This Election Is Not A Rebuke Of President Obama. It's A Referendum On The Lousy Economy

[DemocratSinceBirth]

The lesson of election day is if the economy sucks and you are a member of the governing party you will be punished at the ballot box, regardless of whether or not you were responsible for said economy, and regardless of your political party.

[leveymg]

1. WADR, it's about how Obama and the Dems have dealt with a lousy economy

The vast middle out there gave us two years to DO something to turn the ship away from the rocks. They knew the hull was already breached and the pumps barely working. What they wanted was decisive action, and could have accepted seeing some of the Captains of Industry being made to walk the plank, if that's what it took to get them to cooperate in turning the damn thing clear.

But, no, that's not what happened. Obama decided instead to spend the greater part of the time he had sitting down in the First Class Lounge negotiating terms with them, and ended up handing more money to the Bankster pirates to keep on doing pretty much what they were doing before. So, instead of throwing the worst of them to the sharks, and taking control over the engineering sections back from them, half the Third Class has drowned, and the water's coming in on the Second Class decks.

In other words, we didn't deliver. So the Democratic Congress is getting thrown over the side, instead of those responsible for this ship wreck.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. We Are Living In The Aftermath Of The Greatest Recession In Eighty Years

Punishing the culprits who caused this mess, and some of this mess is endemic to capitalism, would have been cathartic but it would not have hastened the recovery. My biggest fear, being unemployed and having lots of friends that are unemployed, is that this economy never fully recovers.

If it doesn't the 2012 election will look a lot like this one.

I don't think anybody knows how to fix this economy. Capitalism is supposed to fix itself. At least that's what Schumpeter said when writing about creative destruction. I'm skeptical.

[leveymg]

5. We are living IN it, not in the aftermath. Not past tense.

First, NBER called the beginning of the recession nine months after it started, and had to revise its judgment. I strongly suggest they have also called the end of it far too early.

Second, what would have hastened the end of the recovery would have been a declaration of a national economic emergency, which is within the powers of the President, and the passage of a New Deal-style jobs program along with a moratorium on foreclosures. Keep people at work and in their homes - put pressure on the Multinationals to return capital and operations back to the United States, or face the full fury of the federal agencies. That would have worked. But, there was a lack of vision and nerve on the part of Obama and the Democratic leadership to do anything remotely like that. Instead, they dawdled and ultimately caved to corporate pressure on key legislation from HCR to bank regulation.

You should be skeptical about Schumpeter - he viewed people as machine tools that should be thrown out once they've been ground down and worn out. That was Stalin's view, as well.

[customerserviceguy]

3. It's also a referendum on HCR

Not the concept, necessarily, but the way the whole thing was put together. The President promised transparency, and we didn't get that. After the Scott Brown election, he should have started over with a clean sheet of paper, but instead, rammed it through the House using whatever trick was up his sleeve. I think that's where we lost this election.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. If Unemployment Was 7% Instead Of 10%- I'm Rounding

If unemployment was 7% and not 10% we would have a lost a seat here and there as is the historical norm or might even bucked tradition and gained a few seats.

I think the anger against HCR is directly correlated with dissatisfaction with the economy.

Nothing will surprise me tonight and nothing will surprise me going forward if the economy remains stuck in the ditch.

[wmbrew0206]

6. I think you are right but it was also

the fact that Dems could not show how the HCR would help the economy. It looked to the public like Obama and the Dems were ignoring the economy and focusing on the HCR despite everyone saying the economy was the most important issue. That made Obama and the Dems look very out of touch, like they were pursing what they cared about while telling the public, we'll get around to the economy eventually, but lets talk health care.

[DrToast]

10. If by ramming it through the House, you mean it passed with a majority vote, I guess you're right

Seriously, WTF?

[customerserviceguy]

18. Here's 'WTF':

The White House was stuck with the crappy Senate bill, for the most part, because of the Scott Brown election. There were fixes going in that would have been implemented in a conference committee, that didn't get done.

It looked like the President saying, "Make my legacy for me" at the cost of everything else. One of those costs is the Democratic Congress that we've had for the last four years.

[DrToast]

19. Almost all of the fixes that were going to be made were made through reconcilliation

What was left out that you think would have survived conference?

[brentspeak]

7. 1934 mid-terms: Democratic majorities in Congress were expanded

Despite America being in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_1934">middle of the Great Depression.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. How Many Seats Did The Democrats Gain In 1938 When The Economy Began To Contract Again

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1938

[kwolf68]

8. You are right

But the right is considering this on a much larger scale.

I am seeing right-wing friends posting things on facebook like

'you can make a difference'
'vote today, save our country'

and other crap like that. The economy is leading the Dems into the ditch, but the Republicans see it as a grander thing, an election that repudiates liberalism and advances hate-filled right wing Conservatism.

[flamingdem]

9. This is important to keep in mind as the repukes and pundits try to parlay it into dumping on O nt

[FBaggins]

12. This is really just peremptory spin (though it could certainly be right)

But multiple positions in both parties have a great deal of interest in setting the explanation for why we lose big (before we even know that we DO... but that's another topic).

It's all speculation and spin at this point. We'll know soon enough what the exit polls and voter demographics show.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. I Saw A Model By A Political Scientist That Suggested We Will Lose Forty Five Seats

And his model didn't even look at the popularity of the president or the party; just economic variables. The model predicted our losses to be around forty five seats.

That's the baseline.

[FBaggins]

14. And anyone can make a "model" saying just the opposite.

We certainly knew about those economic variables back when we were posting articles about "why 2010 will not be like 1994" and claiming that a republican takeover of the house was highly unlikely.

And right now, 45 seats would look like a pretty good result.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. I Never Predicted That

Respectfully, that's silly.

[FBaggins]

16. Never predicted what?

By "we" I meant "commonly posted here at DU".

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. I Know

Most folks here are very idealistic and their idealism colors everything. I am trained as a social scientist and I was taught too long ago to want to remember to distinguish between the empirical, the way things are, and the normative, the way things ought to be.