Some people think "if Obama would HAVE ONLY fought for a Public Option!"
Others will list any number of other "Obama should haves" as the reason why Democrats were hammered yesterday.
What we need to understand is very little could have changed last night's results. Regardless of who Obama asked to offer prayer at his inauguration, whether he "fought" for a PO, or repealed DADT by executive order, we would still have be hammered at the polls in 2010.
Why? Simple.
Demographics and racism. Neither of which magically disappeared on January 20th 2009 (regardless of what the Tea Partiers say)
FACT: The average Midterm electorate is always whiter and older than the Presidential election electorate. Period!
Links to support this;
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/...
http://brandtao.wordpress.com/...
http://www.cnn.com/...
http://blogs.ajc.com/...
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/...
As much as we would like to believe otherwise, nothing can overcome the fact that historically speaking, the midterm election is the domain of old white people.
These were the folks who told pollsters that "America was not ready for a black President."
These were the people who have been screaming "they want THEIR country back" for the last 2 years, as they watched damn black guy living in the White House with his wife and their little Pickaninnies!
2010 was the time and place for the old, white, angry men and women to let that Thug ("Thug" = any black male who is NOT Clarence Thomas) know how much they disapprove his skin color.
Between his inauguration and now, Obama could have disinvited Rick Warren, repealed DADT, refused to defend DOMA in court, demanded a larger Stimulus (even if he couldn't get it though congress anyway) fought for a Public Option, pushed for a "stronger" Wall Street Reform bill, and hammered the GOP at every turn, it wouldn't have changed one important factor: Who shows up at the polls for Midterm elections.
For the last 40+ years ong thing is true: every 2 years young people and minorities stay home while WHITE, OLD people show up in greater numbers.
We should have seen this coming. That's the real joke here. We should have understood that once the older, white people who hate "the coloreds" got a chance to stick it to "O-Bammy", they would do so with glee. This was their chance! This was their shot at taking out their anger on that damned, black President!
But just as inexorably 2012 is now the NEXT election. And as sure as clockwork the young people and minority voters will come back. They will show up as they always do. And things will be different.
In 2 years the angry, white bigot vote will comprise just 25% of the electorate, not the 50%-60%(depending on the state) they represented this time.
Why do the young and minority voters stay away for midterms? Maybe the better question is why do the old, white, bigoted voters show up in such great numbers for midterms? Well, maybe because they don't have that much else to do? Maybe because they're bitter, and this is their outlet for it? I don't know. But these are the facts.
2010 will be different. In the meantime, we should stop thinking these midterms were anything more than the angry, white payback I described above. And maybe we should spend more time attacking our enemies who say they love America but hate Americans, and less time attacking our leaders and each other.