TEEHEEFollow

change iz hard :(

People are pissed at goverment.

People are always pissed at the government.

It's hard to tell looking at a still picture, but the country in that photograph appears to be moving backwards.

I think we can safely put the "It's just anti-incumbency" angle to bed though. A long list of Democrat incumbents were defeated (nearly 40 I think, kinda lost count in the list). There were two GOP incumbents who lost their seats.

This was not about anger at sitting members of congress. It was anger at Democrats and their policies. One would hope that they'd get the hint and change, but you never know.

It was anger that people were told they should have. Because honestly, nothing Congress has done in the last 2 years has really gone into effect yet.

You're kidding! You're still trying to make this argument? Crazy!

They were "primaried out" because they were perceived as being too much like a Democrat politically.

Get it? It's a negative response to the Democrat's agenda, not just to people sitting in Congress. Sheesh!



Yes. Which they blamed on Democrats.



No. They just wouldn't also have been blaming them for 10% unemployment. See. It's not just one failure Joph. Also, you seem to be missing the fact that the reason we're at 10% unemployment instead of 6% is because the Democrats went on a spending spree on things like the stimulus bill, pushing ridiculous mandates into energy and budget bills, and then following it up with a massively costly health care bill.

You can dance around and deny it all day long, but the perception is that the reason the jobs haven't come back (and to some extent the reason they left in the first place) is because those who might otherwise have put money into expanding businesses and hiring workers held their money instead when they saw how much money the Dems were spending. It's not rocket science either. Massive borrowing means either higher taxes down the line and/or significant inflation (most likely both btw).

You don't want to be the guy who lent money right before an inflationary period, do you? That's why lenders didn't lend and the jobs started drying up. And a whole lot of people place the blame squarely on the Democrats and their agenda.



Sure. Because the largest single shift in house seats in 80 years happens every 2 years, doesn't it? Oh wait! It doesn't. This is not "normal" calculus Joph. It's a massive yell from the masses telling the Democrats that they don't like what they've been doing. It's a rejection of the spending of the last 2 years. It's a cry out for a return to sane fiscal and monetary policy.


And you know what it really is? It's the people realizing that all the stuff they were told to hate and fear during the Bush years and when the GOP was in control have only gotten worse under Democrats. They're realizing something I've harped on you about in the past, that when you attack something in a vacuum, without comparing it fairly to a real alternative, you sometimes will make the mistake of rejecting a better thing for one that is far far worse.


That's the the voters realized. The Democrats reminded them why the people should never put them in charge of the nations purse strings. The unfortunate thing is that it appears like we have to re-learn this lesson every 15 years or so. People forget, they get caught up in the GOP bashing, and they vote in Democrats. Then they learn what *real* fiscal irresponsibility is.




Yeah. Let's hope that the GOP can undo as much of the damage as possible.

No one said that it does but nice strawman. I said that after a large wave election, the winning party has a harder time holding seats to begin with because they picked up seats in districts unusual for them.

You're pretty upset that I'm not viewing the wins last night as magical or or proof of ideological purity or something but they're not. They were quite large and exacerbated by several factors but I was saying a long time ago that this would be an issue, long before the election season got underway.


It's not rocket science, it's simple political calculus. Why do you think I didn't spend the past year saying "Just you wait! Those polls are wrong! You're gonna be soooooo surprised!" like you did all through 2006 and 2008? I know better.

Edited, Nov 3rd 2010 8:29pm by Jophiel

It's not often I get quoted by THE Jophiel.

I just came a little.

This delivers thread.

What Jophiel said.