Democratic debacle

MIAMI – What happened?

That has been the question in the media, inside the Washington beltway, and beyond following the Democrats’ disaster in the midterm elections.

Yes, everyone knew that the Republicans would best the Democrats in last week’s contest. Even the leaders of the Democratic campaign conceded as much in the weeks before the November 4 balloting. After all, historically the party that holds the White House typically does badly in midterm elections, losing an average of 26 seats in Congress.

But the pollsters, the pundits, and not even right-wing Republican zealots envisioned the magnitude and breadth of the Democrats’ defeat. Thus the question “what happened?” is not an idle one or an academic exercise in explaining the obvious. Rather, the answer is important for understanding the state of U.S. politics in the second decade of the twenty-first century and the mind of the American electorate in 2014.

The issue has been the focus of so much self-serving commentary from the right as well as hand-wringing and esoteric apologetics from the Democrats that it has irritated quite a few people, especially in other countries. I confess that I laughed out loud when I read an internet post from someone in Australia obviously fed up with all the drivel: “I’m sorry, but there are just too many dumb fucks in your country.”

There is at least a grain of truth in that profane analysis. Let me cite, for comparison, the answer of a more sober and supremely accredited American source, Paul Krugman, Princeton professor, New York Times columnist, and Nobel prize winner in economics.

The premise of Krugman’s column, titled “Triumph of the Wrong,” is illustrative of why the question of what happened is pertinent:

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet midterms to men of understanding…Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday.”

Krugman goes on to then demonstrate the ways the Republicans have gotten it wrong. They range from championing economic policies that are the exact opposite of what was required to respond to a great recession to dire predictions about Obamacare that have not materialized, and worst of all their obdurate denial of climate change, a phenomenon that imperils life on this planet.

So what is Krugman’s explanation for the triumph of the wrong? He identifies two causes and throws in a third one in implicitly at the end. The first one is that Republicans simply lied. Krugman puts it more politely, but it amounts to the same thing:

“Part of the answer is that leading Republicans managed to mask their true positions. Perhaps most notably, Senator Mitch McConnell, the incoming majority leader, managed to convey the completely false impression that Kentucky could retain its impressive gains in health coverage even if Obamacare were repealed.”

Krugman is my favorite columnist and I think he is the best in the country. He is certainly right on this. Still, I would have used simpler, more direct language. Krugman: “Republicans managed to mask their true positions.” “McConnell managed to convey a “completely false impression.” My translation: Republicans were able to systematically mislead voters. McConnell lied–successfully.

The second part of Krugman’s answer is the Republican discovery that “obstructionism bordering on sabotage is a winning political strategy.” I think here Krugman is right again. In the past, a political party that suffered the kind of crushing defeat the GOP did in 2008 would have felt obliged to play ball with the winner. But the contemporary Republican party is made up of really, really bad sports. Instead of being chastened and acting like a loyal opposition, leading Republicans huddled together even before Obama took power to plot a strategy to wreck his presidency. Sore losers who did not own either the bat or the ball, they took the bases they did have and wrought havoc on the game. They were going to get Obama, and if the country went down the drain with him, then it’s Obama’s fault for trying to be Obama.

They didn’t get Obama and the country did not go down the drain. But they took every opportunity to block and wound the president and to make his policies much less effective than they otherwise would have been.

On this point, Krugman concludes: “Most voters don’t know much about policy details, nor do they understand the legislative process. So all they saw was that the man in the White House wasn’t delivering prosperity–and they punished his party.”

I agree with Krugman’s analysis but what really amuses me is how much of it can be read as consistent with the pithy and profane comment from what Republicans might call an “alien.” Ok, the Republicans lied and misled. But that’s not the point. Republicans have been doing that for years. See, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, George W. Bush. The point is that voters believed them. Who would believe such inveterate liars? Dumb folks?

On the issue of obstructionism, which most people don’t like, it only works if the obstructionist is able to put up some kind of smoke screen and voters are unable to see through it and identify the culprit. But the GOP have shut down the government before, so seeing through the thin Republican smokescreen now should be child’s play. But voters apparently couldn’t manage to do this either. Dumb folks?

But it is Krugman’s final comment that comes closest to the alien’s view: “Most voters don’t know much about policy details, nor do they understand the legislative process. So all they saw was that the man in the White House wasn’t delivering prosperity–and they punished his party.”

For all that, I wouldn’t underestimate Americans’ intelligence but I also wouldn’t underestimate their ignorance. At a deeper level, I also think there is something else at work. Faced with an unprecedented number of sources of insecurity–terrorism in the homeland, failed wars, an economy in decline–Americans are scared. Like a drowning person, they thrash about wildly, managing only to drown the one soul brave enough to jump in and try to rescue them.

Obama, you may not show it. Still, I feel your pain.