Nothing is decided yet. This is Election Day and what people do now will determine the results. We’ll soon know for sure, perhaps already when you read this. But it, nonetheless, seems likely that today’s election will be a good one for the Republicans, bad for the Democrats. The polls, the pundits and public expectations are all in agreement. The Democrats will lose the House and probably keep the Senate with a much diminished majority. With this general prognostication, we start the debate now.
What Happened?
There will be all sorts of explanations to account for the election outcome, most of them connected to the limitations of Obama as a political actor, most of them, also, not really serious. In the past two elections, the Democrats gained a large number of seats in traditionally Republican districts, and thus they were not particularly solid, and when times are tough, as they are now, it is not good for incumbents in marginal districts. I have nothing particularly to add to this. I recommend an excellent, realistic election preview of the likely post election storytelling by Bendan Nyhan, which I think gets it right.
Why?
But beyond the outcome is its meaning. Although Nyhan and other election realists are surely on target when they underscore that the old slogan “it’s the economy stupid” goes a long way in explaining the results, the results’ meaning will be less clear and more important as we proceed.
While I’ve suggested in my most recent posts that the power and limitations of Obama’s speech-making will be revealed by the voting, I don’t think that this is of crucial importance in understanding the meaning of the elections. That was how the battle looked on the ground, as Obama tried to maximize his and the Democrats’ advantage. Now there is the question of where the country is at this moment and where it’s going. The Republican victory does reveal Democratic failures, which need examination, which I hope we discuss here at DC in the coming days and weeks.
I think that the primary issue is commonsense. I have long maintained that Obama, and the Democratic Party under his leadership, is not leftist, but centrist, that his project was to move the center a bit left and to change commonsense understandings of central problems: key are issues of race and difference, more broadly about American identity, and the relationship between the state and the economy.
These issues have been discussed on this blog in posts on “Gates – Gate,” “Park 51,” healthcare reform, and on Obama’s election itself. While I don’t think that the results tonight will indicate a complete failure and repudiation of the Democrats’ approach under the leadership of President Obama, I do think that the election results will show how the Democrats have been engaged in an ongoing struggle about commonsense, which has thus far not been successful.
Since Reagan persuasively convinced the American public that the government is the problem, not the solution to our problems, America indeed has been a center right nation, as conservative observers often assert. Reagan’s obsession with “welfare queens” added a touch of racism to the consensus he forged. But there is nothing natural about this. Obama sought to change it and made inroads with a record of legislative accomplishment and of course by his election itself.
But commonsense changes slowly, and there has been significant resistance, including an impassioned social movement, The Tea Party. In the coming months, in post – election posts, I hope to discuss the battle over American common sense with the D.C. community. Why have people held firm in their obsessions about government spending and balanced budgets while in an economic recession? Why must we take steps backwards, after moving so convincingly forward in electing Barack Obama in our struggle against racial, ethnic and religious discrimination and injustice? Will the change again proceed? What strategies and positions can facilitate this? What strategies and positions will block it?
Dr. Goldfarb, you are right on target when you say that, “…the Democratic Party under his [Obama’s] leadership, is not leftist, but centrist…” And many other level headed individuals, including even the likes of Ron Paul, would agree, and even adding that Obama is in fact a “corporatist.” I really don’t think that calling Obama a corporatist is too far off base. Facile anti-corporate rhetoric aside, he has taken quite a lot of money from corporations such as Goldman Sachs, BP, etc.
With such “realistic” assessments in mind, and with the prevelance of perceptions that Obama is a “socialist” (which he is clearly not, or at least not more so than any Republican who refuses to tinker with Medicaire or Social Security for fear of the voter backlash), it seems to me that the election results are perhaps as much due to a victory of paranoia over realism as they are due to legimate disenchantment with issues such as the economy.
John Boehner,the probable new speaker of the house, has taken dead aim at the new health care bill, calling it a “monstrosity.” And given the fact that, as PolitiFact demonstrates, most of what the public knows about the health care bill are distortions or even outright lies [i.e. “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire] the Republicans have been able to capitalize on paranoia, and this is the one of the main reasons for the Republican victory.
But ironically, oh so ironically, another significant reason for the election results is that the “Communist Takover” that is the perception that the healthcare bill didn’t include a public option, didn’t go far enough. And voter realism, among young voters especially, peg Obama, not as a socialist, but as a corporatist, as are many of the democrats that were given the boot. (Perhaps you may call then corporate socialists.)
So can yesterday, today, tomorrow, possibly be a good day for America? Who can say for sure at this point. Unintended consequences are always a possibility. However, I don’t think the Republicans will be able to undo everything that the Democrats have done; Democrats still “control,” whatever that means, the Senate and the White House. But I think what this possibly means is “gridlock” or some degree of that. If the people still want change, they will need to, at least for the next few years, practice the “politics of small things” or some equivalent and not expect the government to deliver it.
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