His piece in Commentary, “Some Thoughts on Barack Obama’s Awful Evening,” is I think the best reflection on Tuesday’s elections that I’ve yet read. Though one must be careful not to draw too much from limited electoral data, I think Wehner is right to say that the New Jersey results, at least, reflect on the White House to some significant degree.
Because of the economic state of the country, and the scope, reach, and ambition of Obama’s domestic programs, the president was more of a factor than would usually be the case. What we witnessed last night has to be interpreted at least in part as a repudiation of President Obama’s policies (the president himself remains fairly popular personally). The efforts by the White House to pretend otherwise are silly. In New Jersey in particular, a full-court press was put on—from repeated Obama visits to the state, to pouring in huge financial resources (Governor-elect Christie was outspent by a margin of around 3-to-1), to a barrage of relentlessly negative attacks by Jon Corzine against Christie. To have done all that and to still have lost New Jersey is quite amazing.
I particularly appreciate this, from his final point (of seven):
“Today,” proclaimed the Democratic strategist James Carville earlier this year, “a Democratic majority is emerging, and it’s my hypothesis, one I share with a great many others, that this majority will guarantee the Democrats remain in power for the next 40 years.” Added Michael Lind after last November’s campaign: “The election of Barack Obama to the presidency may signal more than the end of an era of Republican presidential dominance and conservative ideology. It may mark the beginning of a Fourth Republic of the United States.” That 40-year, beginning-of-the-Fourth-Republic reign on power seems to be in a good deal of trouble after only nine months.
Democrats still hold power, however, and Republicans still have ground to make up for. Things can change quickly again. Nothing is set in stone. Still, last night was a significant political moment, one that might be a harbinger for much worse things for Obama and Obamaism.
Is this the beginning of the end for that Democratic majority? Not hardly. It may no longer be true that all politics is local, but it remains true that all politics is of the moment, and the moment of November 2010 will no doubt be very different than this moment; it could easily be very different in ways which significantly favor the Left. But this past Tuesday does make it clear that last November wasn’t the beginning of the end for the GOP, either. Instead, whether we wish it so or otherwise, the self-balancing, cyclical two-party system is still very much alive and well. Taken all in all, though I’m not terribly fond of either party, there are worse things.