Today my hope, if you like, my dream, has begun to take on some visibly hard edges and on that slightly wobbly basis I suggest to you, tentatively, that Obama's lease on the White House will run out after four years. Within a few months of his ascendency I suspected that he would be a one-term president and everything that has followed confirms my opinion. Dammit, even from 'over here' he is so obviously un-American, not to say, downright anti-American. He really does dislike his own country - and the American people are beginning to see it and resent it. Hence, the primaries held on Tuesday indicate a disaster for the Democrats in the November Congressional elections, and perhaps even worse in the 2012 presidential race.
However, more seasoned observers 'over there' suggest that this contrarian mood amongst the American electorate goes deeper and wider than just a recoil from Obama and his regime. There seems to be a general anti-Washington mood abroad which, if I may remind you modestly I suggested some time ago, shows that what people are looking for is 'authenticity' rather than any particular brand of politics as gift-wrapped and presented by the 'usual suspects' in the political hierarchies. Matt Bei, in the NYT describes it neatly:
What all this probably means is that we are living in the era of the upstart.
He also makes the deliciously ironic point that it all began with Obama, himself!
This should have been clear to everyone after 2008, when Barack Obama, shunned by most of his party’s major contributors and its Washington establishment, simply shrugged off endorsements and raised more than half a billion dollars from his own constituencies.
But he who lives by the internet looks likely to die by the internet! The Democrats, trembling in their bunkers take comfort from their belief that this tide of contrariness is going to swamp both parties equally, but C. Edmund Wright in The American Thinker believes they are kidding themselves:
It is true that there is fierce anti-Washington fervor. But pundits are dead wrong in claiming that this means both parties are affected equally. Washington is a liberal Democrat city -- and not only by the standards of the current makeup of the administration and the Congress, though that is very true.
It goes deeper. The very notion of Washington as a control center and hub of intellectual power and great solutions is by definition a liberal ideal. Washington is Mecca to the Democrat liberal base. By contrast, the city and all it represents are anathema to progress and prosperity for the Republican base voters...you know, the tea party types. Yesterday was another sound rebuke of Washington as defined by liberals and thus another big day for the mindset of the tea party movement.
His final conclusion should worry the party establishments:
So what does this mean? Does it mean that people are simply fed up with Washington and all elected officials? Not exactly, though there is an element of truth in that analysis.
The real meaning is that people are fed up with this president, this Congress, their party, and the attempt to destroy a country and an economic system that have done more for freedom and good than any other country or economic system in world history.
Good analysis, generally speaking. I'd qualify somewhat the second article's theory. The Democrats will lose more significantly, but I suspect simply and primarily, it's because they are the majority party. It "seems" apparent it actually is an 'anti-incumbency thing'.
Best commentary I've yet seen on what happened in my home state:
http://arkansasnews.com/2010/05/20/liberal-money-and-conservative-votes/
While admittedly my knowledge of Kentucky is limited to (A) how to spell it and (B) I know it's east of the Mississippi River - but the state's election results:
http://news.cincinnati.com/includes/sections/election/KYstateresults.html
Whether some Kentucky Republicans did as Arkansas' seem to've I don't know - but the Party numbers seem oh, "problematic" perhaps?
Kentucky Senatorial election:
Total Republic vote.....421,183 (6 candidates)
Total Democratic vote..520,412 (5 candidates)
Posted by: JK | Thursday, 20 May 2010 at 22:21