[US] Election 2010 [-Congress power shift, Democrats barely hold on to the Senate]

Rare sight: Incumbent Democratic Congressman Ed Perlmutter does cartwheels onstage during his victory celebration in Denver, Colorado, after learning he had held on to his seat

November 2, 2010
Editorial
The New York Times

Voters in Tuesday’s elections sent President Obama a loud message: They don’t like how he’s doing his job, they’re even angrier at Congressional Democrats and they gave the House back to the Republicans. The Republicans spent months fanning Americans’ anger over the economy and fear of “big government,” while offering few ideas of their own. Exit polls indicated that they had succeeded in turning out their base, and that the Democrats had failed to rally their own.

Americans who voted described themselves as far more conservative than they did in 2006 and 2008 — and than the population as a whole. More than 4 in 10 said that they supported the Tea Party movement. But more than half of the voters said they have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

The question is: Will either side draw the right lessons from this midterm election?

Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.

He has made it far too easy for his opponents to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times: a historic health care reform, a stimulus that headed off an even deeper recession, financial reform to avoid another meltdown.

Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies.

The question for the Republicans now is whether they are going to bask in triumphalism or get down to the real work of governing. It is one thing to pander and obstruct when you are out of power. With a divided government, it won’t take long for voters to demand that they explain their plans.

John Boehner, the likely speaker of the House, has not provided a clue of how his party will begin to cut the deficit, which Republicans say is their top priority. One of the few specific promises he has made would dig an even deeper hole: extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts.

And exit polls suggested that even these more conservative voters get what the Republican Party leadership still doesn’t: that there is no way to tackle the deficit and slash taxes at the same time. Only 19 percent said cutting taxes was the top priority for the next Congress.

Anticipating a big win on Tuesday, leading Republicans haven’t been talking about substance, only more obstructionism. Mr. Boehner said the other day that the president was welcome to support Republican programs. But as for Mr. Obama’s agenda, he said, “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

Mike Pence, the No. 3 Republican, said there would be “no compromise” on repealing the health care reform law and permanently extending all Bush-era tax cuts, including for the wealthiest Americans.

A Republican majority in the House of Representatives should pursue Republican priorities. But what we have been hearing sounds disturbingly like what we heard after the 1994 election, when Newt Gingrich, then the speaker-to-be, announced that there would be no compromising on his agenda.

The result was gridlock. The Republicans shut down the government, which ultimately cost Mr. Gingrich his job and the Republicans their majority.

One thing is very clear from all the polls and all the voting: Americans are fed up with that sort of gamesmanship. It’s bad for the country.