November 3, 2010: Day 1 of the 2012 campaign

OK. It’s November 11. It has been nine days since the midterm election and, although we don’t know yet who all the winners are, it’s time to sit down and wonder what happened. The questions that strike me as important are these.

Is this a shift in political direction in the U. S.?

What does this mean for our ability to deal with the Extra Jumbo Size problems?

What are the implications for 2012?

No. It’s not a shift in policy direction. The country has not decided it made a bad choice two years ago and now wants to go back to the Bush era. We need to begin by noticing that at the national level, there are two electorates—the presidential year electorate and the midterm electorate. The number of people who turn out to vote in presidential years is substantially greater than in the midterm years and a good deal more liberal. So the presidential electorate cast its vote in 2008; the midterm electorate in 2010. The presidential electorate will vote again in 2012. And so on.

Of course, that is not the only dynamic. Presidential administrations acquire a certain weight of failure and friction, particularly by the second term. If there are deeply divisive policy decisions, that makes it worse. If there are scandals, that too makes it worse. So I would be willing to see the Rs building up their strength for the 2016 election for those reasons among others. I don’t see that between 2008 and 2010.

So what did happen? First, the Ds won “too many” Congressional districts in 2008. They won districts they would not have won had the voter disgust with Rs been less strong and more than they would have won had they not had a dynamic presidential candidate. So you would expect a substantial number of those to revert to R control in 2010 and they did. Besides, they were only Blue Dog Democratic districts anyway.

In addition, the people who were worried about the economy (so they voted for Obama) are now angry about the economy (so they voted against Obama). And the Rs took a hellacious risk in opposing Obama in lockstep and it paid off for them. The Ds said “It’s not our fault,” meaning that they inherited the recession. But that was two years ago. The Rs said “It’s not our fault,” meaning that they have opposed each and every initiative of the Obama administration. People were angry enough at their economic hardship that the R excuses played better than the D excuses.

So it wasn’t a change of direction. It was economic uneasiness amplified by high stakes partisan opposition.

How about the Extra Jumbo Size problems? Well, they didn’t go away. The deficit is still large, as it should be. Running a deficit to bring the economy back to speed is standard practice and has been since the 1930s. The debt is still large. It is almost entirely the gift to the nation of the Republican Party, but however it got there, there it is and we’re going to have to do something about it. Globalization is still syphoning off jobs that used to be American jobs. The transportation, energy, and communications infrastructures are bad and getting worse. And the Baby Boomers are just now starting to achieve their Medicare and Social Security potential. Our fifty education systems continue to fall further behind our international competition. Oh yeah, and we’re still fighting two wars.

I think the prospects are pretty good for most of those. The report of the President’s Commission on Not Going Broke is due December 1 and it will call for a good deal of pain for everyone. The fact that this is mostly deferred pain will not make it less painful. It’s a bipartisan commission and the rejection of it’s’ recommendations will be bipartisan as well, but the great thing about it is that time is running out. The consequences of failing to deal with it are clearer.

The Bush administration’s flirtation with getting out of the entitlement mess by allowing people to opt out seems more like a drunken pass in a bar than the beginning of a promising relationship. So the entitlement programs are going to have to be cut and federal revenues are going to have to be increased. The closer we come to the edge of the cliff, the more persuasive the need for bipartisan action will be.

Besides, the Republicans are going to have to say something more than NO now that they control the House. In the midst of a recession, the interplay of Democratic “How about this?” and Republican “No to all of the above,” played pretty well. Now it is time for the Rs to say, “No, let’s do that instead.” But “instead” will be massively unpopular and the Ds will always win a battle of proposals. They control the policy agenda and have for years and the public opinion surveys show that people have more confidence in the D proposals than the R proposals on nearly any issue you want to name.

For that reason, I think the Rs are going to have to take quite a few steps in the D direction, at least on the Extra Jumbo Size problems and as the cliff edge looms, innovation will be rewarded.

And the implications for 2012? I think they are very good. First, it is a presidential year so it will be the opinions of the more liberal of the two electorates that will be consulted. Second, the moderation that Obama has shown in his policy initiatives during his first two years, and which has driven perfectly respectable liberals crazy, is going to be affirmed in the 2012 campaign. More daring policies might have worked better, had Obama been able to pass them, but they would also have been more vulnerable to caricature. He is going to reap the political benefits of his freshman term wariness.

Third, the Republicans are going to have to come up with a candidate. If it’s someone like Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, the right wing will sit on their hands the whole election. If it’s a Tea Party firebrand like Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the excesses of the Tea Party will be on display. They don’t have anyone who can mobilize one part of the party and pacify the other part. Yet. And if they did, they will still have to go up against an Obama who will be in full campaign mode.

People felt they lost touch with Obama when he took time off from the campaign to…you know…run the country. I think they haven’t forgiven him for that. But Republican control of the House will make Congress almost inert for the next two years and that is going to put Obama right back on the campaign trail, where the Republicans really can not, candidly, afford to have him.

They like him in some back room of the West Wing arm-wrestling Ben Nelson over why 49 states should pay for the health care changes and Nebraska should get them free. That’s the Obama the Rs like but if they wanted to keep that one, they should have been smart enough to postpone taking over the House and being forced to join the conversation about America's future.