Thoughts on the 2010 Election

I’m going to add to this later, but I have to say something about the election results! So here goes with a few bullet points:

  • The Tea Party had successes, but was a net loss for the Republicans. Hypotheticals are always uncertain, but it seems likely that the Republicans would have won the Senate elections in Delaware, Nevada, and West Virginia if the Tea Party candidates had not won the Republican nomination. That would have been a Republican majority.
  • Today’s Washington Post cites unspecified exit polls as finding that 23% of voters said that they were voting for the Tea Party while 18% said that they were voting against it.  That sizable left is not doing nearly as good a job at making itself heard.
  • The Right claims a victory when it ousts a moderate Republican, even if it means the Democrats win the election. By the same token, if to a lesser extent, the Left should consider the defeat of Blanche Lincoln a victory. True, she did win the primary, and true, she may well have lost anyway – but they did weaken her.
  • The underlying point of all this is that progressives need to move away from President Obama and start working for what they believe in in every election.

As I said, more later!

I expanded (briefly) on this analysis as part of the Presidents’ Roundtable at the Northeastern Political Science Association conference, Friday, November 12, at 3:45 PM in the Parker House. For a podcast of my remarks, see http://johncberg01.podomatic.com/.

November 10, 2010: See “Did the Tea Party Cost Republicans the Senate?” in Chris Cillizza’s Washington Post blog, “The Fix.”