This election was not about the traditional wedge issues that usually plague politics: abortion, religion, and gay marriage. Instead, this election was about economic ideology.
On the one side were the Democrats, with the general belief that you need to invest in programs to restore economic strength. On the other side were the Republicans. And then there was the Tea Party, which has seemed to coalesce around the idea of spending as little as possible.
The problem is, of course, that economic modeling can’t be effectively reduced to 140-character sound bites. The other problem is that economics itself is a completely inexact science, and so the theories are just that: theories.
Even so, most Americans have a pretty good gut feel for what makes them nauseous. Trillion dollar deficits, changes to their health care that they can’t predict, and a continuing bad feeling about the future make us all feel slightly queasy.
The result: a major loss for the Democrats in the House, a moderate loss in the Senate, and surprising gains for Tea Party candidates.
Loss of faith
Key to this election defeat was a loss of faith in President Obama’s policies. His promises during the 2008 election cycle seemed to result in payoffs to big banks and insurance companies, but no real feeling of change to Joe the Baker.
So even though many of Obama’s policies actually accomplished good, including probably fending off another Great Depression and pretty much turning around what was a constant, terrifying job drain, his policies didn’t seem to accomplish good enough. The resulting nearly universal feeling of malaise was enough to provide a strong drubbing to the Dems.
So here we are. In 2011, the House will be run by Democrats, the Senate by Republicans, and the White House by President Obama.
Is the new gridlock the same as the old gridlock?
Normally, with a mixed body governing, you’d immediately assume a new level of gridlock in Washington. But there’s nothing new here. Even with the Democrats’ initial “super-majority” back in 2009, they were unable to move their agenda and so we’ve effectively had gridlock since Mr. Obama assumed office.
The interesting question is how things will change now that Speaker Boehner will be in charge?
Without a doubt, the Republican/Tea Party-held House will field some truly nutball bills, pandering to the extremists in their parties. These bills will create a lot of fuss, but will die in the Senate (if they even get there) and will have no real effect.
The big question is whether the GOP fields any reasonably constructive bills that will help America. If they do, we may actually have less gridlock with a divided Congress than we did before. That’s because Harry Reid has a long record of giving into GOP bullying, and so, if the GOP can field anything even remotely sane, they’re likely to be able to cajole Reid into going along.
It’ll be interesting to see if the Republicans can balance their ideological extremes and actually do any good in Washington.
One final note. Both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman lost their bids. Although I didn’t agree with them on policy issues, I was disappointed to see two strong tech candidates go down to defeat. I still hope that sometime in the future, we’ll get some very strong, tech-aware candidates into positions of policy power in the United States.
Oh, well. There’s always 2012.
9 comments:
And this is what happens when a President doesn't make good on his promises- the swing voters change sides and now we have a "gridlock" within our governing bodies. Hopefully, the two sides will be willing to compromise and work together to achieve realistic goals to fix America's problems.
Gridlock in America is sometimes the best thing for what ails us. Gridlock forces parties to work together to pass major reforms. It prevents one major political party from dominating the agenda and creating policies that will later have to be repealed.There are certainly a number of voters that were upset with the way in which health-care was passed. However,
it was under a gridlocked Congress that the nation finally balanced the budget in the late 90s. There are numerous times when gridlock has proven valuable. So,why is gridlock such a bad thing?
Its so sad how the main issues that are usually debated about has been moved to second best. Now its all about the economy and power. Yes, we may be in debt, but on some levels, there are more important things than money. Changes in health care and many other programs that the government wants to fund may benefit the community (or it may not) but will it benefit the economy..
The Republicans winning majority of the House is just a feel-good situation. They believe that now that the people are backing them up there they can pass more of their legislation. The Democrats still hold 2/3 with The Senate and the president. The gridlock is still going to occur, and again nothing is going to get done. Obama's policies may not have produced as many jobs as he thought but they still produced some, and prevented the country from falling into a depression. Maybe if we didnt have the gridlock in the first place more policies could have been passed and we could have seen more progress. Guess we'll just have to see how the next 2 years play out.
Like you said, it's not the first gridlock we've had, nor will it be the last. But still I doubt the likelihood of anything getting done.
Yay, democracy at work I love it. But, we were never meant to be the most efficient government right... Hmm, Stalin's got everyone beat, then Hitler. tHis gridlock is going to do a lot more than we would initially think. Let's not forget that there are two sides to every battle- offensive and defensive. tHE Democrats for a long time have been thinking offensively: We must get this and this and this done. THerefore, this gridlock is awful news for them. Now that the republicans have taken over the House and enough of the Senate to where nothing can get done,Democrats are at a dramatic loss. However, the republicans, rightly so, are thinking defensively: stop this and this and this from passing. As such, this gridlock is a great win, they've halted EVERYTHING for the next two years. However, I don't think the republicans should celebrate so absolutely becuase we are forgetting history: The last THREE presidents to lose the House and Senate at Midterms were REELECTED. If the rEpublicans want obama out of the white house after this term (pretty sure that's true) then they're going to need to repeal history and continiue to go strong into the presidental election. Oh, and get a competent presidental candidate (I.E. Not ... Chistine O' Donnell or anyone even close to that.)
If we never really went anywhere with the "super-majority" of democrat, then that means that we are going to be in the same place as we started after everyone's moved into office. What I can get from this is that this election just confirmed the gridlock we're already in. Hopefully we'll be able to accomplish something.
One thing that I liked about the turnout of the midterms was that the Democrats no longer have full power of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. It might have put us in a gridlock, but it is better to have the balance of power between the two major political parties than for one to have all of the power.
Well the gridlock could ultimately prove beneficial as apparently Americans are not moving in the direction Expected. Also on a side not, this article was very slanted and writen like a propaganda cannot piece for Obama. Yes maybe he created jobs, but lots of those were extremely temporary like census workers. Also the claim that he stopped a great depression is utterly untrue in my opinion. Statistically comparing our economic crisis in 2008 to the Great Depression is simply ridiculous and he spent tons of money catering to people like the auto workers unions who ran the car companies into the ground in the first place. Also government spending has massively increased so id rather see this article focus on gridlock than adding snide comments to lash out at the people who voted the house majority over.
Post a Comment