Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Election Post-Mortem

I think whoever inherited the multiple disasters of 2008 was going to lose in 2010.

I am glad that we made as much progress as we did over the last two years.

The best thing about divided government is that the two parties have to work together to actually solve problems.

The special moving force in this election was anger at the party in power for not solving our economic problems fast enough. Next time, both parties will be the party in power. This should motivate them to work together.

4 comments:

Ceemac said...

Interesting take. Here in Texas I think more of the anger is directed towards the fact that Washington exists at all. Our governor who was just elected to a 3rd full term will be going on a book tour in a few weeks because he's "Fed Up." (title of the book).

halifax said...

Ceemac, I certainly hope that much of this so-called anger is directed at DC. A healthy scepticism about centralised power used to be a central part of the American creed, but has seemingly disappeared in a fog of infantile nanny-state regulation and hubristic imperial overreach. A return to a sensible federalism is a reasonable way to also return to a sensible version of limited government (another one of those obsolete ideas, perhaps).

That said, the Republican gains in the House are not that surprising given the following: 9.6% unemployment, with the real rate around 17%; slow to no growth GDP; trillion dollar deficits (and, yes, the democrats did participate in these despite nonsensical claims to the contrary); two election cycles which functioned primarily, not as a mandate for Democratic dirigisme, but as a punishment for Bush era incompetence, and which manifested themselves in dozens of seats which were held by Democrats but which actually favored Republican candidates; and generic midterm anti-presidential party trends in midterm elections.

I don't give advice to Dems because they would never listen to me anyway, but I would recommend that the Republicans not take this victory as a mandate (as the Dems stupidly did two years ago) but as merely another repudiation of the arrogance of a party in power.

Cameron Mott said...

I guess we Republicans got a chance to help clean up our own mess rather than criticize the Democrats for our deficits and bail-outs and for not cleaning it up fast enough.

Anonymous said...

Even though I live in CA and will have to endure the return of Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown to the governor's office, as well as watch the Dem controlled legislature accomplish to final, grand implosion of this state, I am revelling in Nancy's loss of the House speaker position.

It's a small but grand consolation out here on the "left" coast.