The 2010 Election...

James W. Creaser has written for RealClearPolitics.com a brilliant summation on the recent election.  Here is the first several paragraphs,  The Democratic Party under Barack Obama in 2010 suffered the greatest defeat for a newly elected president in a midterm since the Republican Party under Warren Gamaliel Harding in 1922. Democrats, at this writing, dropped 61 seats in the House of Representatives, where they will now be in the minority, and 6 seats in the Senate, where they will continue to hold a slight edge. The Democratic defeat was historic by other measures as well--in House seats lost in a congressional election (the most since 1948), and in House seats lost in any midterm (the most since 1938). But it is the performance of a president's party following his first election that is the relevant point of comparison today.


The midterm election is one of the distinctive features of America's constitutional system. By allowing for an expression of voter sentiment separate from the selection of the president, midterms help supply the concrete political support in Congress for checking presidential programmatic power. A check of this kind seems to be exactly what the public had in mind in 2010, ending liberal hopes that Obama's presidency would inaugurate a "new" New Deal.


The comparison of Obama to FDR has been looming in the background for the past two years. Time magazine, in the cover of its post-election edition, superimposed Barack Obama's head onto a memorable photo of FDR seated in his convertible following his 1932 landslide victory. The expectation was that Obama, like FDR, would lead Democrats to further gains in the ensuing midterm and then onwards and upwards to an era of Democratic dominance. Democratic totals in Congress in 2008 were taken to be a floor for the party's support, not a ceiling. "The future in America's politics," wrote Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, "belongs to Barack Obama's Democrats." Happy days were here again.

If 2010 represents the future in American politics, it is not the one Progressives expected. This holds true not just for the Democrats' standing today at the national level, but at the state level as well, where Republicans gained control of at least seven new governorships and fourteen state legislative chambers, giving them their highest total of state legislative chambers since the 1920s. More importantly, the renewed strength of Republicans in the states gives the GOP an important edge in the crucial process of the redistricting of legislative seats that begins next year. It was the perfect time for a surge.

President Obama and the Republicans did not agree on very much over the last two years, but on the question of what this election was all about there was not an inch of daylight between them--at least when the campaign began. The contest, as the President repeatedly proclaimed, was a judgment on "the change," referring to his whole domestic package of stimulus policies, health care reform bill, and presumably his proposals for increased taxes on the wealthiest. Obama spoke of "guarding the change," with Republicans responding by echoing the sentiment, if not always the exact words, of John Boehner, "Hell No." Herein lies the main line of political conflict for the period ahead. With the advancement of the progressive Obama agenda by legislative (as distinct from administrative) means halted, Obama, now the "conservative," will be using every ounce of his powers to sustain the parts of his program that have been enacted, while the Republicans, as proponents of change, will be seeking to reverse many of them...

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