Election Day was yesterday and members of the two major political parties are spinning about its importance. Republicans won the top three offices in the State of Virginia and won the governorship of New Jersey. Meanwhile, Democrats gained a new seat in Congress with a victory in New York’s 23rd District.
The Republicans claim that the election represents the turning of a tide that will bring huge Republican gains in 2010. Meanwhile the Democrats and the media claim that the election results mean little because voter turnout was so low and the bad economy would hurt any incumbent-no matter what party they are from. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs even claimed that Barack Obama was not monitoring the election results.
I think yesterday’s Election has some meaning. This is what I glean from yesterday’s election results.
First, while watching a panel of Virginia Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters I got the sense that voters are angry and fearful about what the future holds. Some people who voted for Obama admitted last night that Obama did not bring the change they wanted. In fact, one Obama voter said that he felt that Obama has done more damage to the country than Bush did in 8 years. Others expressed great concern about the increasing influence of government in the economy and potentially in the health care system.
Second, the fact that a Republican won the governorship of New Jersey is an indication that people are tired of the status quo because Democrats historically has dominated New Jersey politics. This victory is analogous to the Republicans winning the governorship in the union-dominated state of Illinois. This result probably got a lot of the Democratic Party leadership's attention.
Third, the Democratic victory in New York’s 23rd District, a historically Republican district, demonstrates the incompetence of Republican Party leadership. If you are unfamiliar with what happened, the Republicans basically nominated a RINO (Republican In Name Only) to represent their party in the election with the belief that the party could win the election by having a candidate that espouses a lot of the same beliefs as the opposition. The party went as far as sending people party “stalwarts” like Newt Gingrich to endorse the RINO. The fatal flaw of this strategy is that while the party will gain wishy-washy, apathetic “centrists” and possibly some moderate Democrats they will lose the support of motivated activists in their own party. In this case the Conservative activists within the Republican Party totally revolted against party leadership forcing the Republican candidate to resign. The Democratic candidate won with Republican voters splitting their votes between a RINO and a Conservative Party candidate. The Republican Party needs to have real Conservative candidates to have a chance of replicating 1994's Republican Revolution in the 2010 election.
If Obama really did not watch what happened yesterday he is making a mistake. People are dissatisfied with the direction this country is going in terms of the policies that are passed and way the economy is being handle. Obama would get a sense of that if he watched the panel of Virginia voters. The Democrats know they will lose some seats next year to the Republicans because that is what historically happens in Midterm Elections. But if they ignore voter sentiment and the economy does not show much improvement there is a possibility that they’ll find themselves as the minority party in the House of Representatives after the 2010 election.
