Legal Commentary

Fingerpointing, Cont'd

By Big Tent Democrat

Kevin Drum writes:

Lots of Democrats, including me, have been pointing out that structural factors alone predicted a 45-seat loss in the House this year. In other words, the bulk of the expected Democratic losses weren't due to healthcare reform or Obama's remoteness or liberal overreach or anything like that. It was baked into the cake all along. But the model I wrote about, which comes from Douglas Hibbs, only predicted a 45-seat loss, and it looks like Dems are likely to lose at least 60 seats. That means Democrats underperformed the Hibbs model by 15 seats or so, which is a record for them. [. . .] It really does look like there's a fair amount of scope to place a lot of the blame for tonight's Democratic debacle on both tactical and policy missteps.

I think that the model Drum relied upon is flawed in that our economic statistics understate the level of misery in the country. I could point to tactical and strategic political errors that exacerbated the result a bit, but I really think almost all of the result is due to the economy. That means to me, "policy missteps." Governing well is the best way to win elections. The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress simply were not good enough on economic policy. The "bums" were thrown out. Of course the old bums were reinstalled. And catastrophe is what we can expect. But that's how elections work. You throw out the bums you have, even if it means bringing back the old bums.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 03, 2010 (boomark / email).