From this point on though, it will be interesting to see how those “mad as hell” voters manage their cognitive dissonance as very little changes in a substantive way, even while their party is on the ascendent. Perhaps they will settle for sloganeering and symbolic change, which is all they’re likely to get in the short term. They’re main goal seems to be to defeat Obama in 2012 rather than actually get something done. Politics is indeed their vocation.

Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal, but even though I have health insurance, it pains me to think that there are those in this advanced and rich country who can’t afford it, or are kept from buying it. Just today the new Republican leadership is saying they have a mandate for repeal of the health care law. What do they mean by “common sense solutions?” It seems to me that’s been done already. There’ll be no government takeover, just common sense pooling of individuals to enable them to buy as a group.

Eric and Alex, I was also struck by Boehner’s tears as he recalled that he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. I’d like to know more about it. Did he do it during a great recession? Did he get any education or small business loans? Was he ever uninsured? Oh, there are so many questions.

YOu see, its ironic that you should bring up Lincoln, because anything short of slave labor, along with a total disregard for the environment, will bring those jobs back. Adams Smith once said that shareholders were properly “citizens of the world” and had only weak allegiance to their country of origin. That insight is even more true now than it was then. That’s what makes the “Citizens United” case so ironic. Citizens? Of where exactly? Is it not telling that Dick Army was, until he was forced to resign, a lobbyist for a GLOBAL law firm?

But I digress. There was still a bright side to the election results. Loons like Palidino, Tancredo, O’Donnell, and Angle were defeated. And thank heavens!

By using the passive voice, you deny responsibility to any one party. Thus, the title becomes true because only one person somewhere somehow need ‘expect’ the results that we see today, to some extent, and you are not a liar. But what does that really mean? The results were expected. Does that mean that there was no point in voting, that we were exercising a futile right and need not? Does it mean that… I don’t know.

How can you perpetuate the myth that the fact that the election results are fait accompli after they occur means that your vote cannot make an impact?

Also, your argument here could use some working. You quote the T’ville’s statement that a big party is committed to principles, not consequences, then use the consequences of a tax cut(rich people will get all of their money and you won’t!) as justification to undercut the principles that Republicans are appealing to (people generally have a right to the money they’ve earned, which was a common speaking point of Abraham Lincoln. It was a centerpiece of his argument for the freedom of the enslaved.).

On the other hand, we have Iris here, who speaks from the assumption that she knows the best for America, and hopefully the ignorant independants wake up before anything bad happens to them…. like tax cuts for the only people in America in the financial position to create desperately needed jobs.

But all day what did I hear and read about? The independents! The independent voter made all the difference. Who is the independent voter? They don’t understand ideology, and even if they do, they don’t adhere to any. They flit and float. If they don’t feel good, they’ll vote for the other guy. It doesn’t matter if the other guy is the cause of their problems in the first place, or will make things worse. They just know what’s right in front of them at the moment, and if it’s not good, then there must be something wrong with what they’ve got.

Such people are the ones who decide elections and they decided this one. In other words there was no message other than get the economy going again. There is no mandate for how that should be done. Perhaps the only problem for Democrats is that their loss wasn’t larger. Under the present circumstances I can’t see that anything can get done in Congress. Perhaps Obama will be forced to compromise, and the rich will retain their tax cuts for a while longer, but that’s just going to add to the debt the tea party is railing against.

Will “independent voters” switch again next time? Will the Republicans be on the hook if the unemployment rate is still high, or will Democrats be blamed since they still have the Presidency and the majority in the Senate? Or if things miraculously improve, will it be interpreted by the independents that their last vote was a good one? Shudder to think that thought, though I’m still hoping beyond hope for times to get better.

The dissatisfaction expressed in the recent election involves great and small issues. Currently the private, public and governmental spheres may be irrevocably intertwined, and existent ideological divisions seem inadequate to address them. The intensity of the dissatisfaction expressed in the election may be linked to the unwillingness to discuss and resolve longer-term issues.

There needs to be a re-engagement of great political ideas supported by workable alternatives. It isn’t clear that there is an appetite or process to accomplish this. If there isn’t, then the unresolved structural issues will become crises, and ultimately force us to address them. Unfortunately, as the structural problems become larger, palatable solutions will become fewer. Perhaps Deliberately Considered can help bring attention to them sooner.

Newsweek January 7th, 2008:
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/01/06/hillary-tears-up.print.html

“Some people think elections are a game: who’s up or who’s down,” Clinton said, her voice breaking and tears welling. “It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us together. Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some difficult odds.”