This past Tuesday’s midterm elections were entirely predictable for a few reasons, but the interpretation of the results has been a mix of misguided blame by the losers, faulty logic from media pundits, and delusional misunderstanding from the jubilant winners.
Lets start with what was predictable. Going on the historical record of the past midterm elections that have occurred in the sixth year of a two term president, the President’s party loses seats, and the opposition party gainst seats. The reasons are easy to generalize, and the details need not be debated in these cases. Most Presidents leave office with much less enthusiasm and a more negative approval rating than when they started. Given the broken political system in the United States in which the will of the people is seldom carried out, regardless of which party wins or has the majority, any hope generated is routinely destroyed by piss poor performance and the reality of the limitations of the presidency, as well as current events.
Of course the media has been telling voters for months who was going to win this time around, and who was going to lose. Though predictable just from the historical record, the continuous drumbeat of the 24 hour news/propaganda cycle surely has some effect on voter turnout. This is also routine in American politics. The media tells people how they will vote, who will win, over and over again, assisting history to repeat itself with the extra nudge of self-fulfilling prophecy. This is one of the media’s standard operating procedures in the vast propaganda system, and goes a long way towards explaining why public opinion polls continually show that Americans don’t trust either political party and say they would vote for a different alternative, but never do in any significant amount when there is a third option. Independent presidential candidates with credentials and popularity are not allowed in the presidential debates, and are virtually blacked out by all the media outlets for coverage, except for negative reporting and the repeating assurances by the media that it is only a contest between the democrat and republican, and any other vote is a wasted vote.
Given the role of the media coverage, Obama’s low approval ratings, and the public’s even lower approval rating of congress, the lowest ever in modern times, it is no surprise the the incumbent democrats lost.
It’s also no surprise that republicans are claiming to have won a “mandate,” and that the election results are because of voters’ rejection of the President and his party’s policies. But this is not true. What is true, sadly, is that polls continually show that large numbers of voters often don’t know where the candidate they support stands on issues. This is also the intended result of the propaganda system. Candidates are marketed with vague slogans like “reform” or “hope” or “change,” and in the end, the hope is not realized, there is no reform, and little changes. The incumbents are punished by the losers of the last election who are more likely to turn out to vote to say “I told you so!” and vote out the incumbent, and the voters who supported the incumbent, already disappointed and reinforced by the media of the inevitability of losing this time around, are less motivated to even show up to vote.
But to say that Americans have rejected the stand of the President on major issues is far from accurate, and easily proven by any number of examples. The press has been misinterpreting the midterm results with changes in voters’s political views on issues. It is hard to believe that the tv pundits actually believe this falsehood, when numerous examples abound showing this is not the case. One glaring example comes to mind immediately: the ballot initiative on raising the minimum wage.
In all four states where the ballot asked voters to chose whether or not to raise the minimum wage in the state, the voters voted an overwhelming yes, by at least double digits in each state. And these four states, Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, are all red states. If there is one simple policy difference between the two parties that is right in front of voters’ faces, it is the minimum wage position. Republicans are vehemently opposed to raising it, with some prominent republican lawmakers and pundits claiming we don’t need a minimum wage at all. The republicans have filibustered and blocked the vote to raise the federal wage repeatedly, and recently. I have argued that democrats should use this as an easily understandable position that should demonstrate which of the two parties gives just a little bit of a damn more about the plight of the working class and working poor. Yet voters in the red state of Alaska, who not too long ago voted Sarah Palin as governor, went to the polls and voted by a whopping margin of 61 percent in favor of raising the minimum wage to 31 percent against. Voters in the Southern, Obama hatin’ country of Arkansas, voted 65 percent in favor, 35 percent against. With such large numbers in favor of raising the minimum wage in these red states, it is somewhat amazing that in the same voting booth, with the issue right in front of their eyes, these voters still support the party who never supports raising it.
In Kentucky, Obamacare has been one of the country’s success stories, thanks in large part to the democratic governor who chose the medicaid expansion and set up the state’s own healthcare exchange, which helped them avoid the botched rollout that plagued the national healthcare exchange in the beginning. Polls in Kentucky indicate that Obamacare is popular and appreciated by all of the newly insured citizens of the state – so long as they aren’t told or reminded that it’s Obamacare. Senator Mitch McConnell was actually able to say during a debate with Allison Grimes that he wanted to repeal all of Obamacare, but that Kentucky could keep it’s “website” – the healthcare exchange operating under Obamacare. He also said Kentucky chose to expand Medicaid, and could keep that too if they liked. What he didn’t tell them that was the website wasn’t just a Kentucky magical “website” and that Medicaid expansion in Kentucky was funded mostly by the federal government as part of Obamacare. This is yet another glaring example of voters seeming to not know what their candidate actually stands for, since they enjoy the new Affordable Care Act that Mr. McConnell wants to repeal all together, so long as it’s kept quiet that it’s actually Obamacare they are enjoying.
Polls also show most Americans like Social Security and Medicare and want to keep it. Yet these same voters support the party that is salivating to dismantle both programs.
And now for the misguided excuses of the democrats who lost.
The simple answer that losing democrats are giving is that they lost because of President Obama’s approval ratings. But these democrats defeated themselves. With the republican narrative being that everything wrong in the country right now is the fault of the President and his party’s policies, losing democrats effectively agreed with this narrative by going out of their way to distance themselves from the President and try to show how unlike the rest of their party they are. There could not be a more direct path to losing than by agreeing with your opponent that your party and President suck, that you have failed so far, but please come and vote for me.
The epitome, the poster child, the biggest embracer of this losing strategy by a Democrat this time around, is by far, the most pathetic and pitiful excuse for a candidate I have seen in a long time: Allison Grimes of Kentucky.
I have ranted previously on this blog about how infuriatingly incompetent of a campaign that Allison Grimes was running, and that she deserved to lose. Mitch McConnell was vulnerable, and it was her election to lose. She did so with flying colors. Instead of choosing to inform Kentuckians that all of the new benefits they were getting in healthcare coverage and protection, and the magical “website” and Medicaid expansion in the state, was in fact the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, she chose cowardice. She ran a tv ad that started out with her saying “I am not Obama” and shooting a gun. Did she think that would win over republican voters in her state, or the thousands of citizens in her state who were enjoying access to healthcare for the first time? Apparently, she did. One wonders if she was smoking crack with Canada’s famous crack smoking mayor before she chose to not answer the simple question of who she voted for. She appears to have actually thought it was better to tell the media and voters that she prefered to keep who she voted for secret instead of stating the obvious, that she voted for Obama and voted for Democrats – you know, the party she belongs to and was running as to get elected.
An optimistic idiot from the New York Times wrote an article called “Midterms, for Clinton Team, Aren’t All Gloom.” Towards the end of the article, she pointed out: ” The Clintons worked hard on behalf of Alison Lundergan Grimes, a candidate for Senate in Kentucky, and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and were somewhat startled by their double-digit losses.”
That Mrs. Clinton and her team of experts were “startled” by their double digit losses, at least gives me hope that Hillary Clinton is more than vulnerable in the primaries for her presidential bid. It should also be a wakeup call to progressives, liberals, and independents who don’t want a republican president in 2016. Even if Hillary is elected, she is nothing more than a war hawk, neo-conservative, Margaret Thatcher clone, phony hope disguised as a democrat and as a person who actually cares about average Americans.
In contrast, the enthusiasm being generated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, is the kind of enthusiasm that will actually motivate people to vote for them over a republican for president next time. They are doing this by saying what they stand for, an elementary lesson that should have been obvious to the party known for it’s lack of spine.