(Mike Zahara) – All props to author Terry McMillan, but if you’ve been ‘Waiting to Exhale’; Tuesday’s Democratic losses gave Dems the opportunity to adjust and become much more realistic.
Tuesday’s races in VA & NJ were almost identical to those of 1993 in the same states and that’s not a good thing if you’re a Democrat on a 2010 ballot. Historically, it has always been the Governors’ offices that signal an electorate swing, also not a good thing if you’re a Democrat on the ballot in 2010.
The contributing factors are many in this cycle and the prognosis for big shifts next year are the ‘new political reality’. Dems now have the real ability to lose the US House in 2010, and though this cycle looks safe for most in the US Senate, there will be Dem losses there too, and a flip in 2012 to the GOP.
They’re just doing too much, too fast, too left, and America is recoiling! In what has been a consistent pattern for the last 20+ years, voters are feeling more distant and more removed from their federal government than at any time in our nation’s history.
To date, President Obama is not succeeding in healing that rift. Part of it is Americans’ lack of political patience and desire to have everything instant these days…including solutions.
But the much bigger issue is that the average guy has not felt stimulus in his own pocket while listening to daily news about the big banks and other big shots taking millions in profits and salaries.
Americans always vote their pocketbooks and wallets first and foremost…always!
Here in Nevada, it’s even worse!
The few jobs created or saved here under stimulus are almost all exclusively public-sector jobs where outrageous benefits and protections greatly offend those in the private-sector who lost those perqs well before the current recession.
On things like public works, the pool of contractors and favored employees of those contractors is so minute in Nevada, that those projects will not have any affect on the local economy and will only serve to widen the gulf between the haves and have-nots here.
It may be 5+ years before service-oriented jobs—the biggest part of our state’s economy—come back here…that’s 2015!
That builds an underlying resentment across the board.
You just can’t repair that with one year to go before mid-term elections either. There will be great damage at the 2010 polls for the party in power and that could trickle all the way down the ballot.
Voters are highly agitated, and that is not good news if you’re an incumbent or the party in power.
Of course, all candidates will say they’re for jobs, but what idiot isn’t for jobs? It’s cheap, throwaway rhetoric that offers no solutions. The fact remains that government does not generally stimulate the private sector and often makes matters worse by delaying economic recovery with ‘stimulus’ that only stimulates a small group of favored insiders while the regular Joe gets nothing and feels nothing.
* * * * * * *
A blessing in Tuesday’s losses is the end of exuberance and an agenda that was far too big to begin with.
Cap and trade is dead, and that’s too bad because like healthcare, there are some good things within it, but that too is far too big a bill that penalizes our nation while China and India directly told SOS Hillary Clinton earlier this year that they would not reduce Co2.
You can’t sell that back home to voters when China became the world’s largest Co2 emitter two years ago and will hold that title for the rest of this century, and especially when we’re in deep recession.
Break the bill down and get some smaller stand alone legislation that your members can take home to voters in 2010, or watch the whole thing die before your very eyes.
All politicians are all about their own survival and nothing else. With Tuesday’s losses, healthcare ‘reform’ itself has now been pushed into 2010, and with each passing day, gets all that much harder to pass.
Card Check has long been dead without a chance of revival until after the 2010 elections.
We Democrats are just terrible with majorities; terrible, and voters will correct things for us in 2010. We always make the mistake that the nation is as far-to-the-left as our extremist wing is, and it never has been.
Whereas in 1994 the GOP swept in with an agenda called the Contract for/on America, they managed to pass almost all of it within a few months. With Dems coming in in 2008, the goals were far too big, and they are nearly empty-handed a year later!
Voters notice thing like that, especially the independents!
Both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will be under enormous pressure to break up some of these big behemoth ideas into smaller bills that they can get passed, because all members want to come home with something for their voters next year.
Place your bets that that is exactly what’s going to happen now.
But where the nation’s middle is, always ebbs and flows, and currently the independents are over 60% against the current level of DC exuberance and won’t be voting for Dems in 2010.
We’ve already lost them.
What voters are saying and what they’re not listening to is ‘STOP’ let’s hit the brakes and collect ourselves and catch our breath, first!
And everyone on the 2010 ballot will be hearing that and if they actually agree and say that, they’re going to win their offices–that’s candidates of either party!
You’ll be seeing the president slowly moving to his right and perhaps cautioning not a retreat, but an ‘adjustment in priorities’.
So far, he’s above the fray, he welcomes the coming thinning of Dems in 2010, but he can’t sit in the background either. He has to play the good Dem, and also separate himself away from those who could destroy his re-election chances…and that would be his extremist left-wing.
After Tuesday, he has to choose his battles and when to use his ‘bully pulpit’.
He won’t be using it to prop up a US Congress that the entire nation is angry with today, that’s for sure! He’s let them twist in the wind all on their own with healthcare, and they’re too stupid to know it on Capital Hill.
You witnessed voter anger in Tuesday’s results, the Dem retreat has begun, and the exuberance has now officially ended.
It was as predictable as the Sun rising in the east tomorrow morning.
They just chose not to ‘believe’ it.
This time, voters spoke and voted the kind of ‘change’ that’s all that was left in their pockets Tuesday.
Too much, too soon, too fast, too left has them feeling left out and they said so at the ballot box Tuesday.
(Mike Zahara is a Democrat blogger and publisher of WatchdogWag.com)
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