First, of course, is the economy. In 2009 Mr Obama inherited an even worse mess than was realized at the time. Two years on, deleveraging has a long way to go; the housing market is not mended; consumers and investors are still anxious; growth in jobs is slow. Unemployment alone, more the fault of the previous administration, indicates a thrashing for the party in power. Right there, for some, you have the whole explanation.
Next is the president himself. Let me count the accusations. He was out of touch. He
was too professorial. He was too condescending. He was too black. (Not black enough, thankfully, has gone from the list of defects.) He failed to lead. He
deferred too much to Congress. He surrendered to the left. He surrendered to the right. He refused to fight for progressive ideas. He was only interested in progressive ideas.Messaging and personality aside, critics insist, his policies were wrong. He was too timid, say liberals. He over-reached, say conservatives. Then again, he never really seemed in charge: his policies were not his policies.
Democratic leaders in Congress did him in, acting on a mandate they never had. Republicans did him in, opposing him reflexively and telling lies. The press did him in, reporting those lies as if they were true. Gutless conservative Democrats did him in, by watering down healthcare reform and other measures. The Tea Party did him in, to save the American way of life.
The Tea Party did him in, out of pure stupid nativism. Nobody need feel, evidently, that a setback for the Democrats is an unfathomable mystery. My own preferred theories emphasise the economy – which the administration has handled tolerably well in appallingly difficult circumstances – combined with serial political miscalculation. Mr Obama often settled for untidy centrist compromises (on the stimulus, on healthcare), thus disappointing the left; but without ever championing those compromises, causing moderates to wonder where he would stop, given the chance to go further. Offending both segments was an avoidable mistake.
One should pay special tribute to the role the left has played in its own downfall. It did not have to be this way. Pleasing swing voters, if this could even be done, would be no use if committed Democrats did not vote. Tactically, it was better to prioritise as he did. As a matter of electoral arithmetic, I disagree, but the dilemma was real enough.
So credit please where it is due. The whining utopian left has a very full schedule of despising Republicans and the idiots and scoundrels (a little over half the country) who keep voting for them. Yet it can always find time to attack its own team, cry and complain, and demand to be patted on the head. The left’s role in Tuesday’s elections should not go unacknowledged.
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