So what did the midterm election results really signify?

[John_Mace]

@Kimstu

We had a thread just a little over a year ago in which it was discussed, and a couple of the more conservative posters around here were dubious or negative about it:

Well, at least I graducated from “conservative” to one of the “more conservative” posters. Anyway, here’s what I said in entirety:

Good luck on that one. A very modest raise (no more than $.50) might be OK in that it wouldn’t jar the economy too much, but it might put the GOP at a disadvantage if they don’t vote for it. Stay as far away from “living wage” proposals as possible.

I’m on record here in other threads recommending that the Democrats push for a minimum wage increase. I disagree with it as a matter of policy, but I absolutely think it’s a winner, politically, for the Dems. Just don’t go overboard-- that is go for a big increase all at once.

[Jonathan_Chance]

I think the biggest thing I’ve heard so far is to work to re-index the Alternative Minimum Tax and tie it to the sunset provisions of the recent cuts. Pitch them as tied together.

1. Announce that ‘pay as you go’ is the law of the land again. So any cuts have to be offset with spending cuts or tax hikes elsewhere.
2. Present the Bush cuts as favoring the wealthy.
3. Present the adjustment of the AMT as a means of giving more tax relief to the middle class and that it can be offset with sunsetting the Bush cuts.
4. Wait to see who objects and accuse them of hating the middle American voters who’ve made this nation great. Maybe killing puppies, too.

It’d be a good first step at beginning to control the discussion.

[Apos]

It’s totally bizarre to see the spin about the Democrats being elected being conservative in any meaningful sense. At the very least, it’s just a distraction from the fact that the Congress as a whole got more liberal, and that’s that.

And the “conservative” Dems often aren’t often as they are billed. Many of the pro-life stances aren’t that much different from John Kerry’s: abortion is bad, but making it illegal is bad too. Many don’t support gay marriage, sure… but they want to push for civil unions. Given that a fair number of the Republican caucus wanted to purge gays from their ranks entirely, and one member supports the Iraq war apparently in part because he is excited by the prospect that it will bring about Armageddon, I would say that Americans voted in a decidedly more left leaning crew, and there’s really no way to spin that.

[dalej42]

I’m hopeful that it was a serious attempt by the Democrats to take away the “God, Guns, and Gays” strategy that the Republicans have been using in recent elections.

1. Forcibly out Gay Republicans. A Rovian move. Outing Ted Haggard right before the election was a perfect move that took away the attention from Kerry’s idiotic comment.

2. Gun control just isn’t going to work in the red states. Quit taking on the NRA. Putting up military and pro gun candidates.

3. Minimize the God gap. First, show the evangelicals that the Republicans really don’t care about their issues nearly as much as they’d like you to believe. In fact, the Terri Schiavo fiasco should have shown the Republicans that most of the country, with the exception of their very noisy (but small) evangelical base, isn’t at all in favor of government getting involved in these types of situations.

Second, the Democrats can’t appear to be hostile to religion, especially in red states. Most people don’t go to bed hating “Under God” in the pledge. Picking candidates such as Strickland in Ohio can help the Democrats finally move away from the “Democrats are pinko, commie, atheists” label.

[FRDE]

There is an old adage: Elections are not won, they are lost.

GWB just lost - and I’ve a feeling that the USA will benefit from it.

While I don’t much believe in ‘democracy’, it does allow a nation to change its mind.

[rjung]

So what did the midterm election results really signify?

Accountability. Checks and balances. All the things that six years of one-party government failed to provide.

While I disagree with the media’s narrative that the election was won by “conservative Democrats”, I agree with the consensus that liberals who took the results as some divine mandate to run amok are going to be pimp-smacked. After a grace period (say, six months), the American people are going to keep a close eye on the Dems to make sure they don’t engage in Republican-style shenanagans.

[Evil_Captor]

I think we can all agree that,whatever the midterm elections signified, they were full of sound and fury.

[BrainGlutton]

@rjung

While I disagree with the media’s narrative that the election was won by “conservative Democrats”, I agree with the consensus that liberals who took the results as some divine mandate to run amok are going to be pimp-smacked. After a grace period (say, six months), the American people are going to keep a close eye on the Dems to make sure they don’t engage in Republican-style shenanagans.

You are forgetting that liberals can “run amok” in policy-formation terms without engaging in any shenanigans, defining the latter as anything dishonest.

[BrainGlutton]

According to this very persuasive analysis, the election was actually a mandate for economic populism.

As Webb suggests, the hidden story of the election was the appeal of economic populism in a country whose middle class is increasingly feeling the squeeze. Coast to coast, Democrats running for local and national office campaigned on raising the minimum wage, repealing welfare for Big Oil and opposing trade deals lacking protection for workers and the environment, and their message resonated with an electorate anxious about the economy. Half of all voters rated the economy not good or poor, and a full 69 percent said their family’s economic situation had either gotten worse or stayed the same since the last election. Democrats won both these groups by wide margins.

Ironically, in the weeks leading up to the midterm election, the Republican Party stole a page from the Democrats’ playbook and attempted to shift the focus toward the economy and away from the manifestly unpopular Iraq War. The thinking was that the years of relatively strong GDP growth coupled with relatively low unemployment would redound to the ruling party’s benefit, perhaps canceling out the anger over Iraq and corruption. The GOP’s strategy both worked and backfired. Voters did focus on the economy, but they didn’t reward Republicans. Exit polls showed that 39 percent of voters rated the economy as “extremely important” (roughly the same percentage as those who said the same about Iraq and corruption), but Democrats won those voters by twenty points.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Despite relatively strong growth, manageable inflation, high corporate profits and a bullish stock market, real wages continue to stagnate, productivity gains continue to be captured by the wealthiest 1 percent, income inequality has continued to get worse and, as Jacob Hacker argues persuasively in The Great Risk Shift, America’s middle class finds itself living with far more risk and income volatility than it did a generation ago.

I feel vindicated.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

According to this very persuasive analysis, the election was actually a mandate for economic populism.

I feel vindicated.

Beat you to it in post #8.