Star formation

Continuing what's turned into a series of second looks at the US midterm elections, here's more on what I'd earlier called a "genuine political star", and a clear success for the Tea Party insurgency, Marco Rubio. First (with a nod to Instapundit), John McWhorter on Rubio's much noted victory speech -- "There is a good chance that he's next":



That's coming from a guy who backed Obama, but is now "truly unhappy, for the first time" with him. But here's the victory speech itself -- note particularly the notice given to the Republican Party early on:

Midterms again - the wave election

I have to thank Rand Simberg for this fascinating find from Stuart Rothenberg, in April 2009: "April Madness: Can GOP Win Back the House in 2010?" Here's how Rothenberg answers his own question:

Yes, Republicans have plenty of opportunities in good districts following their loss of 53 House seats over the past two cycles. And yes, there are signs that the Republican hemorrhage has stopped and even possibly that the party’s fortunes have begun to reverse course.

But there are no signs of a dramatic rebound for the party, and the chance of Republicans winning control of either chamber in the 2010 midterm elections is zero. Not “close to zero.” Not “slight” or “small.” Zero.

Why? Well, because --

Big changes in the House require a political wave. You can cherry-pick your way to a five- or eight-seat gain, but to win dozens of seats, a party needs a wave. 

...

Waves are built on dissatisfaction and frustration, and there is little in national survey data that suggest most voters are upset with President Barack Obama’s performance or the performance of his party.

Granted, this was a year and a half out, but over a year later he was still saying, "At this point, Republicans appear poised to gain two or three dozen seats but fall short of the majority." In the end, of course, they gained 64 seats, a bigger swing than anything seen since 1948. It's not just, in other words, that it was a "wave" election, and not just that it was a wave of historic proportions, but that it was a monster wave that developed so fast and so apparently mysteriously.

Not that losing politicians, pundits, and spinners don't have their usual assortment of hind-sight explanations --  bad economy, bad communications, "outside" money, fear and anger, bitter clinging, racism, blah, and more blah. Any of which would be fine for a more normal mid-term "correction", but none of which seem sufficient to account for what actually happened.

Now, I think, on a kind of meta-political level, the only thing that can really account for it is the idea of a longer-term shift in the political fulcrum, as I posted previously. But on the surface, what's the one explanation you don't hear from anyone on the liberal left? The answer: bad policies, or at least a rejection of Democratic policies by the electorate. But, as Mickey Kaus points out with reference to a distinctly odd, and even misleading column by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, that's an explanation that actually accounts for some statistical correlations: "the more [the House Democrats] opposed the Obama agenda on health care, the stimulus, and cap and trade, the better they did given the makeup of their district." Well, no doubt the lib-left is a little shell-shocked, and even grief-stricken -- but, if they're going to make opportunistic adjustments in time for the next electoral tide in 2012, they'll need to emerge from the denial stage soon.

More Midterm reaction

And a nice contrast to the deranged screed a couple of posts ago -- here's what the BBC's Paul Adams describes as "one minute and nine seconds of pure advertising genius":



See, what I like -- nay, what I love -- about Sarah Palin is just the effect she has on the so-called "elite", on both left and right. She grates, she baffles, and she just generally messes with their heads -- look what she's done to poor, excitable Andy Sullivan, for example. Now, like David Gergen, I doubt that she'll actually run for President -- though the temptation to be the first female candidate for the office might be enough to do it -- but I think she's having a great time making a lot of people nervous just by threatening to run.

Why take such schadenfreudean delight in the discomfort of the putative elites, you might ask? Oh, just because they tend to treat political ideas and values as they treat fashion -- something merely to be donned and displayed as status symbols rather than thought about seriously. Which is true more on the liberal, bien pensant side, of course, as distinct from the conservative, snobby side. But on both sides the fun is mainly just in seeing an obstreperous opposition get in the face of complacent orthodoxies, and stay there.

So you go, girl.

UPDATE: While we're doing videos that spook the liberal elite, I might as well add this one, called "Fire from the Heartland":


Fire From The Heartland from Citizens United on Vimeo.

Congratulations, America

Maybe about as expected overall, but a very good night, with some disappointments in the Senate, but a possibly historic (see Nate Silver, the electoral guru) result in the House, and big gains in Governorships, and state legislatures. A genuine political star in Rubio, and an interesting trio of Rubio, Allen West, and Nikki Haley. And speaking of the new Governor of South Carolina, a pretty good night for Sarah Palin too -- kind of amazing to see how, just a couple of years after a big defeat as a running mate to John McCain, she's now a national political force in her own right, while McCain's just back to being a Senator. The Tea Party in general had mixed results -- and needs to draw some lessons from that -- but I actually think McConnell was right to say that it's changed the Republican Party for good. More interesting, perhaps, has been it's impact on the Democratic Party, scaring a good many into repudiating their own left wing, and defeating many others who tried to buck that tide.

So, after a couple of setbacks starting in 2006, another substantial swing to the neo-progressive right -- now on to 2012.

A week out from the midterm

I should preface this with a reminder that I'm a Canadian, and so an observer rather than a voter. But US elections have a significant impact north of the border too -- the effect is more indirect, obviously, than our own elections, but it may well be deeper, in the influence on our political culture generally.

In any case, while I think of myself as a long-range optimist, in shorter ranges I'm inclined to prepare for worst-case scenarios. So, a week away from the mid-terms, I'm concerned that predictions of a huge Republican sweep are over-confident, and anything short of a monumental overturn will be taken as a Democrat "moral victory". Not that that means much except in the immediate aftermath, but it would have been better to see more modest expectations, and be pleasantly surprised, rather than the opposite. My own sense is that the Republicans should retake control of the House, and make gains in the Senate but be short of a majority -- that seems to me a reasonable expectation, with anything significantly more than that being a genuine Republican victory, anything less a genuine Democratic victory.

My real point, though, is that it's a mistake to look upon any one election or set of elections as some epochal, climactic, make-or-break event. That's an understandable tendency when things seem dire (and I don't doubt it's easier to say when you're out of the fray yourself, as I am) but it invites all the risks of triumphal overconfidence when things go one way, and despairing resignation when they go the other. When what's really needed is a long-term focus on changing the underlying political culture I spoke of above.

Along those lines, it can be helpful to stand back a bit and look at the real nature of the political alternatives before us, or the dimensions of political space. Elections tend to force alternatives into the single dimension of left and right, but political realities are usually more complex. So, for example, despite the general BigGov/smaller-state distinction between Democrats and Republicans, there is a BigGov, corporatist wing of the Republican Party too, just as there is limited state, free-market/capitalist wing of the Democrats. And on both sides there are the usual divisions over "social issues". But the social issues needn't separate people politically, unless they see the state as a means of enforcing their particular views or values -- in other words, it makes sense to pursue a long-term strategy of forging alliances among smaller government proponents, who are prepared to use persuasion rather than power to advance their values. And that, as I've said elsewhere, would be truly progressive.