Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 43

The margins of House races | Michael Tomasky

There's no getting around that that was just a total shellacking every way you look at it. Democrats and liberals who spend today looking for silver linings are deluding themselves.

The thing I am most struck by as I scroll through individual House races is how large some of the margins were in elections that were judged to be close. Take Ohio 18. That's Democrat Zach Space. I discussed this race on a video. I had it close, with Space slightly ahead, as did most people. He lost by 14 points. Next door in Ohio, Democrat Charlie Wilson was maybe supposed to win and lost by five.

One of my four bellwethers was Indiana's 9th, with Democrat Baron Hill. He lost by nearly 10. Although it does seem that Oregon's Kurt Schrader held on, as did (apparently) Arizona's Gabrielle Giffords. But a lot of the margins were crushing. Alan Grayson in Orlando, held out by the liberal blogosphere as an example of a liberal who voted bravely and gave 'em what-for in a swing district and would prove that it could be done? Walloped by 20 points. And of course a number of races went Republican that weren't generally expected to.

All these numbers tell us something about who turned out. I haven't looked deeply into that yet. I do know that young voters made up less than 10% of the electorate, whereas they were 18% in 2008. It appears that except for in a few states, like Illinois, Democrats didn't get their vote out. I expected a higher-than-anticipated Democratic turnout in Illinois in particular, which is why I pegged Giannoulias to upset Kirk. And he came closer than expected by most, but came up short.

Flordia governor is still not called, and that's one to watch. The Republican, Rick Scott, is ahead slightly. And of course Alaska senator, which Murkowski evidently has won, though it won't be known for a while.

Overall: this is the kind of election it can take a party 10 or 12 years to recover from. More. It doesn't have to be. But it can be. The margins by which some purple districts flipped back from D to R give strength to those newly elected Republicans; means they'll be stronger fund-raisers, which means in turn that strong Democrats will be less likely to challenge them.

So when will the D's recapture the House? The R's could screw up on any number of fronts. And of course right now I'm swayed by the immediacy and recency of events. But I'd say a decade.

And the Senate: in 2012, the Democrats will be defending nearly twice as many Senate seats as the Republicans will. Of course it's a presidential year, which will bring higher turnout on both sides, so it's a different situation. But picking off two more seats in aggregate is not a big reach.

So the Democrats' moment is over. And frankly, they're getting what lots of people have seen coming since the spring, and they didn't do enough about it. Put aside for the moment how they governed, which we'll discuss. Just on the subject of how they campaigned, from Obama down - lamely. And now they're in minority status for some time to come.

US midterm elections 2010Michael Tomasky
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Midterm election results: the fight Obama now faces | Michael Tomasky

With an uncompromising Republican party back in the game after strong election results, the president has to play hardball

The Democrats taking heavy losses, relinquishing the House of Representatives. The Republican party resurgent, falling short of its ambition to win control of both chambers of Congress, but registering some figurehead Tea Party-backed winners with the likes of Rand Paul and Marco Rubio entering the Senate.

What a jaw-dropping change from two Novembers ago. That election night, American liberals were over the moon in rapture, and American voters had proven that they could elect a black man to their highest office and put their nation's great original sin of race behind them.

This election night, American liberals, sternum-deep in their miry slough of despond, are as depressed as they've been since the Florida debacle back in 2000, and Americans may be proving themselves capable of electing to high office, variously: a man who acknowledges he'd likely have opposed the landmark 1964 civil rights act (Paul, who walked the Senate race in Kentucky); another who hired a private, brown-shirt-ish goon squad that "arrested" a working journalist (Alaska's Joe Miller, dropping in recent polls but still in the hunt as of deadline time); and a phalanx of candidates who hope to do away with public state pensions and any remotely meaningful limits on corporate power. Americans have, however, stopped short of electing their first witch.

All right, Christine O'Donnell, the losing Republican senatorial candidate from Delaware, is not a real witch. But the other things are true, and a lot more besides them. The expected Republican recapture of the House of Representatives not only shifts the power of agenda-setting in that body, but changes its ideological character markedly. Roughly half a dozen candidates will enter the US Senate, and perhaps 40 or so the House of Representatives next year, whose radical-conservative political views would have left them mocked and isolated within their own party a dozen or so years ago.

How did this sea-change in American politics happen?

The Republicans moved to the right during the Bush years. But more important, conservative rhetoric became increasingly intolerant, strident, extreme and unhinged; a 2008 book that un-ironically promoted Adolf Hitler as a "man of the left" vaulted up the bestseller charts, its lessons now taken as gospel by millions of conservatives. Long-ago Democratic president Woodrow Wilson, meanwhile, known to most of us as a modestly progressive idealist, is in the right-wing canon America's first fascist ruler.

Throw in a terrible economy, with a high unemployment rate (9.6%), which hasn't gone down in a year. Add a president whose background lends itself to, shall we say, exotic conspiratorial fabrication. Mix in policies that were effortlessly painted as socialist (the bailouts) or as relief for "the undeserving" (mortgage assistance). Result: the toxic brand of tea of which Americans voters have decided to partake this November.

Obama is culpable here, as well – and the Democrats generally. From the president down, they never – against the right-populist onslaught – defended their idea of what society should look like. Split between their centrist and liberal wings, they saw the lightning on the horizon and ran for cover. They flailed around for different messages this fall like a bad singer searching for the right key. Their signal achievement, the healthcare overhaul, was both a historical triumph and a political albatross, and now Republicans will try – whether whole- or half-heartedly is not yet known – to repeal it.

The big question in Washington now is how Barack Obama handles this adversity. He first needs to tell Americans that he heard what they had to say Tuesday. But next on the agenda will be a major test: an upcoming lame-duck session of the outgoing Congress will convene to consider whether to extend Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthiest households (earning more than $250,000 a year). Obama has opposed it. Republicans, with the wind now at their backs, are gung-ho for it. It will be a tense showdown.

Come next year, Obama will need to do two opposite things simultaneously. He will have to move to the middle on some issues. Independents, who backed him in 2008, left his party in massive numbers this year. If he can't get a big chunk of them back, he will not be re-elected in 2012.

But he also has to fight. Republicans will pick fights, and they'll think they can roll him. And they will hold a constant parade of hearings investigating the administration, trying to snare some big administration fish (maybe Obama himself?) in a perjury or obstruction of justice trap.

Republicans play for keeps. And now, Obama is going to have to, too. It's a long and grim way from 2008.

US midterm elections 2010US politicsUnited StatesRepublicansDemocratsUS CongressTea Party movementRand PaulChristine O'DonnellBarack ObamaObama administrationMichael Tomasky
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9:00 pm thoughts, mine and yours | Michael Tomasky

I'm updating columns for editions of the print paper, but I thought I should check in with my regular crowd and see what you think.

We appear to be headed toward around 50 in the House and seven or eight in the Senate. I guess it could be more. Hard to say yet. Watch Kentucky-6, Democrat Ben Chandler's district. Neck-and-neck, wasn't supposed to be. If the Republican challenger prevails there, it could mean a few more pick ups. It looks like the R's beat Rick Boucher in Virginia, and that's one the D's were counting on holding.

In Florida, Republican Daniel Webster has clobbered Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson. Clobbered. This is one liberals need to pay attention to. Here's a guy the liberal blogosphere limned as a hero, and he got his clock cleaned.

The exit polls had Reid-Angle neck-and-neck, at 47 apiece (there's a third candidate in the race, on the right). Also Illinois is reportedly neck-and-neck. In Colorado, Democrat Michael Bennet was a couple of points ahead of Ken Buck. If those flip toward the D's, it's not a bad night in the Senate at all, with loses as few as five. Joe Manchin already won in West Virginia. But five is unlikely. Seven, like I said.

It's way too early to know a lot of things, but it's not too early to know one thing. Speaker Boehner. Probably the functional end of Nancy Pelosi's career. I guess that's two things, even if they amount to the same thing.

Sound off.

US midterm elections 2010Michael Tomasky
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2010 election results: America's right turn | Michael Tomasky

In just two short years, the euphoria of Barack Obama's election as president has turned to dismay and Tea Party rage

What a jaw-dropping change from two Novembers ago. That election night, Americans liberals were over the moon in rapture, and Americans had proven that they could elect a black man to their highest office and put their nation's great original sin of race behind them.

This election night, American liberals, sternum-deep in their miry slough of despond, are as depressed as they've been since the Florida debacle back in 2000, and Americans may be proving themselves capable of electing to high office, variously: a man who acknowledges he'd likely have opposed the landmark 1964 civil rights act (Kentucky's Rand Paul, who will win easily); another who hired a private, brown-shirt-ish goon squad that "arrested" a working journalist (Alaska's Joe Miller, dropping in recent polls, but still in the hunt as of election day); and a phalanx of candidates who hope to do away with public state pensions and any remotely meaningful limits on corporate power. Americans will apparently, however, stop short of electing their first witch.

All right, Christine O'Donnell, the Republican senatorial candidate from Delaware, is not a real witch. But the rest is true, and a lot more besides. Roughly half a dozen candidates will enter the US Senate, and perhaps 40 or so the House of Representatives next year, whose radical-conservative political views would have left them mocked and isolated within their own party a dozen or so years ago.

How did this sea-change in American politics happen?

The Republicans moved to the right during the Bush years. But more importantly, conservative rhetoric became increasingly intolerant, strident, extreme and unhinged; a 2008 book that un-ironically promoted Adolf Hitler as a "man of the left" vaulted up the bestseller charts, its lessons now taken as gospel by millions of conservatives. Long-ago Democratic president Woodrow Wilson, meanwhile, known to most of us as a modestly progressive idealist, is in the rightwing canon America's first fascist ruler.

Throw in a terrible economy, with a high unemployment rate (9.6%), which hasn't gone down in a year. Add a president whose background lends itself to, shall we say, exotic conspiratorial fabrication. Mix in policies that were effortlessly painted as "socialist" (the bailouts) or as relief for "the undeserving" (mortgage assistance). Result: the toxic brand of tea of which Americans voters have decided to partake this November.

Obama is culpable here, as well – and the Democrats, generally. From the president down, they have never – against the right-populist onslaught – defended their idea of what society should look like. Split between their centrist and liberal wings, they saw the lightning on the horizon and ran for cover. They flailed around for different messages this fall like a bad singer searching for the right key.

I don't think this grisly outcome portends some kind of permanent realignment. Nor did I think 2008 did. We are, in America, in a cleaved and volatile time, and a time of frustration and impatience. The legacy of this election will likely not be longlasting. But Lord, in the short term, will it be momentous.

US midterm elections 2010US politicsUnited StatesTea Party movementBarack ObamaObama administrationRepublicansDemocratsUS CongressRand PaulSharron AngleChristine O'DonnellUS economyUS unemployment and employment dataMichael Tomasky
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What heads will roll? | Michael Tomasky

This, from Peter Wallsten and Jonathan Weisman in today's Wall Street Journal, alas has the ring of truth, does it not:

Tensions have come to the surface after meetings over the past few weeks in which Obama senior adviser David Axelrod discussed communications strategy with senior Democratic strategists and party officials. Some Democrats were so unhappy with the White House meetings, they started their own.

The strategy sessions aired a range of disagreements over how to help Democrats forestall an electoral drubbing at the polls—a defeat party strategists believe could have been minimized with a different White House playbook.

Among the complaints: Mr. Obama conveyed an incoherent message that didn't express what Democrats would do over the next two years if they retain power; he focused more on his own image than helping Democratic candidates; and the White House picked the wrong battle when it attacked Republicans for using "outside" money to pay for campaigns, an issue disconnected from voters' real-world anxieties.

And on it goes in this vein. You really should read it. The main question the piece asks is, should Obama revamp his team after the election?

There's a case to be made, of course, for dumping the whole lot of them, up to and including Axelrod. Yes, this was going to be bad in any case with 9.6. unemployment. But it didn't have to be this bad.

Read this quote:

"They just had so much faith in the president's ability to navigate all this and that no matter what the right threw at him, the president would have this force field of trust that would protect him," a House strategist said. "On the Hill, there's this sense that there are three [political] parties, the president, Democrats in Congress and Republicans in Congress."

Well, if that quote is true, and it rings true to me, these folks were pretty spectacularly bad at their jobs. I do not mean here to hold Obama blameless. He obviously, at least a few months ago, had an inflated idea of his own ability to walk these coals. But he can't fire himself. What he can do is wake up to the fact that he's being badly served. His future and legacy are already on the line here.

Liberals love post-election recriminations time! But seriously. He really, really has to change course, and I don't really think he can change course if he's surrounded by the same people. No one should be safe. He doesn't need people around him who want to protect his "brand" anymore. He has that, and his brand ain't in great shape. He needs people who will tell him what's what and get him a few in the win column.

Here's an idea so nutty it might be good: Hire Wolfson.

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The coming Democratic civil war | Michael Tomasky

Politico runs today with a profile of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank here in Washington that the paper says is poised to make big gains after today's debacle:

The group has spent months preparing to capitalize on this moment and take a more central role in the party.

And it's coming down squarely on the side of centrism — and planning to vigorously challenge the left.

"The party is about to come to a major fork in the road," said Jonathan Cowan, Third Way's president. "A left turn at this juncture is a turn toward permanent minority status."

The group's efforts reflect the underlying tension President Barack Obama faces as he heads into the last two years of his first term. Liberals say there's an enthusiasm gap with Republicans because Democrats are disappointed that the party was too timid about the size of the stimulus, compromised on the public option in health care reform and ran away from its accomplishments. Those closer to the middle say a more moderate face for the party is the only hope to win back independents, reelect Obama and retake the House in 2012, assuming it is lost Tuesday.

Cowan's group wants to play a role in 2011 akin to the Democratic Leadership Council's in 1995. Then, the last time Democrats lost the House, President Bill Clinton's willingness to "triangulate" between traditional Democratic orthodoxies and the Republicans who controlled Congress led to welfare reform, community policing and a slew of smaller accomplishments that helped propel Clinton to a second term.

I should point out before I go further that I have friends at Third Way, just as I have friends in the camps of the groups that will be fighting them on these questions.

On most issues, I'm more on the liberal side. But no one can deny, I mean no one, that Obama and the D's have lost independents. Obama beat McCain 52-44% among independents in 2008. Watch for tonight's analogue to that number. I bet independents tonight will break for the R's by at least 10 points, representing about a 20-point swing. That is a political catastrophe.

Yes, Obama will have to do certain things to rev up the base. But he has to win back independents. Often these can be done simultaneously. But there are couple of issues on which he, and Democrats generally, will have to choose:
1. Do you accept some tinkering with Social Security and Medicare for the sake of deficit reduction?
2. Do you sign some free trade legislation?

No. 2 is easier to do because unions are comparatively weak. So watch these matters. And the important thing here will be psychology. Democrats, with their talent for self-laceration, risk getting into a horrible quagmire here.

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Iowa judicial recall | Michael Tomasky

This one had escaped my attention until recently, but Iowa evidently has had a system in place since 1962 allowing voters to refuse to retain sitting state supreme court justices. The voters have never exercised this option. But evidently they're going to this year, and the issue, which by now you've guessed, is the court's pro-gay marriage decision from last year.

Apparently three justices face the voters' wrath today. The Des Moines register published a poll Sunday showing that 37% of likely voters say they'll boot all three, 34% say they'll keep all three and 10% will retain some. Expectations seem to be that one will lose, in all likelihood.

Iowa has a seven-member supreme court. It voted unanimously in support of gay marriage. This poll from June shows a narrow but fairly solid majority of Iowans supports what the court did, by 53-41%.

I'm sure those voting to remove the justices are going around thundering that judges should reflect the will of the people. Well, a, according to this poll (and there are others), that's exactly what they did. And b, no, that isn't what justices are supposed to do anyway.

Justices are supposed to interpret the law. If justices followed the will of the people of the southern US, or for that matter Kansas (as in, Topeka school board), in what year would American schools have finally desegregated? Remember, in south, even though Brown v. Board was decided in 1954, most southern localities didn't lift a finger to integrate, and integration didn't happen until the 1970s, after the Charlotte-Mecklenberg decision. Implementation took until about the late 70s-early 1980s. Now, as a result of some appellate level and Roberts court decisions, schools have been resegregating again.

But I digress. Anyway, the point is, these kinds of things are bad ideas. Judges should be appointed, period. Maybe not for life, as is the case on the US Supreme Court. I could see fixed terms of 10 or 15 years. But judges should not be subject to voters' post-hoc wrath. I write that knowing that it would benefit incumbent conservative justices, too. So be it. The time to think about judges in a political context is during an election of the person who appoints them. George Bush won fair and square, at least in 2004, so he had every right to put Alito on the bench, much as I may not like Alito, but them's the breaks.

The irony here, as the Register article points out, is that Democratic Governor Chet Culver, running today but almost certain to lose, still might get to appoint any ousted justice's successor while a lame duck. But here we are. The majority is seemingly okay with things as they are. A vocal and angry minority, benefiting from an ocean of out-of-state money, will apparently invoke this rule for the first time since it's been in effect since 1962. And later, watch the right-wing millions, in support of the angry minority, pour into efforts to do the same in state after state...

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Final pre-vote thoughts | Michael Tomasky

It's been the weirdest campaign in modern American history. I think of the senators who rode in on Ronald Reagan's coattails in 1980: Dan Quayle, Steve Symms, some of the others. I thought then they were a pretty hardened bunch. They were mildly right of center compared to the crew running today.

It's just one election. Maybe the Republicans will win, and America will be mad at them too in two years time; and each side's inability to do anything will just erode its popularity, alienate independents and confuse its base in successive turns. So maybe very little of this actually matters and we're just going to be in a long phase of Democrats getting power until the people get sick of them, Republicans getting power until the people get sick of them, and repeat and rinse.

Certainly, I have to think that rank-and-file tea partiers are going to be disappointed in Senator Paul and Senator Angle in two years' time. They might start out with the best of intentions, from the tea-party perspective. But Rand Paul won't be able to snap his fingers and cut spending any more than Paul Wellstone could snap his fingers and create government-run healthcare. It's amazing that people have to keep reliving this to come to terms with it.

So...will we see candidates even more extreme than this crop in a few years' time, after this group has (as the inevitable charge will be) "lost touch" with the people back home, "gone Washington" on them? And how far right can they go before they're off the American charts and they're just plain old fascists? Joe Miller dipped at least a toe in those waters, with his private army arresting the journalist. I don't care if it was just three guys. Candidates who have private armed guards are not small-d democrats.

The Democrats are completely unable to defend their vision of society. I have recently completed in my mind a list of the Dems' four great errors. Not now; we'll get to them later this week. But the most disappointing thing to me is just that: they can't defend their vision of society, from Obama on down. They're lame and weak and afraid. Except when they forge ahead heedless of public opinion, which hasn't been the greatest idea either.

I still can't quite imagine some of these people as senators and members of Congress. Of course, drunks and half-wits have people Congress since its inception, but these aren't drunks and half-wits, who might be amiable. These are severe ideological warriors. It'll be unlike any Congress we've ever seen in the modern history of the country.

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How much is healthcare to blame? | Michael Tomasky

The National Journal's Josh Kraushaar generated various reactions last week when he wrote that healthcare reform was really sinking Democrats:

But the reality that Democrats hate to discuss – and even some Republicans have been hesitant to fully embrace – is that the party's signature health care law is what's turning a bad election year into a disaster of potential history-making proportions.

It was the debate over health care that propelled now-Sen. Scott Brown's unlikely special election victory in Massachusetts back in January. And it's the growing unpopularity of the new law that's fueling Republican energy, turning off independents and jeopardizing the prospects of dozens of Democrats who looked like locks for reelection just a year ago.

I can't disagree. I'd still say the economy and unemployment rates are the big problems. But healthcare is what Obama "look like another tax-and-spend liberal" (his words, from that Times magazine piece two weeks ago). About 85% of Americans are insured, and 80% of that 85% was happy with their coverage, which means that for roughly 70%, this was not a pressing problem, while a lousy economy hurts everyone, even if 90% remain employed.

At a macro level, US healthcare is mediocre overall, according to many measures, and cripplingly expensive. But most Americans don't know that. So it takes time to persuade them that big changes are needed, and Obama and the Democrats didn't take that time. They pushed when Americans were angry at bankers, not insurers.

But here's the question. If Obama should not have done health care, which I've agreed he should not have, then what should he have done. The typical answer is, focus like a laser on the economy. But by doing what, exactly? The truth is there just wasn't that much to do. A payroll tax holiday springs first to mind. But that wouldn't have changed the economic situation much.

I think there are loads of things Obama could have done from a p.r. perspective to make it appear to people that he was more engaged in a more urgent way with the jobs picture. But at the end of the day, the rate is the rate, and I'm not sure he could have done much to change it, beyond things which were obviously politically impossible, like $2 trillion in stimulus.

I guess my bottom line here is no different from what I've written many times now: that healthcare should have waited until the economy was recovering. It was the wrong decision, and it hurt him.

Hey by the way, check this out. So Jengie wrote a snide comment Saturday that seemed aimed at mocking me, but in fact he linked to a post I wrote on January 22, 2009, Obama's second full day in office. Jeng had asked me when Obama, not Bush, would "own" the bad economy, Iraq and the terrorism issue. I wrote then:

The economic crisis becomes Obama's mess on September 1, 2010, meaning that if there aren't signs by then that we're starting to turn a positive corner, he'll suffer politically.

The Iraq war becomes Obama's mess on May 1, 2010, meaning that if we aren't at least starting to withdraw by then as he promised, he'll suffer politically.

The terrorism situation is Obama's mess now, meaning that if we are attacked domestically, well, he's the guy in charge, so he'll suffer politically.

I'd say that's pretty dern good for Obama's second day in office, when he was at 70%, no? Of course Jengie tried to write something snide about it, but he undercut his own case by quoting me saying something fairly sharp.

US midterm elections 2010US healthcareMichael Tomasky
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Video | Tomasky Talk: US midterms 2010: 'Go bet'

Michael Tomasky makes his final call on the Senate, House and gubernatorial races ahead of election day, Tuesday, in the US midterms

Michael Tomasky