Post Election Observations

My notebook from election night. I didn't live blog it as I was actually trying to use the notebook as a civics lesson for my teenage daughter. Not sure how much mileage I got from that...

The biggest losers last night were Washington, DC, MSNBC/NBC, CBS, and CNN. Watching CNN and MSNBC in particular was brutal TV last night - their problem is they don't have anyone interesting or insightful. Even Rachel Maddow, who I usually like, seemed off her game. ABC and Fox both did a good job IMO.

You are a fool in denial if you don't understand why the Democrat Party got destroyed on Tuesday. My health care premiums are about $2000 higher per year now than they were last year and my taxes are about to go up. The Obama administration agenda to date in DC is 100% the reason for both of those things. That is the state of now for small business owners in the US, one of the main reasons no one can afford to hire anyone, and based on the election results - it turns out I'm not the only small business owner who has noticed these impacts. For all the talk about Democrats in DC supporting working family's - the results say otherwise and the Democrats paid dearly for being ineffective on the economy. Assigning blame is the tactic for losers, and blaming Bush as a tactic for economics made the Democrats losers after two years.

The bigger problem facing the Democrats right now is that they have exactly zero ideas people believe in regarding how to fix the economy. They also have no plans to manage the burdens of the new Health Care law on working families with it's staged enactment, nor find a way for the Bush Tax Cut expiration to avoid directly impacting most of the working class in the country over the next two years without compromising with the Republican House. A family of 4 who makes $50,000 a year is about to pay $2900 more in taxes, and a family of 4 who makes $100,000 a year is about to pay $4500. That is going to make for a lot of unhappy people who just voted Democrat in ignorance this election, because most of them do not realize they are "the rich" who Bush tax cuts impact.

If Democrats think today is bad today, give it two months without making serious changes to policy and I'll show you what 'a lot worse' feels like. America is not in a good place right now, and an election result that just made things even more partisan on both sides will just amplify how things are bad - and trending worse.

Ike Skelton and Gene Taylor both went down. That is a combined 55 years of experience lost on the left in the House Armed Services Committee in 2 races. The bench on the left for Defense in the House has almost no depth, and quite frankly I don't see the left leaning Think Tanks producing any serious discussions either in the mainstream. This is not a good trend for Democrats in general or progressives specifically.

The last two elections demonstrate to me just how old and out of touch folks like Eugene Robinson are in America, and how he - and not America, is who can't let go of prejudice. I can no longer observe elections in America and take his racial arguments in politics seriously, indeed what we have seen the last two elections really does highlight how far America has moved from the civil rights movement, and how far folks like Eugene Robinson are removed from the mainstream. Whether the example is the President, Hillary who almost beat him in the primary, Palin who was the Vice President nominee, or the increasing number of minority candidates that are carrying predominately white districts in the South - it seems to be lost on folks like Eugene Robinson that our nation has the cultural ability to move beyond simple prejudices like skin color or sex and focus on what matters about people in the post civil rights generations - and that really is something unique to America. As a boy from the south - I see it clear as day because I know what racism looks like. As an entrenched career media elitist in Washington, DC - I'm not surprised he doesn't get it anymore.

Real Clear Politics stopped at +61 pickups for the Republicans in the House and +6 pickups for Republicans in the Senate. Partisans on both sides are going to spin this towards their agenda, but that's a brutal loss by every standard. Politics in the US today are extremely volatile, and have been for most of the elections in the 21st century starting with Florida in 2000 (2002 was really the only exception). I don't think the Republican party will be able to work with the Tea Party movement without serious problems, and I don't think the Democrat party will learn the right lessons from these election results.

The only lesson I take from Tuesday is that if you write down the most unlikely, most unpredictable result for the 2012 election - that is probably what happens. Right now the middle in America is completely up for grabs, and both parties are in a hurry to be more progressive, or more conservative.

The Tea Party movement in 2010 looks to me to be a lot like the netroots movement of 2006, except far less organized. Both grassroots organizations eat their own first, and neither organization has any tolerance for cooperation with the other party. One thing I find interesting about the Tea Party though is how it means different things in different states. In New York, for example, the tea party is fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Is that what the Tea Party is everywhere? I doubt it. It seems to me the Tea Party is a loose affiliation of voters united under a fiscally conservative approach in Washington - and doesn't seem to care much about social issues - but ironically, it seems that the social aspect of the candidate (as it relates in the specific state) is ultimately what made the candidate successful or not. Thought that was interesting.

I do not see a bipartisan future in Washington, and the only question will be whether gridlock will improve the economy. If the economy doesn't improve, the next two years are going to be brutal - for Americans.