Posted by
Bill Crawford on Monday, May 17, 2010 10:28:20 PM
I'm not even going to go into the tried and true rule about how if one Party is spending time spinning how their losses aren't going to be as bad as all that, they're about to get drawn and quartered. This has been the DNC spin since they realized there was no change in the polls after their health care touchdown dance.
The media spin is usually closer to this November being a backlash against incumbents of both parties. The White House is actually presenting it all as support for their policies- the hubris of which caught me by surprise when they spoke of Senator Brown's election as exactly that in Massachusetts.
Truth be told, what is coming is a butt kicking of Democrats not seen since 1994, for a number of reasons, the last of which came to me last week.
The Democrats took a lot of GOP seats in 2006-08, first by positioning relatively conservative candiadates and then being aided by the Obama tide. These people were then pushed to argue over and then vote for health care, spending over a year with their noses pressed on the issue while state and local governments were facing budget shortfalls and unemployment was twice the rate of three years ago.
The GOP internecine civil war in '06, which brought the Dems the rest of the way to majority, is now essentially over. Those in the party who saw that seeking out and deporting the illegals was both impossible and politically insane have watched the shennaigans in Arizona and ceded the point to the 'security first' clan.
Those in the GOP leadership that didn't quite understand the nature of the Tea Party movement have seen the light. If the Tea Party asked Michael Steele to drive a Volkswagen naked, Michael would probably pick that day to get his dry cleaning done.
Finally, there is the underlying X-factor: Obama and his Chicago White House. For all his policy choices, his core problem is deeper. He is not an American exceptionalist. The Ivy League fruit cakes that follow him around aren't, either. But a solid majority of the country clearly is, which obligates one to deduct that includes a sizable chunk of the swing voters that vaulted him over 50%.
Since the Republicans are out of power, have been monolithic in their opposition to all this and are now a conduit for the groundswell of resistnace that has been bubbling for months, they will end up on the good side of this.
Mind you, this is still a polarized country, and the counter culture holds a third of us in their camp. There will be no surrender coming. But one side will get their butts kicked pretty well. and, for the second time in a decade, a Senate Majority Leader will lose their gavel and their seat in one ugly day.
Pelosi will keep her seat, as San Francisco is only above Washington DC in the rationality food chain. D.C. is where friends and foes alike were drawing crack pipes on Marion Barry's re-election posters and he still won handily.