Listen up you stupid idiots: My name is [Evan Bayh/Some blogger] and I have a message for you:
I was right all along and Obama should have been more of a [liberal/centrist]. This election was all about his ideology, and he had the wrong one. The one that I've listed was the right now. He should have had another one that was different than the one he had (totally different), and it's time for you to hear this from me. Next time, maybe you will not repeat your mistake of not listening to my tiresome whining that are basically designed to raise money for my [Honeymoon Suite with David Broder/podcast/PAC/youtube channel] and generally just depress people.
Let's face it folks: this election wasn't about the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Nope. Voters don't mindlessly punish the incumbent party during recessions. They're nuanced. They pay attention to tiny details in healthcare bills that bloggers harp about, and then they react accordingly. They vote for the incumbent when that incumbent blathers on mindlessly about Wall Street, but when the incumbent doesn't do that, they support the opposition. If only the Wall Street bill had been 95% populist instead of 93% populist, the Democrats would have won everything. And if the healthcare bill was a half loaf instead of 47% of a loaf, that would have changed everything.
And you know what? This entire election was about the White House's style and rhetoric. Slight shifts in style (as outlined by many "People Who Told Us So") would have changed everything. But we didn't listen to those people, even though they told us. And they didn't just tell us - they told us SO.
But maybe my first points are wrong. Maybe this election WAS about the economy and the worst recession since the Great Depression. But what did Obama do to fix the economy? The biggest demand-side stimulus in the history of the nation was a PATHETIC effort, and he obviously could have done more (since he had plenty of extra votes to spare). He could have made people build stuff and then we'd have workers. That could have happened. I have no understanding of policy lags or the difficulty in emerging from the 2nd biggest recession in history, so I can't tell you. All I know is that FDR cured the Great Depression in 20 days.
Also: I love how Obama compared himself to Reagan and Clinton. Barack Obama isn't Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. Nyuh nyuh nyuh! I won't even elaborate on this, because you all know that Barack Obama is a STUPID LOSER when you compare him to these two people, both of whom totally didn't lose seats in congress in 1982 and 1994.
Bottom line: I told you so. This election was about [X] minor thing that I've identified and could have been 5000% different if people had just listened to me. It wasn't about an inherited recession and the American public's inability to understand policy lags and business cycles. Nor was it about a black president whose popularity is skewed younger and minority having to hold congress during a midterm when an electorate is skewed older and whiter.
After all - there is no causal relationship between pocketbooks and voting or between old white people and voting Republican.
Now that you've all learned from me, please apply my lessons in an apples to oranges situation: the 2012 election. When Obama easily wins with a friendlier electorate and tea party pushing the GOP to the Right, I will have made it happened, because I waved my hands around a bunch and then it did happen. Like I said - I don't understand causation.