Of course there's a lot of armchair quarterbacking about Tuesday's elections from both sides of the aisle. Not surprisingly, liberals think the problem was that blue dog Democrats didn't want to spend enough. Seriously.
It's impossible to emphasize enough that the reason Democrats got their asses kicked so badly in this election comes down to two things:
1. Unemployment
2. Obamacare
I've always said that it wouldn't matter if Barack Obama had found a cure for cancer, if the unemployment rate was over 8%, Democrats would lose in 2010. And 2012, for that matter.
But worse for Democrats is the anger their underhanded and sleazy tactics in passing Obamacare created. Americans, perhaps naively, believe that the legislative process is connected with public support for certain ideas. Once Americans make it known they don't support certain legislation (think Hillarycare), that legislation is supposed to die a quick death. But rather than admitting that the People didn't want Democrats' version of health care reform, those "representatives of the People" told the People F.U. and passed it anyway. Not hard to figure out why so many voters decided it was time to revoke the D's driver's licenses.
George Will says voters recoiled from liberalism. He has about the best definition of progressivism I've seen:
The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.
Karl at Patterico's Pontifications watches the struggle of liberals to understand what happened to them. Good stuff.
I'm a little rusty at this, so bear with me while I get back in the swing of things...
|