In October 2013, a Democrat versus Republican standoff over Obamacare funding created a budget impasse which partially shut down the federal government for 16 days. Republicans eventually gave in to Democrat demands: Obamacare received funding, and the debt ceiling rose. In exchange, Republicans received humiliation.
Rubbing salt in the political wound, a smug President Barack Obama advised his vanquished adversaries:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W_M1bNBs88[/youtube]
What a difference a year makes…
Obama’s opposition heeded his advice. As a result, the electoral disembowelment of progressives, begun in 2010, paused in 2012, and seemingly improbable in 2013, resumed with a vengeance on November 4th, 2014. The carnage was undeniable:
- • U.S. Senate: Democrats lost at least 7 seats in the 2014 midterm elections, probably 8, and possibly 9. After entering the Obama era with 57 seats in 2009, only 45, or less, will survive into 2015.
• U.S. House: Democrats lost 12 seats, minimum. So, while 257 Democrat Congressmen marched in with the current president in 2009; a maximum of 191 will limp with him into the final two years of his administration, their lowest total since the 1920’s.
Expressed geographically, a person in Texas could travel north to Canada, or east to the Atlantic Ocean, without setting foot in a state where a Democrat won a Senate seat; that same person, starting in central California could travel East to the Atlantic ocean without visiting a Democrat’s congressional district. Democrats in federal elected office are, increasingly, a critically endangered species, except on portions of America’s coasts.
Not only did the polls, and the U.S map, look less blue, but the vaunted Democrat Party diversity also took on a GOP reddish hue. Even if, as Geraldo Rivera tweeted, Democrats were defeated by “angry old white folk”, those cantankerous Caucasians voted to elect the very people Rivera said deserted Obama and the Democrats: latinos, blacks and millennials.
As for the president, prior to the election, he was emphatic that his policies, if not his name, were on the ballot:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkYnghIrQrA[/youtube]
After the vote, the president downplayed the rebuff from those who cast ballots, making special mention of the majority who passed on this election…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4mBVL6Qz0Y[/youtube]
which prompted one reporter to ask if the president was some kind of election non-participant “whisperer”, the leader of America’s non-voting bloc.
Obama’s Chief of Staff joined the spin cycle, shrugging off the electoral destruction to say Washington, D.C. would “work better” if Obama has his way:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-unITq3gQE[/youtube]
Unfortunately, the “Bleeding within the Beltway” is not the worst of Democrats’ problems, for if, over the last 6 years, federal elections shoved a dagger into the flesh of Democrats, then state elections twisted it:
- • Governors: In 2009, there were 28 Democrat Governors in the U.S.; in 2015, there will be fewer than 20.
• State Legislatures: In 2009, Democrats controlled 60 of the nation’s 99 state legislative chambers; in 2015, Republicans will control 67 chambers, gaining another 11 on November 4th, 2014.
Despite these prohibitive Democrat Party losses over the last six years, it is not hard to find “sages” who predict the GOP’s 2016 demise…as other wise men had predicted in 2012…as still others had predicted after the 2008 election.
Those crystal balls may need cleaning…
So, is this simply another pendulum swing from donkey to elephant? Won’t the Democrats likely prevail again in 2016, at least for the presidency? Well, perhaps…and perhaps not. Since the 1951 ratification of the 22nd Amendment, only once has a political party won 3 consecutive presidential elections; the GOP accomplished that in 1980, 1984, and 1988. The current president’s low popularity, and the steep decline in his party’s Congressional numbers during his tenure, make it unlikely that Democrats will achieve that trifecta.
Eventually, the Senate electoral map will favor the Democrats, meaning the GOP will have more seats to defend. That could result in another change of majority. As for the House, the most recent election is the eighth, of the last ten, to produce a Republican majority, and the third in a row. There is little to suggest large national sentiment moving in the Democrats’ direction.
The Democrat description of Republicans as anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-homosexual, and anti-science is electorally ignored; the myth that the Republican Party is anti-youth now lies under a billowing mushroom cloud. The mantra that the GOP ain’t for everybody is chanted less loudly, and by fewer people, as elections go by.
Nevertheless, there is a growing disconnect between federal elected leadership and that found in the states, more according to ideology than party. It is clear the Washington, D.C., with its continued deficits and entitlement largesse, is ideologically to the left of a nation in which 2/3 of state elected legislatures govern according to a different view. Washington, D.C., is to the left of Wisconsin, a state that elected a “union-busting”, tax-cutting Republican governor 3 times in the last 4 years. Washington, D.C., is to the left of 30 other states having Republican governors, including the four (Arkansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland) that just traded in Democrats for a GOP model.
Washington, D.C., is ideologically to the left of the now 50 individual “laboratories of democracy”, as Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis described the states in 1932. The primary difference between state and federal governments: state governments see theirs as an obligation to solve problems, with limited resources, so their citizens may thrive; the federal government believe their obligation is to take on problems they cannot solve so they may grow and a political party might thrive.
Consequently, this past election was more about the direction of the country than about control of the Senate. The states work to solve the problems of their people; Washington, D.C., works to solve the problems of the political parties. States see election results as a license to get busy fixing, while Washington sees them as a license to get busy campaigning…throwing money and words at problems it has either bungled…or caused. These are two irreconcilable views of government.
So long as deficit spending, and the direct election of Senators, continues, it is unlikely that the ideology of the federal government and that of the majority of states will ever consistently align. Therefore, eventually, each state may have to decide, as increasing federal spending and power limits what it can do for its citizens, whether to continue to act as the sovereign for its people’s interests, or to relinquish that sovereignty to those who live outside of its borders.
There will be a referendum on whether the U.S. shall remain a nation of states, or become a national state, and that quite soon, depending on what the states, and their citizens, decide.
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