Election Coverage
Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest: Bloggers Were Right: It WAS Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.
Steve Bates at the Yellow Something Something: Hey Democrats… The Election Could Have Sucked Worse.
Lambert at Corrente: The midterms were a referendum on Obama from the D base, and that’s why the Ds lost.
Duncan at Eschaton: Here We Go Again
I don’t know how politicians lacked the self-preservation skills to recognize that if they failed to deliver on the economy they would fail, but that’s what happened.
Paul Krugman: Blame The Whiny Center
So, we’re already getting the expected punditry: Obama needs to end his leftist policies, which consist of … well, there weren’t any, but he should stop them anyway.
What actually happened, of course, was that Obama failed to do enough to boost the economy, plus totally failing to tap into populist outrage at Wall Street. And now we’re in the trap I worried about from the beginning: by failing to do enough when he had political capital, he lost that capital, and now we’re stuck.
The first President I voted for was a Texan who came into office with the same type of flood that Obama did, but instead of putzing around and being conciliatory, Lyndon Baines Johnson went to work and got his Great Society programs passed. It wasn’t easy, parts of the program were filibustered by Democrats, but Barack Obama couldn’t have been elected without LBJ’s program. He took his “political capital” and spent it to get things done. With LBJ, “kicking butt and taking names” was not a figure of speech.
He damaged his legacy with the Vietnam War which is why people tend to forget the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and the other Great Society bills he pushed through in his single term.
9 comments
Yer right, David, expecting the Democrats to do what we elected them to do makes us whiny contributors to their loss. The nerve of us, asking the Democrats to do what we elected them to do! What next, we expect them to have, like, actual spines or somethin’?
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
LOL @ Badtux! 😀 Ya haveta remember BT that in the UK, nobody really expects anyone to do *anything* that they are supposed to! And if someone does, it’s instantly suspicious! It’s sorta… the natural way of things there! Which is why nothing get’s done there either. 😆 😛 Curiously, they don’t expect the Monarch to do anything. Maybe because they are afraid they may go back to the *good ol’ days* when the Monarch told everyone what to do, and it was a short life if you damned well didn’t do it! Things were much *simpler* then. And now these idiots want to go back to that kind of *simplicity*, but without the consequences. At least back then, everyone knew who had the money, and where the bodies were buried… usually. 😉
Endlessly amusing! 😀 😀
But yeah… the nerve! Actually expecting one’s elected *representatives of the people* to actually do what they promised they would do in order to get elected. tch, tch… where will it lead??! Next thing ya know BT… You’ll be expecting people to actually be honest, kind, caring, considerate, trustworthy, etc!! Geez… What planet do YOU live on??? 😉 😛
I guess if Cameron decides to nationalize the banks, no one in the Conservative Party will complain.
Just how many Crooks is Duff friends with?
Oh, Clive is enough because he is dishonest in so many fields, libeling people at will to please his patrons in economics, politics, and climatology. He’s a real piece of work.
Kryten, I was, of course, being snarky :). Nobody here in the ‘States really expects politicians to do everything they say either — I mean, politicians here promise to walk on water if that’s what’ll get them elected, and funny, I haven’t seen any of the marching across the top of the Potomac lately :). But we do expect them to at least walk across one of the bridges over the Potomac if walking across the Potomac was, in fact, what they promised to do. Instead, they’re kinda huddled over on the side of the Potomac with their bathing suits on, occasionally dipping a toe in the river and then shuddering and whining, “it’s too cold!” as an excuse to not do anything even near what they promised to do. Awe the poor widdle babies, guess we gotta trade’em in for the next model that either ain’t such wimps or can figure out how to use a bridge to get over the water they promised to walk on. Too bad it’s going to be two more years before we can trade in the new batch of do-nothings, sighhhhhh!
I worked my butt off to get a Progressive Dem
elected to the CA State Assembly. We WON
even though thousands of Chamber of Commrce
dollars were poured into the race to defeat us.
Actually cookie jill, they spent millions! They targeted Boxer alone with a $5mill war chest. I posted a comment about it here: 🙂
http://whynow.dumka.us/2010/11/02/mel-brooks-explains-it-all/#comment-53893
@ Badtux – No… really? You… snarky??! I’m shocked. 😛 😉
(I did kinda *guess*. The opportunity to annoy duff was worth a comment. I had nothing better to do for a couple minutes.) 😆
Congratulations on the win, Jill, which proves my point that progressives went to the polls to back people who supported their views, but didn’t automatically vote for people labeled Democrat. We got our redistricting amendments passed in Florida, so the voters were there.
Kryten, the big money was spent in Federal elections, like the Senate, not as much was spent in the local state races, like the assembly, but it was still there.
I don’t expect them to win every fight, Badtux, but I do expect them to show up for it.