The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same (?)
I've had a few days to chew on this, but my take on Tuesday's election: Nothing really changed. A bunch of Blue Dogs got voted out and replaced with Republicans - so what? Blue Dogs didn't get with the program anyway. And none other than Rand Paul had a stern warning to Republicans not to interpret the results as an endorsement of the Republican Party - the Teabaggers are as much at war with the Republican establishment as are the liberals, albeit for very different reasons. Rasmussen already has a poll showing 59 percent of voters expect the GOP to disappoint by '12. 59 percent! The real axis of insanity (O'Donnell, Angle, Miller) and a few other Teabaggers effectively delivered the Senate for the Democrats in the same way that A-Rod sent the Texas Rangers to the World Series a decade after he left the team.
The folks at Reason (no great defenders of the Democrats) had this to say:
Had the Republicans also won the Senate, things might be different, but only in so much as to create gridlock. But even then, for the first time in a long time the Republicans appear not to be a single unified block. I can't wait for the civil war within the Republican ranks as the Teabaggers try to grab the Republican steering wheel - will they ultimately become the new Red Dog Republicans? Or will they sell out as soon as they set foot in Washington and bow down to Wall Street and the Koch Brothers?
If some analysts are to be believed, President Obama is actually better situated politically than Bill Clinton was when the Republicans stole Congress in 1994. According to Gallup, Obama's approval rating at this point in his Presidency is equal to that of Bill Clinton's and slightly better than St. Ronald Reagan's.
Even if a Republican House effectively puts the brakes on Obama's agenda, Obama's Presidency has been fairly productive in its first two years. It's not like he hasn't done anything for us lately.
