in place to do so.

Hmm. Maybe I should've voted Green, but there weren't a lot of Green candidates on offer in my district that I recall.

Just think what they could have achieved if they hadn't been mesmerized by the idea of the Great Democratic Dream (TM) of Universal Health Care.

Or, perhaps, if they had just gritted their teeth and rammed the bill through quickly, rather than dicking around, so that they'd have had time to get stuff done?

Even if you think UHC was a bad plan, you're the military history buff. You know as well as I do that sometimes hesitating for fear of making the wrong decision is worse than making the wrong decision. And I think UHC was a great example of that in action in politics: by taking months and months in the quest for bipartisan UHC, the Dems got a bill that their supporters thought was watered down and their enemies still hated, and that they'd expended precious time and energy to get.

The Democratic leadership should have after the first couple weeks of polling Congressmen informally on the HC Bill, should have quietly shelved it once it became apparent that the Democratic caucasus, as much as they liked it, did not want to go forward to a near-straight party line vote that left them with it as a possible albatross around their necks.

Now this is arguably a point. The Dems had three options:
-Push it, with all the weight of the party, and do whatever was necessary to get it passed on a straight party line vote
-Try for bipartisanship
-Skip the whole thing for this election cycle.

(2) got them all the disadvantages of (1): screaming teabaggers, Republicans vowing to roll back Obamacare, the perception in red states that the Dems were trying to force through un-American measures. It also got them all the disadvantages of (3) because most of the people who WANTED a health care bill wound up hating the compromise-bill as much as they'd have hated the Dems quietly sitting and doing nothing at all.

Like I said, sometimes the consequences of hesitating are worse than the consequences of charging ahead and making the less-optimal decision. Especially in the face of active opposition that wants to beat you.

It's not out of the question that the House Republicans will decide to be obstructionist in hopes that a failure to get anything done in the government will make the Dems look worse than it makes them look.

They tried that in 1995 and got Clinton re-elected for their trouble.

Will the Tea Partiers see the pattern, though? Will Boehner see the pattern? Even if they do see the pattern, will they be able to resist?

The dynamics of this election are somewhat similar to those of 1994: the right launching a counteroffensive that involves rallying a solid core of very determined voters who are towards the right wing of the Republican party. A lot of those voters won't take "no" for an answer.

Short form: the Tea Party voters were promised government tax and spending cuts, and they were promised economic recovery. One or the other's going to have to give, and it's possible that it'll be "budget cuts at the expense of recovery" not the other way round.

[TimothyC]

Very well.

I assume that the predictable redistricting to divide up Democrat-heavy parts of the state to ensure a more uniformly red distribution representing Ohio in the House of Representatives will be an acceptable alternative. And hopefully we will NOT see the new Secretary of State gaming the vote in Republicans' favor as the old one did in the Democrats' favor... I'm not optimistic about that.

Ohio is already Gerrymandered to hell and back (Just look at the Ohio 3rd and the Ohio 8th at some point*), but it goes both ways, and right now whomever has three of the five slots (One from each state house, Governor, Secretary of State, and State Auditor) on the redistricting board gets to pull it off. It was controlled by republicans last time, and unfortunately now it looks like all five slots are going to be in republican hands (Remember I voted for Strickland).

And Yes, if the new Secretary of State pulls the same stunts, I'll call for him to be removed just as fast and smacked around just as hard (I never cared for Ken Blackwell, the last Secretary of State).

*Oh heck, here is a map:

[ray245]

Fuck off you crazy bitch. We don't "owe" you our votes. Someone has to give us a reason to vote if you want us to do it; and this election, there was no reason. Even in this 8 page thread I still haven't heard one negative consequence that a GOP-controlled House will cause that wouldn't have happened anyway, and I haven't heard even one good thing that would definitely have happened under a Dem-controlled House that is now prevented.

Our votes wouldn't have mattered. Nothing would have changed.

I would have thought that giving the Republicans a much greater platform to secure the presidency would be a cause of concern. Now the Republicans can portray the Obama administration as something that is actively trying to go against the will of the people.

Another thing that might not be beneficial to the progressive movement would be causing the remaining democrats in the House and the Senate to swing even more right.

[General Zod]

I would have thought that giving the Republicans a much greater platform to secure the presidency would be a cause of concern. Now the Republicans can portray the Obama administration as something that is actively trying to go against the will of the people.

They certainly don't need a majority to do that. The teabaggers and Palin have been doing it already.

[Flagg]

Sorry to burst you balloon Broomstick but your entire argument is premised on the fact that there are strong progressive congressmen and senators out there for them to go vote for instead of Republicorp party or the Democratic party. The best two progress voices in the US are now out of power, we lost Allan Grayson and Russ Feingold.

Damn. Grayson as well? Kudos to the two, though. They were the sane ones.

Who's our number three guy?

Barney Frank?

Anthony Wiener.

[Thanas]

Weiner is a bit of a sell-out and when pressed, backpedals.

[Mr Bean]

Weiner is a bit of a sell-out and when pressed, backpedals.

He's a shitty TV person and loves Fox and yes he's sold out, unlike others Barney frank where he's good on most issues but really bad on other issues Weiner is really good on heathcare and terrible on most everything else.

[Flagg]

Weiner is a bit of a sell-out and when pressed, backpedals.

He spanked the shit out of the Republicans antics on Healthcare, though so I give him alot of props for that.

[Thanas]

Yeah, but like Bean said, he weasels out of nearly all other issues.

[Soontir C'boath]

Yeah, but like Bean said, he weasels out of nearly all other issues.

What issues has he weaseled/sold out on?

[RedImperator]

Will the Tea Partiers see the pattern, though? Will Boehner see the pattern? Even if they do see the pattern, will they be able to resist?

Boehner is a prick, but he's not an idiot. Boehner was Gingrich's #2 or #3 guy and went down in flames in 1998 when Gingrich was basically forced to resign by his own caucus. He's spent the last 12 years clawing his way back into power, and I sincerely doubt he's going to blow it all again because some halfwit backbenchers want to impeach Obama for being a sekrit Muslim. He's welcome to try, of course--shutting down the government and starting impeachment proceedings would be a great way to give the majority back to the Democrats.

[Thanas]

Yeah, but like Bean said, he weasels out of nearly all other issues.

What issues has he weaseled/sold out on?

The mosque, for one.

Aside from the free TV coverage for Health Care, he really does not do anything else.

[Soontir C'boath]

Aside from the free TV coverage for Health Care, he really does not do anything else.

If we were to make a comparison of work by the amount of bills introduced by Weiner and Grayson (who I'll mention as you praised as sane earlier), the former is doing rather well.

If we were to take a look at his voting record of the issues, he votes most of the time like Grayson; GovTrack

So it's pretty puzzling to make such remarks as if he was Republican light or a do nothing.

[Pelranius]

Boehner is a prick, but he's not an idiot. Boehner was Gingrich's #2 or #3 guy and went down in flames in 1998 when Gingrich was basically forced to resign by his own caucus. He's spent the last 12 years clawing his way back into power, and I sincerely doubt he's going to blow it all again because some halfwit backbenchers want to impeach Obama for being a sekrit Muslim. He's welcome to try, of course--shutting down the government and starting impeachment proceedings would be a great way to give the majority back to the Democrats.

Problem for Boehner is, can he control the backbenchers? They might not be able to overthrow him or shutdown the government on their lonesome, but they can make life hell for him until he starts caving in to their demands one by one, especially if their constituents and Professor Beck egg on the teabagger backbenchers.

[Thanas]

So it's pretty puzzling to make such remarks as if he was Republican light or a do nothing.

How else do you characterize his position on the mosque?

[Soontir C'boath]

So it's pretty puzzling to make such remarks as if he was Republican light or a do nothing.

How else do you characterize his position on the mosque?

What position? Not saying whether he agrees or not? He doesn't have to say anything and expecting him to make a statement like the article seems to be pushing is hilarious. It's not like they're asking why the other congressmen in the city aren't as well. I sure as hell haven't heard a peep from mine about it and he's in a safer district with a hell of a lot more non-whites than Weiner.

[LMSx]

It's always worth emphasizing that elections are not the consequence of a complete national census, but the result of those willing to engage:
Link

By comparing these 2008 national exit polls and these from yesterday, both from CNN and asking essentially identical questions, we learn some useful things.

Certain figures weren't very different from 2008. The men/women split was the same over both elections, 47% male and 53% female. The "white-no college" category, which we roughly equate with the concept of the white working class, accounted for the same 39% of this year's vote as it did in 2008. Those voters did vote somewhat more Republican this time. They went for McCain by 58-40% and voted Republican this year by 62-35%.

Here, as far as I can see, are the three big top-line differences:
1. The 2008 electorate was 74% white, plus 13% black and 9% Latino. The 2010 numbers were 78, 10 and 8. So it was a considerably whiter electorate.
2. In 2008, 18-to-29-year-olds made up 18% and those 65-plus made up 16%. Young people actually outvoted old people. This year, the young cohort was down to 11%, and the seniors were up to a whopping 23% of the electorate. That's a 24-point flip.
3. The liberal-moderate-conservative numbers in 2008 were 22%, 44% and 34%. Those numbers for yesterday were 20%, 39% and 41%. A big conservative jump, but in all likelihood because liberals didn't vote in big numbers.

Add to these figures the fact that overall turnout was down by about a third, or more, from nearly 130 million to about 82.5 million. That's at least 45 million no-shows, and the exits tell us the bulk of them were liberal, young, black, Latino. If 25 million of these no-shows had voted, Democratic losses would pretty obviously have been in the normal range, and they'd still control the House.

There tends to be a lot of hand-wringing after an experience like this about the Really Big Questions of what the party stands for, and I have and will do some of that, because it matters. But it may well matter less than electoral mechanics. Democrats would probably do far better to invest $200 million in 2014 GOTV operations than in soul-searching, who-are-we projects. Off-year turnout is a perennial problem for the party, and it's only going to get worse as ideological battle lines in society become more rigid, which they are. So this will be something I'll be watching for to see if Democrats understand the climate they're in.

I want to know the youth percentage of prior elections to 2008 (more specifically midterms) and see if the 2010 results are a strong crash as it appears on the surface or a bit of a drop from "normal" figures.

[Vympel]

On the lazy "blame the left" narrative that the media and the Democrats have been cooking up for months

The best thing to come out of this was the pathetic Blue Dog coalition being eviscerated.

[Guardsman Bass]

These election results are bad, but not too bad. There will be political paralysis in Congress, but that actually works in favor of the Democrats, since it means that the Republicans won't be able to do stuff like trying to repeal. That's two years for the bill to become further entrenched, at which point Democrats will be able to pull the "Republicans are trying to take away young people/the poor/etc's health care" strategy to win in 2012.

The Dems saw that they had a chance to do one of their big checkmark objectives now that they had the Government effectively under their control (Congress/POTUS); and got sucked into a self-licking ice cream cone loop to justify that objective.

Large Scale Health Care has long since been a wet dream objective of the Democratic party since FDR; which partially explains why they let their pursuit of it blind them.

I'd hardly call it "blinding". The democratic leadership probably realized that they simply were not going to get the majorities they had in the House and Senate again anytime soon (the last time a party effectively had 60+ seats in the Senate was in the 1976-78 Congress), so it was now or never. Moreover, the "lesson" that everybody took from the failure of health care reform in 1993-94 was that it was apparently wrong for the President and his people to simply present a bill for Congress to vote up-or-down upon after discussion, so Congressional leaders had to initiate.

Their mistake was that they wasted a bunch of time in discussion with Republicans trying to get a bipartisan bill instead of simply forming a bill that could pass either a filibuster or through reconciliation (which only requires 51 votes), and then getting it through as fast as they could. It might have made sense if there were some Republicans willing to vote on it, but the Republicans had turned hardline against any health care reform that didn't involve allowing health care companies to exploit what the credit card companies are already doing in terms of "bottom-of-the-barrel" state regulatory standards, and the Republican leadership was using obstructionism as an electoral strategy.

The Democratic leadership should have after the first couple weeks of polling Congressmen informally on the HC Bill, should have quietly shelved it once it became apparent that the Democratic caucasus, as much as they liked it, did not want to go forward to a near-straight party line vote that left them with it as a possible albatross around their necks.

That wouldn't have changed anything. The Republicans were already using the obstructionist strategy, and if it hadn't been health care reform it would have been something else (like TARP and the Stimulus). The only difference is that the Democrats would have been completely empty-handed going into the election, since there's little chance for a climate change or immigration bill.

The best thing to come out of this was the pathetic Blue Dog coalition being eviscerated.

Not for long. Most of these seats basically swing with the economy, so a bunch of them will become DINOs again in the near future.

[RedImperator]

Boehner is a prick, but he's not an idiot. Boehner was Gingrich's #2 or #3 guy and went down in flames in 1998 when Gingrich was basically forced to resign by his own caucus. He's spent the last 12 years clawing his way back into power, and I sincerely doubt he's going to blow it all again because some halfwit backbenchers want to impeach Obama for being a sekrit Muslim. He's welcome to try, of course--shutting down the government and starting impeachment proceedings would be a great way to give the majority back to the Democrats.

Problem for Boehner is, can he control the backbenchers? They might not be able to overthrow him or shutdown the government on their lonesome, but they can make life hell for him until he starts caving in to their demands one by one, especially if their constituents and Professor Beck egg on the teabagger backbenchers.

The Speaker of the House can squash a backbencher with an attitude problem like a bug. What are they going to do, start voting with the Democrats? He'll throw them a couple bones that will die in the Senate, like an attempt to repeal the health care law, and they'll like it or else.

Remember, too, that the Teabaggers are all freshmen. All of the committee chairs are held by old-line establishment Republicans, and just about all of them owe their power to Boehner. The Teabaggers can make all the noise they want on the floor and they can submit all the bills they want--Boehner will let them do that--but anything stupid like a government shutdown or an impeachment bill will die a quiet death in some committee room somewhere.

[Samuel]

Liberals are for social liberties as a core principle. Conservatives are for it because it's a side effect of small government.

What? Small government and civil liberties don't mess. You need a federal government large enough to enforce obedience on local states... unless by civil liberties conservatives mean the right to lynch people who are different which works great with small government (I apologize to the minor misrepresentation of some of Americas non-Iowan conservatives).

Of course, this requires them all to actually be principled, but that's more common than you might think

Like not aproving of torture? At this point it is safer to assume politicans are principled than voters.

The problem is I think the Democrats have been continually mirror imaging / projecting onto the Republicans what *they* would do if they had that kind of power.

Bush did attempt to dismantleprivatize social security. There are probably other social programs that were taken apart. To be fair Clinton did some as well so it might not be a republican thing as much as bipartisan effort to screw the poor balance the budget.