Blessedly, the cacophony of political attack ads on every television station is over.  Democrats and Republicans will all agree that the peace and quiet is welcome.  As to the result, we all know the numbers:  The GOP takes over the House; the Democrats hold the Senate.  Most major highly watched races went to the Republicans, but Democrats hung on in California and Harry Reid survived in Nevada.

Before discussing what this portends, let’s consider what history will say about the 2010 mid-term elections:

Independents did a complete swivel.  After embracing candidate Obama in ’08 largely due to unhappiness with Bush policies, both domestic and foreign, and seeing a looming economic and banking disaster, they turned to then Senator Obama in whom they saw extraordinary intelligence, charm and a message of unity … as he put it … “only one America.”

So why the complete reversal in 2010?  There are numerous reasons, but one towers over all the rest: the president squandered his popularity by misreading the 2008 mandate.  He saw it as an opportunity to put a radical new stamp on the country and solve our problems, social and economic, as if he were the second coming of FDR.

But this was not the 1930s and he forgot that America is essentially a centrist country, sometimes veering a few degrees to the left and more often a few degrees to the right.  President Obama veered hard left and jammed through a health care bill when it was obvious there was no consensus for it, and he did so using tactics that, from his campaign rhetoric, he disdained.  Similarly, his cap and trade legislation had no public appeal, but he went forward anyway and got it through the House without a single Republican vote.

In pursuing his legislative agenda, he lost focus on the three issues most pressing to the electorate:  jobs, jobs and jobs.

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Yesterday, Washington Post columnist and former Bush II speechwriter Michael Gerson played a long slow violin solo over the death of the mainstream media. There’s nothing new in his piece. Dazed with panic as the circle of financial ruin closes in, we’ve heard this song many times before from our ink-stained dinosaurs. And true to form, Gerson can’t break the mold. It’s all there, the rose-colored glasses, denial, and a heaping helping of rationalization.

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting  to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

How absurd. (more…)