Decision 2K10

After an evening learning about Brazilian ju jitsu, I returned home with my sore shoulder to watch the shills of MSNBC dealing with the midterm elections. By the time I tuned in, they had already called the House for Republicans. Kudos to Todd Young, my classmate at the Academy and TBS, on his win in Indiana's Ninth District. I took a Nyquil to prevent the onset of a cold (it's not working) and ended up falling asleep on the couch. By the time I woke up and went to bed, NBC had called the Senate for the Democrats, resulting in a split Congress.

How to look at these results, aside from my personal happiness for Todd (sorry you missed the reunion, but we all understood), is causes me some difficulty. To a certain level, I feel a bit of vindication. As Evan Bayh posits in today's New York Times, "[i]t is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a 'political realignment' and a 'new progressive era' proved wishful thinking. Exit polls in 2008 showed that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives and 44 percent as moderates. An electorate that is 76 percent moderate to conservative was not crying out for a move to the left."

Not to be too snarky, but in 2008, I warned Democrats not to overstate their victory. In a post on November 21, 2008 regarding Obama's cabinet choices:

"...I think the picks Obama has made reflect a great deal of savvy on his part, and an understanding of just what mandate for change he has got: The mandate to be someone other than Bush. That's basically it."

As I said before, the 2008 election, while a humiliation for the GOP that should have inspired some true soul-searching (as opposed to tea partying), was not a radical realignment of political power in America towards a progressive majority. It was voters taking out the bad economy, the bailouts and the war in Iraq on the village idiot from Crawford, Texas and anybody associated with him. Obama even framed the election that way: Hope and Change, or a third term of Bush.


And I also said that if Democrats pushed a decidedly liberal agenda, they would pay for it now.

Have the Democrats pushed so liberal an agenda? That's up for debate. On the one hand, the health care bill didn't have a public option, Gitmo is still open for business, the war in Iraq is still winding down according to the schedule Bush set, and the Supreme Court still has a conservative slant to it, so there have been a lot of things which haven't really turned to the left. On the other hand, progressives have a lot to be pleased with over the last two years. As has been only recently reported, Democrats have passed more bills since Obama's election than any other Democratic-controlled Congress and president since the Great Society. The health care bill, while imperfect from liberal eyes, is a bigger step toward universal coverage than anything in this country's history (albeit something Democrats could have achieved decades ago if they could have stopped fighting among themselves). There are greater regulations on Wall Street than there were when Wall Street tanked our economy three years ago. Two new justices on the Supreme Court. New protections for the environment. All in all, a lot for Democrats to be proud of. So whenever I hear someone on the Left complaining about what a disappointment Obama has been or talking about running a primary challenge to him in 2012, I wonder what country they have been living in for the last two years.

The Huffington Post warns of "Gridlock in America" today. Maybe they're right. But as the liberal shills on MSNBC pointed out (and as I have alluded to in the past), these newly elected Tea Partiers, as well as the more established GOPers they caucus with, are going to be under immediate pressure to make their promises of fiscal restraint and smaller government a reality. None of them seem to want to identify programs or departments they will cut in order to balance the budget or how to increase revenue without raising taxes, but the grace period in which they could stonewall on these questions is now running out. When they take office, real choices are going to confront their campaign promises, and a lot of those angry voters who sent them to Washington are going to be expecting results.

Good luck, Todd. Semper Fi.