If you didn't see opening segment of the Thursday, Nov. 4th Rachel Maddow show, you missed the essential reason American voters reinstalled the discredited Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Basically, the Republicans won because a substantial majority of voters can't see beyond the end of their nose, they have no capacity for critical thinking, and they are open to manipulation by a propaganda machine that cons them into acting against their own interests. If you think that is hyperbole, watch the segment and explain how I am wrong.
Now, of course, you're going to tell me the problem was the economy, and sure, the economy was a factor. But the voting public can behave mindlessly in good times and bad. In 1968, Richard Nixon offered a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War, and instead of being laughed off the stage, he was elected and then re-elected in 1972. In 2004 George W. Bush got half the vote after setting the country on the path to bankruptcy and moral oblivion.
Obama's failure to "uncrash" the economy Bush left him with was, indeed, a reality. James K. Galbraith identifies Obama's major mistake prior to the inauguration
The original sin of Obama's presidency was to assign economic policy to a closed circle of bank-friendly economists and Bush carryovers. Larry Summers. Timothy Geithner. Ben Bernanke. These men had no personal commitment to the goal of an early recovery, no stake in the Democratic Party, no interest in the larger success of Barack Obama. Their primary goal, instead, was and remains to protect their own past decisions and their own professional futures.
Before he took office, Obama himself gave the keys back to some of the principal drivers who ran the economy into the ditch. He really had no one but himself to blame for the widespread hostility toward bankers as a factor in the election. Nevertheless, given the obstructionism displayed by the Republican minority in the current Congress, there was no reason to believe a Republican majority would offer any solutions. Their whining about the deficit is farcical at best, in view of their insistence that wealthy people get tax cuts at a cost of nearly a trillion in deficit spending.
Still given the economic woes, the election was decided by voters who live inside a right-wing bubble. Fox News and talk radio give them their facts, even though the facts may be made up out of thin air. Their facts cannot be disputed, disproven, or discredited because the bubble is self-contained. Nothing gets in except what the right wing noise machine lets in - or creates.
Many of these same voters are religious fundamentalists with delusional thinking at the basis of their spiritual beliefs. Frank Schaeffer writes about how so many position themselves as righteous outsiders and draw strength from the ridicule directed at them for their outlandish views.
There is no arguing with the ardent true believer divinely inspired, whether they live in a religious bubble or a Fox News bubble. The best you can do is treat them civilly and marginalize them at every opportunity. Tell them matter-of-factly that death panels were invented to con them and walk away.