WHY DEMOCRATS LOST
This was a dismal day and night for the Democrats. Early on, very early on, like six years ago, the McConnell strategy of assignation of the President and his party day after day, week after week with FOX news fanning the flames and unlimited money from the KOCH brothers pouring coal oil on the fire, they poured enough to win first, second, and third place on the mid-term elections.
Subliminally…..nothing of it was subliminal, it was on the table and expected for a long time like the bird at Thanksgiving. And when things don’t go right such as the widening income gap, wars, disease, the angst and anger is played out on the incumbents and the Democrats took the hit.
The incredible war machine put forth by the Republicans followed their plan of burnt and scorched earth to preserve their larger, much larger share of the MONEY so readily available in politics. They lock stepped their attacks, pulled out the heavy twisted attack ads by the KOCH brothers for millions upon millions of dollars, and the with the Democratic base was falling apart, it was an easy victory. Even with POLITICO pulling the "pants on fire calls" on the ads, it didn’t help. We don’t vote for the best, we vote for the least damaged. Our election process has become a crapshoot of lies, lies and more lies.
When voters get tired of the guy in the White House and take it out on his party. The President is partially to blame In the two years since he won a second term, President Obama has often seemed a bit behind the power curve in some of his decisions. That drove down his approval ratings.
Last fall's disastrous rollout of the federal health care exchanges gave Obama justifiably the blame. There's just no excuse for a chief executive who doesn't stay on top of his single most important initiative. Truthfully, how could he with the GOP fine toothing every word and add the loss at Benghazi, the Arab Spring with revolutions in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya which melted into a solid Winter of death.
Add lost e-mails and political targeting at the IRS, outrageous abuse of our nations hero’s at Veterans Affairs facilities, the Ebola scare getting out of hand by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Secret Service falling down on the job on several occasions. One after another, relentless
Obama also made declarations but later backing down as with the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The "red line” was painted with invisible paint. This year with nothing done on immigration, he has held off to satisfy a few and that will be the end of that scenario. A fumble and the Republicans will take possession. Congressional Democrats lost their own base in the face of sustained attacks by the GOP. Their retort messaging was weak.
The stock market has reached new highs in the 17,000 but it won’t buy you a beer at the local pub. The stock market is the thermometer of the rich, not the rest of the country. Nevertheless it went from 6000 to 17000, thats a recovery and the rich are enjoying it. A boat manufacturer friend close to my home tells me the orders are for the “big stuff”, one-half to two million are doing quite well.
WHATS NEW FOR THE DEMOCRATS
Demonization and obstruction can work, Mitch McConnell loved and hated by his party put the war machine on stop the presses. It would be no surprise if Democrats play the obstructionism game if there is a Republican president. With the win, the current political layout requires working with Republicans to build a record of accomplishment in the next two years. Thats in doubt if the likes of the Ted Cruz’s and Rand Paul alike play by their rules. They won’t, war clouds are already brewing in the Senate with Christie joining in looking at 2016.
Three things are on the Democratic agenda now are critical though I suspect the GOP will put the brakes on everything and everything for the next two months.
A) Make sure the second rollout of the health exchanges, which begins Nov. 15, goes smoothly.
B) A Pew Research survey last month showed that Republicans lead Democrats by 17 points in dealing with the terrorist threat and 15 points in dealing with the deficit.
They seem to be able to turn out their supporters in presidential election years but fall short in midterms. Overall, turnout for midterms drops by roughly a third from presidential elections, and — as the GOP proved again this year — Republicans tend to do a better job of getting their voters fired up and to the polls in non-presidential elections. But thats when more of the “I have what I need, screw everybody else crew gets into office”.
THE NEW SENATE MAJORITY LEADER
Mitch McConnell, who will soon be the next majority leader of the Senate, told his supporters, "Just because we have a two-party system doesn't mean we have to be in perpetual conflict.” His speeches should be made at the annual Ipecac convention palatable. The pundits (notably FOX) have praised McConnell for devising the strategy of total obstruction that ensnared Congress in gridlock, helped erode President Obama's approval ratings, and ultimately allowed Republicans to reclaim control of Congress. Praise for nothing from Congress, severe partisanship, financial gridlock in shutting the government down, the raping of women rights, delays in immigration, voting fraud scams and they get praised? They should get shot.
Democrats lost seats in Arkansas, South Dakota, West Virginia, Montana, Colorado, North Carolina, and Iowa. They barely held on to what had previously been seen as a safe seat in Virginia. They failed to knock off any vulnerable Republican incumbents, including Kansas' Pat Roberts and McConnell himself. And they were unable to take down two juicy gubernatorial targets, Rick Scott of Florida, and Scott Walker, a of Wisconsin, both recognized for their puppitorial tendencies as party men.
It remains to be seen whether McConnell and Co. will devise a new strategy once Congress begins a new session. He is already facing enormous pressure from the conservative base to remain on offense against Obama, which could include hearings, debt showdowns, and votes to repeal ObamaCare ad nauseam.
But along with Speaker John Boehner, McConnell will be in charge of setting the table for the 2016 presidential election, which may entail pursuing compromises that could make further inroads with the Obama coalition. And remember, McConnell's grand strategy has had its downsides, too — most notably a low favorability rating for the GOP that could come back to haunt the party long after the glow of tonight's victory fades, and with great power comes great responsibility, the presumptive majority leader when the 114th Congress convenes next year.
McConnell and Boehner, (like (Goebbels and Himmler) will pretend to work particularly well to show Republicans can govern. Yea right. To get anything President Obama will sign, Republicans need to compromise. It's not clear McConnell's caucus won’t take the Congress path with same old, same old, passing doomed, theatrical repeals of ObamaCare, up to and including a politically disastrous government shutdown. McDonnell says no government shutdown.
There are plenty of relatively moderate House Republicans, just as there are relatively moderate Republicans in the Senate. The GOP moderates haven't driven the political conversation in the House, and there's no reason to believe the new class of 2014 will have any interest in being less assertive.
THE UPSETTER
Are people that stupid to vote for those who have stopped any advances for this country in the Senate. Are people that stupid to support those who have shut the government down , denied women rights, initiated phony voter rights scams? Yes they are stupid because It may be 2014 but prejudice, is apparently alive and well in this country.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the most vocal of the Senate's Tea Party–aligned Republicans, born a Canadian with Hispanic parents, has refused to say if he'll support McConnell's bid to be majority leader. A man with roots fights against immigration put forth by Obama. We cried when he denounced his Canadian citizenship. We had hoped he went home. The Canadians cried with tears of joy.
Ted’s supporters, other teat-pot heads (they suck and must be on drugs) and the Republican freshman class of 2014 appears to be closer to Cruz's vision of the GOP's mission than McConnell's get-stuff-done aspirations. There's no way Obama will sign a repeal of his health care law, but that's Cruz's stated first priority. Here's how Cruz welcomed former hog-castrator Joni Ernst of Iowa to the Senate:
There's a school of thought that suggests Republicans won this election by beating the Tea Party as well as the Democrats — there were no major gaffes from Republican candidates, as in 2010 and 2012, and the successful ones went out of their way to downplay or repudiate previous stances that seemed too far to the right of the political mainstream. But that's good public relations; it doesn't signal a change of heart or mind.
Ernst, North Carolina's Thom Tillis, Colorado's Cory Gardner, Tom Cotton of Arkansas — will they follow McConnell's lead, or dance with the fired-up Republican base that brought them with the help of the KOCH money ? After five years of saying no to Obama — a strategy McConnell championed — can Republicans suddenly start saying yes? Political parties don't have the same levers of power and persuasion they did even 10 years ago. Mitch McConnell's party won the Senate, but his biggest battle may well be with his own caucus and he might just need to put Cruz under the bus, a Greyhound one of those new double deckers bigger than ever.
McConnell has two years to prove himself. Tuesday was successful for the GOP, but 2016 could end his reign as majority leader — assuming his conservative colleagues don't first. Not only will the electorate be broader and younger, if recent presidential election years are any guide, but Republicans will have to defend 24 Senate seats — seven of them in states won by Obama — versus 10 seats for the Democrats.
WHY REPUBLICANS WON
There is much celebrating among Republicans after having recaptured the Senate majority they lost in 2006. They won by fielding a solid, (less of the loony-toons, the tea party had promoted) and disciplined roster of candidates who were able to play the blame game better than I have ever seen it played. With more money than ever played. Their mantra offered nothing in the way of solutions, but as Dr. Goebbels put it, tell a lie, tell it often, tell it loud and it will eventually work.
They bashed Obama, they took the focus off the table of the real problems and capitalized on President Obama's unpopularity. I get annoyed because as I youngster twice I got in trouble for something I did not do. Blamed and I got the punishment, retribution in Brooklyn at that time was what we referred to as baseball bat theology. Today its called revenge. To me blaming the President for the Ebola outbreak when the funding for the CDC was by 40% over the past four years since the last outbreak clearly puts the blame in the wrong place. Cutting funding for the VA, cutting funding for the security at our overseas facilities like at Benghazi, it’s about time the blame needs top go to those who cut and slashed and people died.
With its low standing among the young, women and especially immigrant voters, the party faces a tall order in winning the White House in 2016, when turnout will spike by roughly 40% and include many of the marginal voters who tend to vote Democratic. Its control of the Senate could also be short-lived, as the electoral map in two years will be more favorable for the Democrats. Republicans will have to defend seven Senate seats in states twice won by Obama.
To sustain Tuesday's gains, Republicans will have to demonstrate that they can govern — and bring under control the extreme elements of the party that want to define the GOP by government shutdowns and other forms of obstructionism. On the governance front, soon-to-be Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is likely to start by passing some bills that made it through the House, with some support from Democrats, but were stalled in the Senate for largely political reasons. He won the battle but could wind up loosing the war. Some of the smaller tokens won’t buy the railroad, hopefully a short trip. He’s a strong negotiator, but like Boehner, truth and sincerity are not part of his vocabulary.
FAST TRACK BILLS TO LOOK GOOD
Keystone XL Pipeline; Reinstate work requirements in welfare laws; Government and industry to get more tools to counter cyber attacks; Corporate tax reform. If the only output of the next two years is a pipeline, restrictions on welfare, and a fix for the tax code without help for the individual filer, it could backfire showing the GOP is all about corporate interests.
WHY THE PUBLIC WILL SUFFER
WHY THIS WAS GOOD