I found the link to this article at The Confluence.Craig Crawford is right. The Dems fooled themselves into believing that Barack had transformed the country. The DNC along with MSM placed Obama in the WH. Barack thought his smooth speeches and accusing all dissenters of racism would work for him indefinitely. How wrong can one person and one party be?
How can elections two years apart look so different? But Tuesday's vote seems to be the norm. Its center-right results fit into the main stream of the last 30 years far more than 2008's assumed lunge to the left.
Even the Democratic congressional sweep of 2006 was actually more in keeping with tradition. Democrats won Congress largely by recruiting centrist candidates - which created a time bomb that exploded in their faces this week, as voters in those right-leaning districts and states switched back to the Republican column.
This has me wondering if Barack Obama's election was merely an exception made possible by the alluring uniqueness of his personal history and appeal. If so, the biggest mistake Democrats made was in assuming that their recent successes were transformational, instead of merely temporary.
http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/trailmix/
__________________
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.... Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less. ~Susan B. Anthony
In 2008, the party mistakenly concluded Hillary as the person with bad baggage. So much for progressive. Somehow the nation held a longer yardstick for her to live up to for the mistakes of her husband, and gave no credit for the professional in Hillary - no credit for the lifetime of work she had already done. The term "junior senator" was used in very derisive tone; junior is junior of two in any state. Meanwhile, Obama was a less-than-one-term senator who also had "junio senator" tag, but the less-than-one-term description was relegated to put him on the same level as Hillary -- which he never was in reality in terms of U.S. Senate experience, nor the sum total of public service experience. That is now resume comparison and unfair advantage that media pundits gave to candidate Obama.
Public got fooled by an air of confidence that candidate Obama projected. Public was so hurting and scared by the combination of wars looming large and jobs leaving the country by the boatloads. Every person knew at least one in their family who did not have a job ... and now they know two.
So, no, 2008 was not an outlier. Every election is a swing from side to side. 2008 had a lot of help from people's hopes and fears. 2010 has a lot of help from people's fears and disgust. Each election has increasingly plays it straight into the hands of the special interets. We are just sheep following without questioning the theatrics and lofty claims.
__________________
Democracy needs defending - SOS Hillary Clinton, Sept 8, 2010 Democracy is more than just elections - SOS Hillary Clinton, Oct 28, 2010