First things first: please keep all those soldiers and their families stationed at Ft. Hood in your thoughts, especially those wounded and killed. It's early yet, but it looks like the army dropped the ball pretty big on this one. According to the shooter's aunt, he had repeatedly asked for discharge prior to an impending first deployment to the Middle East and had been a longtime vocal critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Much like the Virginia Tech shooter (ironically this shooter's alma mater), there were a lot of signs of psychological instability that were missed before he unleashed unprecedented violence on his fellow soldiers. Thankfully, the people of Ft. Hood showed the kind of sympathy that anyone would hope for in these circumstances, turning out in such droves to donate blood for the wounded that literally hundreds had to be turned away from the donation clinic.
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With that, I'll get down to business covering the main topic of the day, namely the election results in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York; what I think (I think) they mean; and the growing schism between the GOP and the tea-baggers. As we all know, the "referendum" elections yielded gubernatorial wins for the Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey, while a Democrat (with his erstwhile Republican challenger's support) won the special election in New York, giving that congressional seat to the dems for the first time in over a century and a quarter. This set the moderates to trembling, Michael Steele to trumpeting ("Strike the Heisman pose!"), the center-rightists to governing, the tea-baggers to blathering, and the White House to--well, nothing. No Drama himself couldn't be bothered to watch election returns on Tuesday night (referendum? What referendum?). On top of all this, the spin doctors of both sides continue to busily weave the webs they've been spinning since well before the polls opened. Everyone's convinced these all mean something, but no two people or groups seem to have identical convictions. Just to add to the cacophony, here are my takes.
As far as the gubernatorial races, both involved "embattled" democratic candidates with on-again/off-again support from the White House losing to fairly middle-of-the-road Republicans. Given that both lost, the administration is now blaming the ineptitude of the candidates, particularly R. Creigh Deeds of Virginia. Deeds made such a poor showing that administration officials were dialing rhetoric back and preparing the way for a renunciation of the candidate for several weeks before the election. Corzine attempted to party like it was 2008 all over again, telling his supporters that "President Obama needs us." Regardless of what the President actually needed, the people of New Jersey clearly didn't need any more of Gov. Corzine. New Jersey has been pretty reliably blue recently; Virginia has been historically red, though with a definite purple haze around liberal suburbs. Last year, the Washington suburbs helped push Virginia over the top into going blue for the first time in over four decades, which seemed to make the giddy Democrats assume that the tide had turned for good and the GOP was on the run or "in the wildnerness" for the foreseeable future. As has been pointed out over and over again of late, though, America is at heart a center-right country with a historically fairly apathetic electorate, especially the young. Apparently assuming that Obamamania was a permanent thing, the Democrats were quick to take for granted the mobilization and turnout of the liberal base, the young, the blacks, and the independents who--yes they did--turned out in droves to get Obama elected a year ago.
This year, it was back to business as usual. The young stayed home, the liberal base turned out in average numbers, African-Americans weren't nearly as involved, and the independents (terrified of the Obamaconomy) did what independents usually do and waved a big old finger in the face of the party in power. As Charles Krauthammer noted in today's Post, all this amounted to a 19-point swing in the Republicans' favor in New Jersey and a 23-point swing in Virginia; alarmingly for the Democrats, the independents swung 30 and 33 points for the Republicans in those states respectively. Additionally, the African-American vote was 20% smaller than a year ago and the under-30 vote (some of the most fervent Obama supporters of yesteryear) was down by 50%. According to Michael Gerson, about 10% of those who voted for Obama last year in Virginia voted for the Republican McDonnell on Tuesday. Given that Obama only carried the Old Dominion by six points, that 10% is a significant chunk by itself, especially, as Gerson points out, since gubernatorial races are even more of a fight for the middle than presidential elections.
To that end the GOP challengers Chris Christie (NJ) and McDonnell (VA) both took care to respectfully disagree with Obama and their opponents on the issues and present themselves as viable alternatives who were more in line with public opinion. On the flip side, both Corzine and Deeds ran what are generally acknowledged to have been highly negative campaigns, devoting more energy to muckraking than scrabbling for the median voter that parties covet. If Obama needed him so badly, Corzine probably shouldn't have, among other missteps, put out an ad showing the corpulent Christie climbing out of a car while a narrator pointedly observed that Christie "throws his weight around" on issues. If the time has indeed come to put away childish things, David Axelrod probably should have told Corzine where to put that ad. Surprise, Democrats--party politics didn't end a year ago. The GOP is still very much around to challenge you.
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The Republican party might be around, but who exactly is a Republican these days? Is it RNC Chairman Michael "I don't want to crow" Steele (he of the Heisman pose on national television)? Is it the tea bag-toting Palinites? This schism played itself out in upstate New York, where a Democrat won a seat in congress from the 23rd district for the first time in over 125 years. A quick recap: after Obama tapped the congressman of the 23rd for his cabinet last year, a special election was called this year to fill the seat. Popular local Republican Dede Scozzafava was pitted against conservative Democrat Bill Owens, with Scozzafava looking likely to win until the "real" conservatives arrived on-scene. Those would be the national personalities of the reactionary Palinite movement--Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin herself. That is not a misprint: the resigned former governor of the state of Alaska, in the public eye for about 15 months now, turned all her--ahem--firepower on a congressional race in a district that borders Canada. Poor Ms. Scozzafava just wasn't conservative enough for Palin & Co., who actually managed to chase her out of the race and put the arch-conservative Doug Hoffman on the ballot instead. This led to the unique situation described in the top of the column--the former Republican nominee threw all of her remaining support behind the Democrat who had until recently been her challenger, who (luckily) ended up beating out the tea-bagger.
As one of the millions of Americans who self-identifies as a conservative (full disclosure: I'm a registered Democrat, but I'm hardly leading the charge to the left) and as an under-30 voter, I find the two scariest aspects of Tuesday's outcomes the battle for the meaning of "conservative" in New York and the 50% drop-off in under-30 voting in Virginia and New Jersey. From the days of Locke, true conservative have always recognized and named reactionaries as the true enemies of conservatism, and reactionary is what today's "conservatives" are all about. When "conservatism" is defined by a woman who is likely to run for President yet couldn't name a single news magazine (a low hurdle indeed for a prospective Vice President!) just over a year ago and the many angry white men of cable TV and hate radio, that says to me that I can't in good conscience call myself either conservative or Republican. Where have you gone, William F. Buckley? The GOP turns its lonely eyes to you, as it is apparently no longer capable of policing its extremes. The trouble is, neither are the Democrats: tripling the national debt over the next decade is simply not feasible. If there is one lesson of the current financial crisis, it should be that life ain't free. If Obama continues to tell the nation with a straight face that Obamacare won't add a cent to the budget, Joe Wilson is absolutely right: he lies. Same goes for Reid, Pelosi, and the whole gang on Capitol Hill. Last time I checked, doctor's visits were not free. Now we're going to provide them to everyone in America without raising taxes or adding a cent to the budget? Read my lips: that's horse apples, and everyone with half a brain (or who's ever been to the doctor) should know it. The danger is that, with true conservatism rapidly being overrun by the loonies of the right (and we're talking right of Atilla the Hun here), there's no viable alternative. Which party does someone who wants to see this country finally join the rest of the free world in offering health coverage to all its citizens yet in a responsible, economical way sign up for? These days, I just don't see the answer.
Which brings up the second point: apathetic young voters. Obamacare, current federal spending levels, added stimulus, and whatever other Great Society/New Deal 2.0 initiatives crop up in the next several years will absolutely cripple today's under-30 crowd and our children (and likely their children, and theirs....). Still, under-30's just can't be bothered to vote. We all rocked the vote last year for a magnetizing young candidate, but now that the very same person is mortgaging all of our futures up the wazoo nobody's moved to say anything. It may be that few under-30's like "the system," but we can't change the system by not voting. Unfortunately, the system can sure as hell still reach out and touch us--by the time we're over 30 and start to pay attention to such things as the national debt, our personal debt, and the fact that we're likely to become the first generation of Americans to achieve backward mobility, it'll be over a decade too late. It's beyond me why this is such a hard concept for people my age to grasp. Even ignoring for a moment the glaring problem of what's being decided about the futures of everyone who's under 18 and (rightly) can't vote yet, even those of us who have been recently enfranchised just can't seem to bestir ourselves to fight tooth and nail against the mortgaging of our own futures. That, to my mind, is incomprehensible and inexcusable.
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So what's the moral of the story? In terms of referendums, I'd say that the elections in VA and NJ tell us not much about the mid-terms, 2012, or even all that much about Obama today. Mostly, I would say they provide another example of a the growing schisms between the "reds" and the "blues" and further between the "Republicans" and the "conservatives," and it's those fault lines that are the really worries. As I've said before, neither conservatism nor liberalism is about extremism, nor should they be. The cable news/hate radio syndrome of simply trying to out-shock the other side is out of control and highly counter-productive. What the election of moderate Republicans in VA and NJ and the Democrat's win in the NY 23rd is, hopefully, that people in general--on Palin's oft-cited "Main Street," perhaps--are largely sick and tired of hate-driven, extremist party politics. To the extent to which the election of Republicans in VA and NJ was a reaction to Obama's policies, that they were both moderate "mainstream" Republicans who ran relatively respectful, issue-driven campaigns is a healthy sign. If voters are legitimately scared of Obamacare, etc., it is much better that that sentiment find expression through the election of articulate, respectful people who will work within the system to try to challenge the liberal agenda than through the election of pundits or tea-baggers, who have nothing to offer but hate and obstinacy. If that was indeed why McDonnell and Christie were elected, let's hope they follow through on their campaign promises.
And finally, to address party politics, I'd say it's long past time that both the Republicans and Democrats got some young blood and some ideological airing out. Both parties, as traditionally construed, are respectable, viable, and valuable positions. Opposition is a good thing in politics. As they're both currently trending, however, neither looks terribly attractive. The Dems are drunk with power, far too liberal in many ways for the country as a whole, and out of touch with the base and with reality. As long as the Democrats continue to try to enable the unfolding Obama agenda without realizing that the "mandate" they obtained last November has expired and is unlikely to be repeated, they will only keep alienating the center and the independents, the key constituencies that helped give Obama that "mandate" a year ago. The GOP, meanwhile, is arguably in position to capture the center while the Democrats are busily assuming they still have a mandate and that conservatism was dealt a mortal blow last year. While the sycophantic Democratic mandarins are resting too comfortably on last year's laurels, the GOP could very easily steal the middle from under their noses by presenting the only viable alternative for the disillusioned independents. Potential trouble for the GOP still lies in soul-searching and civil war with the tea-baggers, though. If the battle for the soul of the party comes to a head between the reactionaries and the so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only, aka rational conservatives), a conservative win could spell disaster for the party and/or the country. With any luck, the electorate will see that such people have nothing positive to offer the country and will show them the door, but the conservative movement does not show signs of abating or being turned out to the margins of the political wilderness where it belongs any time soon.
Basically, the Dems need to realize that the GOP is not in the wilderness nor is it headed that way, and the Republicans need to exorcise the tea-baggers and banish them to the hinterlands. At the moment, neither party's old guard seems capable of seeing what needs fixing nor of making the switches.
Who best to tell them? The under-30's, of course! It's time to get "fired up, ready to go" again to bring some real change to America. If voting doesn't seem productive enough, it's time to put ourselves on the ballots and start bringing some new ideas to the table.
Yes, we can...