Post Mortem
One advantage Charles Krauthammer has in writing a weekly column that is published on Fridays is that he has a few days to sift through the events of Tuesday before he has to produce copy. A lot of what he has to say in this week's column has already been said. But the information has come out in various places and at varying depths of analysis. Krauthammer gets to pull it together and make a compelling omnibus of a case.
Because both houses have gone Democratic, the election is correctly seen as an expression of no confidence in the central issue of the campaign: Iraq. It was not so much the war itself as the perceived administration policy of "stay the course," which implied endless intervention with no victory in sight. The president got the message. Hence the summary resignation of the designated fall guy, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Nonetheless, the difference between taking one house vs. both — and thus between normal six-year incumbent-party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency — was razor-thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican.
A margin this close should no longer surprise us. For this entire decade the country has been evenly divided politically. The Republicans had control but by very small majorities. In 2000 the presidential election was settled by a ridiculously small margin. And the Senate ended up deadlocked 50-50. All the changes since then have been minor. Until now.
But the great Democratic wave of 2006 is nothing remotely like the great structural change some are trumpeting. It was an event-driven election that produced the shift of power one would expect when a finely balanced electorate swings mildly one way or the other.
This is not realignment. As has been the case for decades, American politics continues to be fought between the 40-yard lines. The Europeans fight goal line to goal line, from socialist left to ultra-nationalist right. On the American political spectrum, these extremes are negligible. American elections are fought on much narrower ideological grounds. In this election the Democrats carried the ball from their own 45-yard line to the Republican 45-yard line.
Read the whole thing. Krauthammer makes one point that really should have been obvious to everyone who has been looking at this election the past few days. Both parties have moved to the right. The Democrats ran quite a few people who could very easily have run as Republicans on almost all of their positions. But the decimation in the Republican ranks was among its more moderate members.
One thing the Republicans have got to resist is doing what the Democrats did for a number of years while in the minority - swinging too hard toward the extreme. People really need to think about what the criticism of the Democrats had been earlier this year. For the most part it centered on the party being too far to the left. Except among the nutroots, of course. If the Republicans try to swing hard right, they can start planning their stay in the wilderness for a while.
As Krauthammer says, the game is fought between the 40-yard lines. This is not time to retreat to the end zone and yield the middle of the field.
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The Heretik : Deep Blues — Friday, 10 November , 2006 @ 11:38 am
By Ed, Friday, 10 November , 2006 @ 9:15 am
Somehow Mr. Krauthammer’s definition of a “serious majority” and mandate changed significantly in just 2 years. Hmmm? I wonder why? Do really think he made a compelling omnibus of a case. Or is this just another case of pundit spin.
From Unclaimed Territory:
Charles Krauthammer, November 9, 2004, writing on Bush’s 2004 victory:
Later than most two-term presidents, George Bush got his mandate. . . . This election was a referendum on Bush’s handling of his first, accidental mandate. The endorsement was resounding. . . .
Second, there was the popular vote. Bush supporters should not gloat too much about the popular vote, given the fact that they lost it last time. Nonetheless, if you have already won the electoral vote, it is OK to talk about the popular vote as a kind of adjunct legitimizer. And a 3 1/2 million vote margin is a serious majority.
The results of the 2006 election:
Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate†two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.
By Realism, Friday, 10 November , 2006 @ 1:15 pm
Of course, what makes this coumn so dishonest is that, as Krauthammer knows, gerrymandering by both parties has greatly increased the power of incumbency. He had to reach all the way back to the 1930’s to skew the averages enough to minimize the Democratic rout. Why doesn’t he look at the average number of seats turned over since 1980?
And since the 3.5 million vote spread in 04 was a “mandate”, what does that make the 7 million vote spread this time around?
One thing that I do agree with, is that both parties have shifted to the right. That would make the Democrats solidly “moderate” and the Republicans “right wing radicals”