After four years of Democratic Party control over both houses of Congress, the American voting public opted for a change last Tuesday. As result of elections , Republicans the United States House of Representatives next year, and the Democratic majority in the United States Senate has been narrowed. An analysis of this election and its consequences follows.
Context
The mixed results achieved Tuesday means that the two parties will have to work together to pass bills into law. Had Republicans won control of both chambers, it is possible that legislation could have cleared both chambers with minimal Democratic support before arriving at the White House for presidential action. However, with Democratic control over the Senate, Republicans will be unable to pass legislation without real backing from the party of President Obama; this prospect renders impossible the already difficult prospect of the excesses of the Affordable Care Act.
Nonetheless, the divided outcome resulting from the elections conducted last Tuesday is significant for another reason; this has been a year of hard-fought elections resulting in mixed outcomes. The British election held in May resulted in the first coalition government in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has led a minority government since her Labour Party lost seats in an election conducted this past August. Minority coalition governments in the Netherlands and Sweden are similarly reliant on small new parties to remain in power following elections in those countries earlier this year.
The Blame Game
After suffering a net of not less than sixty seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, leaders in the Democratic Party have started assigning blame for Tuesday’s results. Some Democrats blame the economy while others eerily suggest that the agenda of President Obama has not been progressive enough in the policies he has supported. Presumably, it is the latter group who are supporting Nancy Pelosi’s ill-conceived to again become minority leader after a four-year tenure as Speaker. Already before Tuesday, other Democrats were faulting Ms. Pelosi for dragging down the electoral prospects of their party nationally; The Speaker featured prominently in television spots around the country meant to associate local Democratic members of Congress with her progressive politics. By making a bid to remain the leader of the Democrats in the lower House of Congress, Ms. Pelosi will either force out one of her lieutenants, either outgoing Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) or outgoing Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), or face an embarrassing loss when members of the Democratic caucus vote on leadership in January.
Meanwhile, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) from leading the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after serving at its helm for two election cycles. Van Hollen makes a convenient fall guy if President Obama really believes that Tuesday’s outcome resulted from a failure on his part to promote the actions of his administration. Somewhat surprisingly, Senator seems poised to remain Majority Leader in the United States Senate despite a reduction in his majority there.
The Tempest in a Teapot
Analysts have used to describe the outcome of the 2010 midterms. Regardless of the term used, describing Tuesday’s events as a “rout” would be incorrect.
The election ought to have resulted in a rout, but Republicans fell short. With the exception of HI-02, every seat shown having changed in this video should be in Republican hands come January. Unfortunately, Republicans fell short. Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan that the correct message is not enough to win an election; the quality of the messenger matters too. While this conclusion is essentially correct, a deeper analysis in support of it is required.
Proponents of the Tea Party movement contend that many of the U.S. House candidates involved or associated with that group were successfully elected on Tuesday. This is obstensibly correct, but such candidates were often either incumbents or were elected to represent right-leaning congressional districts. Due to their size and often arbitrary design, congressional districts often lean liberal or lean conservative, regardless of overall trends in the states containing them. For example, the first and sixth congressional districts in Maryland presently trend conservative while the State of Maryland as a whole trends liberal. Thus, it follows that Tea Party candidates did well in conservative congressional districts.
Whereas the relatively small populations of congressional districts allow them to trend right or left, states in general are less bound to ideology due to the diverse views and professional backgrounds of their comparatively larger populations. Most states, as is true of most U.S. senators, trend toward the middle politically. As a result, Tea Party senate candidates were resounding failures in states which do not lean conservative. Thus, for every Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Mike Lee (Utah), there was a Sharon Angle (Nevada) and Christine O’Donnell (Delaware).
One of the better aspects of the Tea Party movement when it started was that it was decentralized and without clear leaders. To some extent, this is still true, but Tea Party Express and Tea Party Nation have tried to direct the movement to their own ends. While the latter was largely discredited by their for-profit “National Tea Party Convention” held in February, the former was a driving force in making the primary candidacies of and . Suddenly, a truly grassroots, bottom-up movement was ironically usurped by a national movement aiming to undermine popular local candidates and prop up more rightward, less popular individuals.
Somewhere along the way, the movement which pragmatically rallied behind Scott Brown in January abandoned its successful formula throughout the summer and autumn to back candidates other than those who could win win relatively liberal states. Much of the impetus to get Scott Brown elected was to derail the health reform excesses proposed and since enacted by the Democratic Congress. Any chance of successfully amending or repealing that horrid law required Republican control over both houses of Congress with only the presidency standing those efforts.
Conservatives and Republicans have long subscribed to the idea that their candidates and ideas are not regarded fairly in reporting by much of the national media. Yet, proponents of candidacies for federal offices by people like Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell seem to forget this. The only way Republicans can survive in a hostile media climate is by rallying behind candidates who can win, and those interested who have local bases of support. One cannot help but accept the premise that the controversy surrounding far too many unsuccessful GOP candidates this term derailed viable candidacies elsewhere.
The national funding, for example, that went into dispelling Democratic propaganda linking to Christine O’Donnell could have been spent propping up Ruth McClung against Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), the congressman who called for a boycott of his home state following its controversial efforts this year to enforce immigration laws. McClung, a rocket scientist, was one of many viable candidates in this wave year who lost narrowly. One is left to conclude that the constant press assaults on easy Republican targets this election cycle hindered support for promising first-time candidates and potential future leaders. Thus, Christine O’Donnell and the like not only weighed down GOP efforts to recapture the U.S. Senate, but also weakened prospects for a true rout in the House of Representatives.
Several gubernatorial candidates around the country lost in close races. Each of these too were probably weighed down by the “extremist” narrative so easily spun by press elites willing to ignore an administration too willing to use and to implement policies unfathomable to the electorate. One may recall, for example, that Tom Emmer of Minnesota was caught up in a contrived corporate funding controversy which allowed the media leeway to portray him as a man far outside the American mainstream. That Chris Dudley nearly won the governorship of increasingly liberal Oregon also suggests that voters on the margins were impacted by lousy candidacies elsewhere. The same could also be true of Bill Brady in Illinois and Tom Foley in Connecticut, who also seem to have narrowly lost.
Reapportionment
Following publication of the decennial Census, each state is tasked with reapportionment following the announcement of how many congressional eats, if any, are gained or lost. The process of reapportionment, which varies by states, often results in states being able to manipulate the prospects within their state for one party or the other in what os often called Gerrymandering. Named for Elbridge Gerry, the specific idea is to prevent members of the other party from being elected or reelected by redrawing their districts so that their partisan or ideological base of support is diminished. With states like Oregon, Illinois, and Connecticut now remaining in Democratic hands, it could be quite easy to reverse Republican gains made this year in 2012.
Consequences
Since the Republican wave fell short, Democrats still in power are free to think that the election results were something than a of President Obama’s policies thus far. That said, there are moving forward several areas in which Republicans can find common ground with President Obama in the next Congress. The of several trade agreements have been stalled by Democrats in Congress since the final years of the George W. Bush administration. With Republican control of the U.S. House, and a reduced Democratic majority in the Senate, these deals have a chance at raification and could help to lift the U.S. economy. There seems to be potential for cooperation on education reform too. Whether or not this movement to the center could help President Obama remains in doubt, however.
2011
The current year is not yet over, and already, American politicians are looking to the next two years. While much national attention since Tuesday has been focused on the presidential election now just under two years away, 2011 could be a very pivotal year. Three states have gubernatorial races next year; Kentucky, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Of the three, two are now governed by Republicans. Events in the coming year will shape the 2012 election cycle, for better or worse.
Last 5 posts by James Kane
- On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
- Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
- A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
- Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010
- In Defense of Michael Steele - July 9th, 2010