With all the very loud buzz about the historic Republican sweep last Tuesday, the biggest since FDR’s second term in 1936, it sort of got lost in all the partying that the GOP got almost as much bad news as good. Sure, they won their majority back but did anyone seriously believe that that was not going to happen anyway? (Okay, the Mike-O-Meter took a very bold position and predicted the Democrats would hold by a very slim margin. But I think M-O-M was the only one.) This has happened in almost every first mid-term in the nation’s history. Every President loses control of the Congress at their first mid-term, that is if they even had it in the first place. But the predictions were for a massive sweep, bigger than even the 60% super-majority the Democrats won in ’08. The predictions were that the GOP was going to come in so big that they could dictate policy and the Democrats would be powerless to stop them. I believe the numbers finally settled in at about 54% for the House and the Democrats retained the Senate by about 1%.
Don’t get me wrong! These are very respectable numbers. The Republicans achieved a very noteworthy victory. And at 54%, they’re just under what is generally considered a landslide. But it’s not a mandate. And it’s not even close to a super-majority. And what if it were? For the last two years, the Democrats had a 60% super-majority and what good did it do? The GOP masterfully navigated the labyrinth of procedural rules and effectively blocked most Democrat legislation, this despite the fact that the Democrats easily had a majority vote. Guess what? For the next two years, the Democrats are just going to turn right around and do the same thing back to the GOP. No, to paraphrase Mark Twain, I think the rumor of the death of the Democrats has been wildly exaggerated.
Frankly, I don’t see this as wildly good or bad news for either party. I don’t think it was a good thing that the Democrats had a super-majority in the last two years. It’s understandable that the GOP would have resisted tooth-and-nail. When you’ve only got 40% of the votes, you’re quite powerless to do anything else. That’s the main reason there’s been so little bi-partisan cooperation.
The GOP now has two choices. One - they can use their new-found power to create complete gridlock during the next two years and make sure absolutely nothing gets done, because without at least some Democrat cooperation, they still have no hope of getting anything through. But this first choice is likely to backfire. Despite all the media analysis about last Tuesday being a thorough repudiation of the whole Obama and Democrat agenda, I believe that the voters were instead sending the message that they are sick to death of all the partisan bickering. This has happened throughout our history. Americans seem to prefer that one party be in the White House and the other in the Congress. That’s a very healthy balance in a democracy. Nobody wants a one-party dictatorship, and that’s exactly the perception the country has labored under the last two years.
The GOP has a second choice, the one I hope they’ll pursue. Now that they have 54% control of the House, enough to even the playing field but not enough for a mandate, maybe they will discover the wisdom of meeting with their Democrat colleagues and finding a way to compromise so that we can move forward. This is what usually happens after a mid-term such as we just went through. When both sides know that they need the other side, an awful lot of reasonableness suddenly starts to happen. Of course, there’s been absolutely no hint of any of this in the rhetoric of the last two weeks or last several months. But we also know that our Washington politicians have a long history of being vitriolic in public but much more civilized behind closed doors. Let’s hope that this election does not prove to be one of the few historic exceptions to that tradition.
So the polls were partly right and partly wrong. The prediction was that our new Republican governor would win by close to a 60/40 margin and it was awfully damned close to that. But they also said that our Congressman, Democrat Gary Peters, would easily be wiped off the map by Republican challenger Rocky Raczkowski. They were quite wrong about that. Peters prevailed. Quite a few Democrats actually prevailed, the most shocking surprise being Harry Reid’s upset victory retaining his Nevada Senate seat, defying all the polls.
No, I think this is going to end up being a very healthy thing. And to put things into perspective, some of our most successful Presidents NEVER had control of the Congress; FDR, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton. And some of our least successful Presidents - or at least Presidents who were horribly unpopular; Herbert Hoover for the GOP, Jimmy Carter for the Democrats - did have control of the Congress and it didn’t do them any good. One thing history has taught us is that our most effective Presidents have learned to work with both parties. Having control of the Congress has never been a prerequisite for getting things done.
Which brings us to the title of this posting, "A Terrible Way To Govern," as a reminder once again of my favorite political quote, "Democracy is a terrible way to govern. We would never do it except that every other way is so much worse." Attributed to Winston Churchill but certainly Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton were known to paraphrase it from time to time. Even George W. made a comment or two along those lines. And Obama has said it repeatedly, "Governing is hard!"
And that bring us full circle again to that disgraceful 29 million statistic. 29 million Democrats didn’t think their vote would matter so they stayed home. Let’s do the math. If government belongs to those who show up, 90 million did show up last Tuesday. We don’t know how many were Republicans vs Democrats but we can do so rough guestimates. If the House is roughly four times the size of the Senate and the Republicans took 54% of the House and 49% of the Senate, we can split the difference at about 53%. That means 47% of 90 million were Democrats or 42.3 million. It doesn’t take a math genius to understand that adding 29 million to that and the Democrats would not only have kept their majority but their super-majority. Let’s say it’s even worse. For the sake of argument, let’s say that every seat that’s currently up in the air goes to the Republicans, giving them roughly 56%. So that means that 39.6 million Democrats actually voted. Wouldn’t have mattered. Add 29 million to that and you’d still have had a Democrat sweep. Now instead of being a repudiation of the Democrat agenda, it would have been a definitive ringing endorsement!
This is why the Mike-O-Meter doesn’t mind going out on a limb. I think it’s far healthier to base predictions on pro-active assumptions than the somberness of polls, polls which are as often wrong as they are right. And if everyone stayed home because of the polls, shame on the polls too. Sometimes I think they’re really dangerous. In a democracy, of course, we must put up with them. This is as it should be. And I’m really only half-serious when I suggest that the polls are the problem. No, citizens are still responsible for their actions. I said it last time and it bears repeating: you don’t vote because you think you’re going to win. You vote because you believe in the cause!
Government belongs to those who show up and the Republicans have now richly earned their place at bat. Let’s hope they use it wisely. Let's hope they get together with the Democrats, find common ground, and move the country forward. Democracy surely is a terrible way to govern when such large numbers stay home on election day. This is the point I made in a letter to The Oakland Press that got published on Wednesday right after the election (and which is on display at the head of this post.) My point was that neither ObamaCare nor the Tea Party are the real issues. The real issue is that historically only one-half of registered voters show up (and only one-half of eligible citizens are even registered.) This particular election, it was even less than average: about 40%! (According to the United States Election Project website.) For all the rhetoric about the massive turnout last Tuesday, not really. It was even middling for a mid-term, which are almost always middling. It was considerably under par for an average election. Shame on the 29 million. They get no sympathy from me for the next two years. But they damn well better show up in 2012!
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