Although President Obama admitted after Republicans retook the House of Representatives on Tuesday that his party suffered a real “shellacking” at the polls, Democrats immediately began arguing that the results weren’t a repudiation of either their president or his policies, but evidence of the public’s frustration at the slow pace of the economic recovery.
Indeed, in a postelection press conference on Wednesday, the president ignored exit polls that almost unanimously found that Americans went to the polls on Tuesday to participate in what amounted to a referendum on his policies.
But the Republican gains in the House were unprecedented and the election of a half dozen more GOP senators, shows that the American voters were clearly reacting to the president, his policies and the way in which he and his congressional allies have tried to forcibly remake the American economy and society.
The Democrats’ postelection spin differs markedly from their message to partisans just a few weeks ago. The president himself, while touring the country on behalf of Democratic House and Senate candidates, urged his supporters to get out and vote on Tuesday precisely because the election would be a referendum on him.
Speaking in Philadelphia in early October, for example, the president told his audiences that those who believed this election wouldn’t be about him were wrong. “Don’t assume because I’m not on the ballot that this election is less important,” he said. You have to vote, he insisted, to keep “them” from making “me look bad.”
He was right; This midterm was all about him and his policies. The results fully justified House Republican Leader John Boehner’s charge that the results amount to a “rebuke” of the president and the direction he and his party want to take the country. Denial won’t change that, but could lead to another and more definitive (and final) rebuke in two years.
Democrats can spin as much as they like. They can celebrate the defeat of so-called “Tea Party” candidates or congratulate themselves on Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s survival, but unless they face up to why they lost so massively on Tuesday, they will compound their problems as they try to move forward.
Even if they do change course as President Clinton did after the 1994 midterms, however, Obama’s Democratic Party will be paying for this one for years to come. The political tsunami that swept through the country this year was even more devastating than what happened to them in 1994.
Washingtonians may not have been paying much attention, but the wave that swept the country on Tuesday allowed Republicans to take over at least 10 more governorships and win as many as 600 state legislative races.
These results will affect the redistricting that will take place across the country between now and 2012 and will make it much more difficult for Democrats to take back the House. Some are already estimating that Republicans could pick up another dozen or more seats once redistricting is completed.
Even more significant when one looks to the future is that the Democratic “farm team” was decimated. Young future “stars” elected to Congress in 2006 and 2008 have been sent packing, and those who hoped to move up have been strangled in their political cribs, while the GOP has elected future stars like Marco Rubio in Florida, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Susana Martinez in New Mexico.
Tuesday was all about Obama, but his fellow Democrats who will be paying for his mistakes for years.
David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union.
