Right . . . ho hum, nothing significant here . . .
No party has lost this much influence in one election since Harry Truman pissed off America in 1946. But even old "give 'em hell, Harry" didn't lose so much in the statehouses as has the twelve-year-old-in-chief. Moderate democrats might be experiencing a touch of buyers' remorse. It's usually too late when you do, and it is now also.
This election, or "restrainig order" acording to P. J. O'Rourke, is a direct and unmistakable rebuke of the Leftward Lurch. The health care takeover, which nobody calls "reform" anymore, should be repealed and re-invented on a bi-partisan basis, or else it should be defunded and battled out in the state courts, which it is now and ever shall be.
Cap and trade, the evil plot to quadruple America's electrc bills, is now dead. It will not pass, it will not collect $200, nobody will mention it again except to remind moderates of the stupid overreach now known as the Obama Manifesto.
Obama now owns the 10% unemployment rate, which is appropriate as his kindred intellectual giant (Jimmy Carter) owns the last one.
Will the republicans, the unwitting and unwitted beneficiaries of Obama's arrogant and innumerable missteps, govern appreciably differently? Probably not substantially. But, if they're paying attention, they'll notice that the last liberal/moderate republican to win a national election (George W. Bush) masqueraded as a conservative. His father did the same. Richard Nixon did, also. Bill Clinton won reelection by swerving violently to the middle ground. However, Obama will not. He will crash and burn much like Jimmy Carter did, sticking blindly and arrogantly to his "principles, " as if that is what they were. Obama only knows one persona. One political persuasion. A rigid ideologue, he will not be capable of the change necessary to save his party (we now know that, for sure) as if he could care anyway.
You want to see an ugly two years of politics, you just hang on. As his political brain trust of politicians leave him, the purity of the inner circle of ideologues becomes greater. They know how to wield power, and they are not given to compromise.
But, as an event of 2010, it's much bigger (for America and Americans) than the Haiti earthquake, Chile's earthquake and mining accident and every other event. The gauntlet has been thrown down and, as Dennis Miller chastised John Boehner for his emotional election night speech, "there's no crying in bloodsport! "