Official midterm elections thread

[Patrick Degan]

An analysis of the Teabagger vote offered by an ex-Apocalypse whore who's now trying to undo some of the damage he helped (by his admission) bring about to American culture:

One reason the Republicans won on Tuesday is because many of their supporters have already given up on this world and are waiting for the next. I know, I used to be one of them.

Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of sixteen novels (so far) represents everything that is most deranged about religion. It also is a reason and symptom of the hysteria that grips so many "conservatives" in the Republican Party. Frankly: to borrow from Jon Stewart they do believe that these are the "End Times" not just "hard times."

My late father, Francis Schaeffer, was a key founder and leader of the Religious Right. My mother Edith was also a spiritual leader, not the mere power behind her man, which she was. Mom was a formidable and adored religious figure whose books and public speaking, not to mention biblical conditioning of me, directly and indirectly shaped millions of lives and ruined quite a few too.

For a time I joined my Dad in pioneering the Evangelical anti-abortion Religious Right movement. In the 1970s and early 80s when I was in my twenties I evolved into an ambitious, "successful" religious leader/instigator in my own right.

I changed my mind for reasons I describe in my book Patience With God (just published in paperback). I no longer ride around with the likes of Mike Huckabee (who named my Dad's fundamentalist books his favorites) "saving" America for God, nor am I a regular on religious TV and radio these days.

I still see a religious connection in public policy though that I think a lot of commentators miss -- for instance, that lots of the energy behind this mid-term election came from the ghosts of the Religious Right.

The Left Behind novels have sold tens of millions of copies while spawning an "End Times" cult, or rather egging it on. Such products as Left Behind wall paper, screen savers, children's books, and video games have become part of the ubiquitous American background noise. Less innocuous symptoms include people stocking up on assault rifles and ammunition, adopting "Christ-centered" home school curricula, fearing higher education, embracing rumor as fact, and learning to love hatred for the "other," as exemplified by a revived anti-immigrant racism, the murder of doctors who do abortions, and possibly even a killing in the Holocaust Museum.

And now that the "death panel" Republicans who also claimed Obama is the Antichrist are in power, maybe its time to take a look at the religious insanity that beats at the heart of their movement.

No, I am not blaming Jenkins and LaHaye's product line for murder or racism or any other evil intent or result. What I am saying is that unless you take the time to understand the End Times folks you will never "get" the mid-term election result.

Feeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals. It's also one of the big reasons that the nutty fringe is now the "center." If you believe the Bible is literal and true and that this is the "End" then the crazies look sane and the sane look crazy. Welcome to the new congress.

And convincing folks that Armageddon is on the way, and all we can do is wait, pray, and protect our families from the chaos (or from the first black president) that will be the "prelude" to the "Return of Christ," is perhaps not the best recipe for political, economic, or personal stability, let alone social cohesion. Glenn Beck cashes in on this when he sells gold on TV and survivalist gear.

But this End Times cult may also not be the best philosophy on which to build American foreign policy! The momentum toward what amounts to a whole subculture seceding from the union (in order to await "The End") is irrevocably prying loose a chunk of the American population from both sanity and their fellow citizens.

Enter the "new" Tea Party candidates.

The evangelical/fundamentalists/Republican Far Right -- and hence, from the early 1980s until the election of President Obama in 2008 and now in the mid-term lashing out, the Religious Right as it informed U.S. policy through the then dominant Republican Party -- are in the grip of an apocalyptic Rapture cult centered on revenge and vindication. This End Times death wish is built on a literalist interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

As I explain in my book Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion Revelation was the last book to be included in the New Testament. It was included as canonical only relatively late in the process after a heated dispute. The historic Churches East and West remain so suspicious of Revelation that to this day it has never been included as part of the cyclical public readings of scripture in Orthodox services. The book of Revelation is read in Roman and Anglican Churches only during Advent. But both Rome and the East were highly suspicious of the book. The West included the book in the lectionary late and sparingly. In other words, the book of the Bible that the historical Church found most problematic is the one that American Evangelicals latched on to like flies on you know what.

Given that Revelation is now being hyped as the literal -- even desired -- roadmap to Armageddon and an American End Times "future" controlled by Republican crazies who don't even believe we have a future(!), it's worth pausing to note that it's nothing more than a bizarre pastoral letter that was addressed to seven specific churches in Asia at the end of the first century by someone (maybe John or maybe not) who appears to have been far from well when he wrote it. In any case, the letter was not intended for use outside of its liturgical context, not to mention that it reads like Jesus on acid.

The Left Behind series is really just recycled evangelical/fundamentalist profit taking from scraps of "prophecy" left over from an earlier commercial effort to mine the vein of fearsome End Times gold. A book called The Late Great Planet Earth was the 1970s incarnation of this nonsense. It was written by Hal Lindsey, a "writer" who dropped by my parents' ministry several times in the 1970s.

Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth interpreted Revelation for a generation of paranoid evangelicals who were terrified of the Soviet Union and communism and were convinced that the existence of the modern State of Israel was the sign that Jesus was on the way in our lifetimes, as Lindsey claimed. According to Lindsey, Revelation was "speaking" about the Soviet Union and imminent nuclear attacks between the Soviet Union and the United States. When Mikhail Gorbachev became president of the U.S.S.R., Planet Earth groupies claimed Gorbachev was the Antichrist, citing the references in Revelation to the "mark of the beast" as proof because Gorbachev had a birthmark on his forehead!

After everything predicted in the book came to nothing, Lindsey rewrote and "updated" his "interpretations" in many sequels, in what must have been some sort of record for practicing George Orwell's idea of "doublethink" via editorial revision of ever-changing "facts." Trying to follow the prophecy party line eventually got confusing, even for the Lindsey followers, and Lindsey faded into well-deserved obscurity.

This would be amusing, if not for the lives touched by this crazy nonsense. For instance, a good friend of mine was dragged -- at age five -- to Alaska, where his parents huddled in an "End Times" commune, a place chosen to be out of the way of major cities so that when the bombs fell, his family (and some fellow "pilgrims") could await the Lord's return in safety.

My friend's life was almost destroyed by suffering through years of a cruel and bizarre lifestyle in which his family was reduced to eating their goats and bear meat hunted (with the many guns kept by the members of this particular cult) on the "mission's" garbage dump. Of course, school was not a big concern since Jesus was on the way! Discipline was harsh so that everyone could be found "pure of heart" at the Lord's imminent return. After five or six years of this, my friend's miserably duped parents dragged themselves back to a neighborhood near ours where it happened that my wife Genie and I got to know their utterly dislocated and severely damaged children, one of whom grew to become a close friend of ours.

Jenkins and LaHaye provide the ultimate revenge fantasy for the culturally left behind against the "elite." The Left Behind franchise holds out hope for the self-disenfranchised that at last soon everyone will know "we" were right and "they" were wrong. They are waiting for Jesus to do to the world what the Tea Party just did to America.

They'll know because Spaceship Jesus will come back and whisk us away, leaving everyone else to ponder just how very lost they are because they refused to say the words, "I accept Jesus as my personal savior" and join our side while there was still time! Even better: Jesus will kill all those smart-ass Democrat-voting, overeducated fags who have been mocking us!

Knowingly or unknowingly, Jenkins and LaHaye cashed in on years of evangelical/fundamentalists' imagined victimhood. I say imagined, because the born-agains had one of their very own, George W. Bush, in the White House for eight long, ruinous years and also dominated American politics for the better part of thirty years before that. Nevertheless, their sense of being a victimized minority is still very real -- and very marketable.

Now they have "won" the election, you'll see they will still cry "victim" against the "liberal elite" even when they are in charge again.

Whether they are winning politically or not, the mostly white underclass of religious fundamentalists nurture a mythology of persecution by the "other." Evangelical/fundamentalists believe that even though they are winning, somehow they lost. It's why Sarah Palin won't give interviews to the big bad "Them" in the media.

I used to be part of the self-pitying, whining, evangelical/fundamentalist chorus. I remember going on the Today Show with host Jane Pauley back in the late 1970s (or early 1980s). I debated with the head of the American Library Association about my claim that our evangelical/fundamentalist books weren't getting a fair shake from the "cultural elites." We Schaeffers were selling millions of books, but the New York Times never reviewed them. I made the point that we were being ignored by the "media elite," which was somewhat ironic, given that I had been invited to appear on Today to make that claim.

I dropped out of the evangelical/fundamentalist subculture soon after that Today appearance (years later I was back on Today in my secular writer incarnation, being interviewed about a book of mine on the military/civilian divide, but I decided not to mention that I'd been on the show about thirty years before in what seemed like either another lifetime or an out-of-body experience.)

Others carried on where I left off. The whole Republican mid term election victory was predicated on cashing in on years of Evangelical effort to sell the Right an image of being righteous outsiders.

A host of evangelical/fundamentalist Cassandras tour college campuses reinforcing their followers' perennial chip-on-the-shoulder attitude by telling fearful evangelical/fundamentalist students to hold fast against the secular onslaught. They tell their student listeners (and those students' even more worried parents) to not let "those people" -- professors, members of the Democratic Party, moderates, progressives, and such ordinary American men and women as Jews, gays, and members of the educated "elite" -- strip them of their faith. Hundreds of books by many evangelical/fundamentalist authors could be consolidated into one called How to Get Through College with Your Fundamentalist Faith Intact So You Won't Wind Up Becoming One of Them.

What just happened in this election is that the culturally left-behind hit back.

They won but will still claim they are victims of the "liberal elite." Actually they are victims of bad theology that has tutored them for generations to accept myth for fact.

It's no wonder that these folks believe lies more easily than truth. Sure the bad economy played a part in the mid-term results, but so did bad theology that has made a virtue out of being misinformed.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Patience With God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion now in paperback

Schaffer's analysis has its limits. The hardcore of Evangelical crazies can't account for the whole of the electorate who voted to put the GOP back in control of the House, so it should be taken with a handful of salt. But the observable tendency of right wing voters to elevate mythology over fact is quite evident: if not the "End Times Are A'Coming" myth then the current wrinkle on the Horatio Alger myth —"you too may be rich one day"— which is why so many blue collars have been gulled into voting against their own interests and for the interests of the plutocratic class who are determined to bury them to secure their own wealth. That apart from those who voted simply because they were frustrated that the Bush years weren't successfully repealed within six months of Obama taking the Oath and/or just couldn't be bothered to think about what was at stake in this election.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Indeed. Most of the people who turned out to support Obama in 2008 stayed home this year. If the Democratic leadership hadn't been so damned spineless. If Obama had taken the hard-line stance and actually gotten something done, instead of letting the GOP set the tone and pace of the debate, the people who supported him in 2008 (young progressives and liberals) would've been motivated enough to go vote.

I am TIRED of hearing that shit - "young progressives and liberals" weren't motivated to vote and it's all Obama's fault? - what a load of fucking horseshit! Those same sniveling brats whine that no one listens to them, that they're ignored, taken for granted, the world shits on them... well, what the fuck do they expect?

Of course. And, while yes, young liberals share much of the blame by choosing to do something other than vote over the last . . . what, month or two it's been possible to vote, counting early voting and absentee ballots . . . there's more than enough blame left over to let Obama and the national Democrats have it with both barrels.

If you don't care enough about your circumstances to get up off your ass and VOTE, if you can't be bothered to do at least that much WHY the fuck should the people in power care about you? Think about it.

Hey, don't blame me, I voted. I was probably the youngest person I saw at my local polling place, and I'm over thirty.

[Kon_El]

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.

I read that the 2008 elections were the anomaly and 2010 is a return to more normal numbers for the demographic but I can't remember where.

[WesFox13]

Yeah don't blame me either. I'm 22 and I still sent it my Mail-In Ballot, I did my part to try to keep the Republicans out of office.

[Questor]

Yeah don't blame me either. I'm 22 and I still sent it my Mail-In Ballot, I did my part to try to keep the Republicans out of office.

Let's see.

Phone Banked... Yup
Donated... Yup
Assisted with campaigns and community organizations... Yup

Many statewide defeats of tea party crazies... yup. (And both governor and senator had electable non-tea party options in the primaries.)

[Big Orange]

Very disappointing but not unexpected given the seeming passivity of Obama, although given how radical the Teabaggers are and how they're playing really dirty in supplanting the Reagan Republican infrastructure that went into ruin following GWB, I get the impression that the Teabaggers will burn themselves out once they seize control of some of the levers of genuine power, and there'll be vicious infighting between the naive idealists and dangerous sociopaths.

And while Obama blew it and should've been as assertive as his enemies claimed he was, his administration is not without merit and everybody should be terrified about the Teabaggers threatening to roll back what progress Obama made.

[RedImperator]

A little historical context for this year's election. Source here.

Since 1934, the president's party has gained seats in the House in a midterm election only three times, and all three of those times it's pretty easy to figure out why. In 1934, FDR's popularity was astronomical and the Republicans had nothing to offer except a return to Hoover-era policies (Alf Landon would run in 1936 on a "Roll back the New Deal" platform and get clobbered). In 1998, the voters were unhappy about the Clinton impeachment (this is part of why, by the way, that you won't see a serious attempt to impeach Obama). In 2002, Bush's popularity was extremely high and the country had war fever; despite the Democrats' shamelessly rolling over for everything Bush wanted that year, they still got hammered in the mid-terms.

The Democrats got shelled this week, but it's not some kind of new historical precedent. Given how bad the economy is, how overextended the Democrats were after '06 and '08, and the usual historical pattern, these kinds of losses were to be expected.

Incidentally, you see how Roosevelt's Democrats lost 70 seats in 1938? Roosevelt Recession. It's the economy, stupid, and it always has been.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Very disappointing but not unexpected given the seeming passivity of Obama, although given how radical the Teabaggers are and how they're playing really dirty in supplanting the Reagan Republican infrastructure that went into ruin following GWB, I get the impression that the Teabaggers will burn themselves out once they seize control of some of the levers of genuine power, and there'll be vicious infighting between the naive idealists and dangerous sociopaths.

And while Obama blew it and should've been as assertive as his enemies claimed he was, his administration is not without merit and everybody should be terrified about the Teabaggers threatening to roll back what progress Obama made.

They can try, but they won't get a lot done in the next two years. Remember the GOP's ultimate goal is to see Obama out of office come 20 January 2013, and for all the Tea Party thunder and lightning; at the end of the day, it's going to be virtually all for show. The anonymous captains of industry who catapulted them into office will start reminding them who really controls who, and they'll be voting lockstep like good Republican drones before the end of the spring.

That's not to say that there aren't a lot of scary things on the mainstream GOP platform and that the party leadership won't let the freshmen indulge themselves in things that will keep Obama distracted and ineffective (but not overindulge themselves to the point where they shoot the GOP in the foot, or give someone like Palin the notion that she'd be a credible Presidential candidate in 2012.) But they'll push things that the few surviving Blue Dogs, and other examples of the DINO species, can get behind so they can claim they accomplished something in 2012. The real rollbacks will wait until President (picks a name out of my hat) Huckabee is sworn in in 2013 and the GOP has a chance to consolidate their grip on the House and make further inroads on the Senate.

[Themightytom]

Personally I think the Republicans just made the same play Obama did in 2008 for less game. They campaigned on change, well, now tehy have TWO years to effect change instead of four. They're touting this as a massive victory/referendum/the people have spoken. Great. lets see what gets done in the next two years.

Their ass is on the line now too, either they buckle down and actually pull off some work, or they shoot off their own foot for 2012 when the Democrats come back with "Well you voted for change, last time, and nothing changed, so fuck change and settle for who didn't screw up the country."

Also I was gratified to see little or no discernible effect by the Tea party. Sure they seem to have mobilized voters, but what clear victory did they achieve? Christine O'Loony bin is following Palin around on talk shows, Joe Miller MIGHT win over a write in candidate from nowhere. Not exactly the shot heard around the world here.

[Pelranius]

Did the Teabaggers increase the GOP margin of victory in the House at the cost of ruining their chances for the Senate?

[Flagg]

Did the Teabaggers increase the GOP margin of victory in the House at the cost of ruining their chances for the Senate?

Essentially. Though I'd take some issue with the whole "teabagger" thing, considering they are just the hard right of the Republican party that has always existed.

[Themightytom]

Essentially. Though I'd take some issue with the whole "teabagger" thing, considering they are just the hard right of the Republican party that has always existed.

Well you and I know that Flagg, but they would love for Amerika to think differently. I think the election results prove they are just emboldened Republicans, as much as the Green party are just Democrats gone wierd.

[StarshipTitanic]

Did the Teabaggers increase the GOP margin of victory in the House at the cost of ruining their chances for the Senate?

It doesn't matter because they possibly laid the foundation for a GOP Senate majority in two years or four. There were already 18 GOP class 3 senators from Bush's 2004 victory. Now they have 24, one shy of half a majority. There are 13 Republican class 2 senators, bringing the total to 37. Nine Republican class 1 senators survived 2006 so they will probably survive 2012. The tenth is Scott Brown. And look at where some Democratic senators are:

Florida
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska, though that's Ben Nelson (DINO-NE)
North Dakota
Ohio
Virginia
West Virginia, Manchin again.
Wisconsin, which just unseated Russ Feingold

Democrats can probably remove Scott Brown (MA). John Ensign (NV), possibly. Maybe Olympia Snowe will fall to a primary challenge and maybe Maine will elect a Democrat to replace her. Lieberman will get purged, but replaced by a Democrat.

Democrats will have 30 seats not up for reelection in 2012 and they will have to defend at least 9 seats difficult seats, possibly more. Republicans will have 37 seats not up for reelection, 7 very likely safe seats, 2 more (NV, ME) that are pretty safe and they only need a handful to gain control.

[Thanas]

BTW, anybody who did not understand what a loss Feingold will be,here is a short article.

[StarshipTitanic]

BTW, anybody who did not understand what a loss Feingold will be,here is a short article.

His defeat was a bigger loss to the Tea Party's alleged principles than to the Democratic Party. A shellacking for individual freedoms, if you will.

[Thanas]

BTW, anybody who did not understand what a loss Feingold will be,here is a short article.

His defeat was a bigger loss to the Tea Party's alleged principles than to the Democratic Party. A shellacking for individual freedoms, if you will.

It will be a loss for civil liberties. I don't see how the Tea Party matters in that respect.

[StarshipTitanic]

BTW, anybody who did not understand what a loss Feingold will be,here is a short article.

His defeat was a bigger loss to the Tea Party's alleged principles than to the Democratic Party. A shellacking for individual freedoms, if you will.

It will be a loss for civil liberties. I don't see how the Tea Party matters in that respect.

The Tea Party matters because they helped vote out a man who supported civil liberties while one of their alleged principles (or catch phrases as I think of it) is "limited government." Isn't that obvious? Not sure what you mean here.

[Thanas]

Yeah, that. I thought that was obvious as well.

[StarshipTitanic]

Yeah, that. I thought that was obvious as well.

Oh, what you meant to dismiss was why being utterly contradictory would matter to a Teanut. I remember some Palinistas on the board around 2008. Maybe they can come out of hiding and explain why.

I forgot a local note I wanted to give: Despite all the bragging over Scott Brown's surprise victory to take Kennedy's seat in January, the Republicans were unable to pick up the most vulnerable district in the state (MA-10). It had a Democrat incumbent retiring and it was where Brown racked most of his votes. They only unseated the two New Hampshire representatives in all of New England and gained only one governorship. In fact, the GOP lost a seat in our state Senate because the incumbent was running for lieutenant governor (and lost, along with the Republican nominee). He was also one of those inexplicably gay Republicans.

[Thanas]

Link to a discussion about the base and Obama.

And I really hope Reid will be as effective as a senator then he is as a campaigner.

[RedImperator]

Link to a discussion about the base and Obama.

And I really hope Reid will be as effective as a senator then he is as a campaigner.

Where the shit has this guy been the last two years?

[Thanas]

Probably planning this effective machine? Really, I have no idea.

But it really is a very stark difference between the family-sacrificing guy and the ineffectual "leader". It may just be that he only cares to be in power and not much else.

EDIT: Also note that much of the support came from people who profited from him being a weak leader (Baucus) so they would be interested in keeping him as well. And that Reid did not anger Republicans by not mounting challenges against the other Republican senator. Kinda like a gentlemen's agreement there.

[Samuel]

You need a federal government large enough to enforce obedience on local states...

I said "conservatives", not "anarchists". But the point of the illustration wasn't even the specifics - it's simply that politicians aren't actually black and white; not every conservative ideal is at odds with liberal goals and vice versa.

No, I meant for civil liberties. You need to be able to have a large federal government in order to enforce obedience upon states. I'm not talking about military might- I mean things like being able to blackmail states by threatening to withold funding unless they enact certain legislation. You can't really get more big government than that.

[Patrick Degan]

William Saletan of Slate has an interesting take on the outcome:

Pelosi's Triumph
Democrats didn't lose the battle of 2010. They won it.
By William Saletan
Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2010, at 8:19 AM ET

Democrats have lost the House, and health care is getting the blame. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a retiring Democrat, says his party "overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation" and by spending $1 trillion on "a major entitlement expansion." Sen. John McCain's economic adviser agrees. Pundits say the health care bill killed President Obama's approval ratings, cost congressional Democrats their jobs, and snuffed out the legacy of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Virtually every House Democrat from a swing district who took a gamble by voting for the health law made a bad political bet," says the New York Times. The Los Angeles Times laments that "the measure of a leader in Washington isn't how much gets done, it's who holds power in the end. On that scale, Pelosi failed."

I'm not buying the autopsy or the obituary. In the national exit poll, voters were split on health care. Unemployment is at nearly 10 percent. Democrats lost a lot of seats that were never really theirs, and those who voted against the bill lost at a higher rate than did those who voted for it. But if health care did cost the party its majority, so what? The bill was more important than the election.

I realize that sounds crazy. We've become so obsessed with who wins or loses in politics that we've forgotten what the winning and losing are about. Partisans fixate on punishing their enemies in the next campaign. Reporters, in the name of objectivity, refuse to judge anything but the Election Day score card. Politicians rationalize their self-preservation by imagining themselves as dynasty builders. They think this is the big picture.

They're wrong. The big picture isn't about winning or keeping power. It's about using it. I've made this argument before, but David Frum, the former speechwriter to President Bush, has made it better. In March, when Democrats secured enough votes to pass the bill, he castigated fellow conservatives who looked forward to punishing Pelosi and President Obama "with a big win in the November 2010 elections." Frum observed:

Legislative majorities come and go. This healthcare bill is forever. A win in November is very poor compensation for this debacle now. … No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the "doughnut hole" and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents' insurance coverage?

Exactly. A party that loses a House seat can win it back two years later, as Republicans just proved. But a party that loses a legislative fight against a middle-class health care entitlement never restores the old order. Pretty soon, Republicans will be claiming the program as their own. Indeed, one of their favorite arguments against this year's health care bill was that it would cut funding for Medicare. Now they're pledging to rescind those cuts. In 30 years, they'll be accusing Democrats of defunding Obamacare.

Most bills aren't more important than elections. This one was. Take it from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Yesterday, in his election victory speech at the Heritage Foundation, he declared, "Health care was the worst piece of legislation that's passed during my time in the Senate." McConnell has been in the Senate for 26 years. He understands the bill's significance: It's a huge structural change in the relationship between the public, the economy, and the government.

Politicians have tried and failed for decades to enact universal health care. This time, they succeeded. In 2008, Democrats won the presidency and both houses of Congress, and by the thinnest of margins, they rammed a bill through. They weren't going to get another opportunity for a very long time. It cost them their majority, and it was worth it.

And that's not counting financial regulation, economic stimulus, college lending reform, and all the other bills that became law under Pelosi. So spare me the tears and gloating about her so-called failure. If John Boehner is speaker of the House for the next 20 years, he'll be lucky to match her achievements.

Will Republicans revisit health care? Sure. Will they enact some changes to the program? Yes, and Democrats will help them. Every program needs revisions. Republicans will get other things, too: business tax breaks, education reform, more nuclear power, and a crackdown on earmarks. These are issues on which both parties can agree. Which is why, if you're a Democrat, you deal with them after you've lost your majority—not before.

It's funny, in a twisted way, to read all the post-election complaints that Democrats lost because they thought only of themselves. Even the chief operating officer of the party's leading think tank, the Center for American Progress, says Obama failed to convince Americans "that he knows their jobs are as important as his." That's too bad, because Obama, Pelosi, and their congressional allies proved just the opposite. They risked their jobs—and in many cases lost them—to pass the health care bill. The elections were a painful defeat, and you can argue that the bill was misguided. But Democrats didn't lose the most important battle of 2010. They won it.

[Jaevric]

I like that article. It's a shame that a lot of Americans, including politicians, seem to think "being in office" is more important than accomplishing anything positive while being there. I think we forget sometimes during the elections that this isn't the Superbowl or the World Series where winning means having a shiny trophy and a lucrative advertising gig; this is governing a nation. It doesn't do any good for "your team" to win if the nation loses.

Frankly, I'd've respected the Democrats a lot more if they'd rammed the Public Option through over Republican howls of protests, gotten massacred in the elections, and Obama had come out and said "Yeah, we lost a lot of seats in the House. But you know what? We did the right thing and the nation is going to benefit from our making the hard choices, so fuck 'em."