Posted on 11/06/2010 4:27:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Let's try to put some metrics on last Tuesday's historic election. Two years ago, the popular vote for House of Representatives was 54 percent Democratic and 43 percent Republican. That may sound close, but in historic perspective it's a landslide. Democrats didn't win the House popular vote in the South, as they did from the 1870s up through 1992. But they won a larger percentage in the 36 non-Southern states than -- well, as far as I can tell, than ever before.
This year, we don't yet know the House popular vote down to the last digit, partly because California takes five weeks these days to count all its votes (Brazil, which voted last Sunday, counted its votes in less than five hours). But the exit poll had it at 52 percent Republican and 46 percent Democratic, which is probably within a point or so of the final number.
That's similar to 1994, and you have to go back to 1946 and 1928 to find years when Republicans did better. And the numbers those years aren't commensurate, since the then-segregated and Democratic South cast few popular votes. So you could argue that this is the best Republican showing ever.
Nationally, Republicans narrowly missed winning Senate seats in heavily Democratic Washington and in Nevada and California, where less problematic nominees might have won. As in all wave years, they missed winning half a dozen House seats by a whisker (or a suddenly discovered bunch of ballots).
But they made really sweeping gains in state legislatures, where candidate quality makes less difference. According to the National Conference on State Legislatures, Republicans gained about 125 seats in state senates and 550 seats in state houses -- 675 seats in total. That gives them more seats than they've won in any year since 1928.
Republicans snatched control of about 20 legislative houses from Democrats -- and by margins that hardly any political insiders expected. Republicans needed five seats for a majority in the Pennsylvania House and won 15; they needed four seats in the Ohio House and got 13; they needed 13 in the Michigan House and got 20; they needed two in the Wisconsin Senate and four in the Wisconsin House, and gained four and 14; they needed five in the North Carolina Senate and nine in the North Carolina House and gained 11 and 15.
All those gains are hugely significant in redistricting. When the 2010 Census results are announced next month, the 435 House seats will be reapportioned to the states, and state officials will draw new district lines in each state. Nonpartisan commissions authorized by voters this year will do the job in (Democratic) California and (Republican) Florida, but in most states it's up to legislators and governors (although North Carolina's governor cannot veto redistricting bills).
Republicans look to have a bigger advantage in this redistricting cycle than they've ever had before. It appears that in the states that will have more than five districts (you can make only limited partisan difference in smaller states), Republicans will control redistricting in 13 states with a total of 165 House districts and Democrats will have control in only four states with a total of 40 districts. You can add Minnesota (seven or eiht districts) to the first list if the final count gives Republicans the governorship and New York (27 or 28 districts) to the second list if the final count gives Democrats the state Senate.
When the tea party movement first made itself heard, Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as "Astroturf," a phony organization financed by a few millionaires. She may have been projecting -- those union demonstrators you see at Democratic events or heckling Republicans are often paid by the hour.
In any case, the depth and the breadth of Republican victories in state legislative races, even more than their gain of 60-plus seats in the U.S. House and six seats in the Senate, shows that the tea party movement was a genuine popular upheaval of vast dimensions. Particularly in traditional blue-collar areas, voters rejected longtime Democrats or abandoned lifelong partisan allegiances and elected Republicans.
This will make a difference not just in redistricting. State governments face budget crunches and are supposed to act to help roll out Obamacare. Republican legislatures can cut spending and block the rollout. "I won," Barack Obama told Republican leaders seeking concessions last year. This year, he didn't.
A point Barone didn’t go so far as to note: when you win a lot of new seats at the state level, you build up your bench for wins at the Federal level down the road. The Dems just got their benches cleared. The Reps just doubled and tripled up. One or more of those people is very likely to be a viable candidate for President in 10-20 years and many will be ready for Federal prime-time in 5.
I see that as a middle-term plus.
It’s too bad the inner sanctum of the GOP has NO respect for the Tea Parties. They seem to think they’ve “won” this election on their own merit.
Yup. And state governments can determine what federal policies they will opt in to. In most of the country, Obamacare is now a dead letter.
Also, these new Republican legislatures can require Presidential canidates to fork over a Birth Certficate in order to get on next Presidential ballot in their state.
The GOP establishment will be pushed to the side next year as more conservative House and Senate freshmen drive the party’s agenda.
It just doesn’t know yet the new class of Republican legislators isn’t coming to Washington to do business as usual. They want change and they’re determined to get it, whatever it takes.
Happily, my state NC may be one of them, though the teacher’s union is incredibly powerful here. Another good thing is that Erskine Bowles just retired as Pres of the UNC system. That’s a combine I’d like to see broken up, but, as I say, the unions could probably check it. But there’s a $3 bn shortfall to deal with and we’ll see how the new majority divvies up the cuts.
One things we’re prepared for: Bowles actually had the gall to say that, if cuts of 5% to 10% were implemented, he’d recommend shutting down one of the campuses. That’s the kind of dare Clinton used in the Gov’t shut-down in the ‘90’s: they make sure to make the stupidest, least popular and most invasive cuts possible, rather than making the sensible, logical slices that were intended. Perdue says she wants to work with Repubs, but I don’t believe it. The only way that woman will be brought to heel is to continue the investigations into the fraud she benefited from in her election effort. Keep her bad side before the public and her efforts to derail constructive reform will be blunted, as they should be.
It’s too bad the inner sanctum of the GOP has NO respect for the Tea Parties.How do we go about clearing out the "inner sanctum of the GOP"?
Keeping the focus on firmly connecting Republicanism with conservatism and not with plutocracy is one way. Making sure that TEA-party Republicans keep getting re-elected and new ones added to the mix. The old guard will eventually retire and the new way would become the standard way, God willing.
Congratulations!
The "bench clearing" has moved the Democrats into the nether regions of political life for the next 30 years.
It isn't just that we've replaced nearly all the younger Democrats in state legislative bodies with younger Republicans, we have also aged their national contingent by removing their younger Representatives.
The Democrats will be running an older and older face against a younger and younger Republican face.
We also have a large number of politicians who serve on city and urban county councils. Those bodies will be lurching the same direction as the state legislatures in the next half dozen elections thereby depriving the Democrats of yet another source of younger experienced candidates.
Eventually (within 10 years) the Democrats will be reduced to drawing directly on their special interests (the unions, select industries, the NEA, Planned Parenthood, SM-13, drug cartels and others of the kind) to get candidates.
That's why this last election will continue to reverberate for decades.
Yes, it was a big day fo conservatives in Maine.
There is another alternative for the Dems: they could actually be forced to purge their apparatchiks and Politburo members in order to survive. If the Reps are smart, they will subtly seek ways to defund the Dem organizing groups currently being supported by Federal money. That would accelerate the process. Who knows what the Democratic Party would mutate into, but I have a hard time picturing a Party which could have a worse ideological profile than the current Democrats have.
Yup. Its says a lot about the Democrats their idea of a deep bench is Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo. They have no rising stars who are future presidential material.
bump
Well the question after this past Tuesday is how important is the inner sanctum of the GOP. The establishment Republicans in Maine had little use for the Tea Party.
But a Tea Party type just got elected governor and that group (I am not an offical member) energized the base and we took both the state house and senate.
As has been pointed out many times, for the first time since 1962, the Republicans control both houses of the state legislature, the governor, and all other state-wide offices.
Nobody gives credit to Snowe and Collins for that.
A party that’s a collection of identity groups and which is owned by the unions doesn’t exactly have a transcendental message. They’re united by what government can do for them rather what they can do for the country.
This is not John F. Kennedy’s party.
There is literally no bench at all now except on city councils ~
I don’t know enough about the internals of the 1960 election to truly say. It does seem that interest groups and intellectualoids have had a striking amount of impact on Democratic ideology for well over a century now. What was Wilson but a Princeton ideologue?
That said, until the records are unsealed, we are all going to wonder exactly what forces led to Kennedy’s assassination. It all seems neatly tied up now, but some of his policies: anti-Communism, reducing taxes, et al, worked against the emerging consensus in the Dem Party. Given they already had a low opinion of the value of human life, who knows?
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