Many pundits have ascribed to the voters all sorts of messages they supposedly sent. No one has been able to make any of these messages
fit the polling data. None of these explanations take into account all the crazy stuff that occurred the in 2010 election.
The other approach is to see 2010 as the third of a wave of "anger" elections. As the argument goes, the voters punished Obama for not curing unemployment. Some say, he did not spend enough time on unemployment.
Anger had a lot to do with the great Republican victory. Clearly, some of the independents who turned on Obama were angry that he did not slash unemployment to 6%.
There is a problem with going too far with this argument. It assumes that these people waited 12 or even 18 months to see if the Obama administration and Democrats could reduce unemployment.
The fact is that anger against the Democrats and Obama was building from shortly after he was inaugurated.
In fact, there was extraordinary anger even in 2008. Remember the Palin appearances. They often resembled Klan rallies.
Then there were people showing up at Obama events with weapons to intimidate the Democrats.
The birther nonsense began in 2008 and increased greatly after Obama was elected. A reasonable person might take this as a measure of slightly veiled racism.
Not long after the inauguration, birther sentiment peaked. There were also all those people insisting he was a Muslim Socialist. Then anti-Islamic sentiment reached a new high--far above what it was just after 9/11.
Who can forget all the ugly disruptions at the health care town meetings or what happened when the Tea Baggers demonstrted in front of the Capitol. People called Black Congressmen ugly names and there were threats of violence. Then came the physical attacks on the offices of some Congressmen.
The Tea Bagger movement may have appeared out of nowhere, but Republicans were soon skilfully using it to generate anti-Democratic sentiment. John Boehner admitted to a writer for The New Yorker that he instructed his people to use the movement. They did so successfully--almost always turning a blind eye to calls for secession, sedition, and nullification.
Very few in the press have said much about all the ugly aspects of Tea Baggerisn. We know that one candidate said she was not a witch. That is zaniness and not dangerous. Some pundits should be exploring the outlooks that threaten the republic.
Tea Baggerism is a manifestation of political fundamentalism. In times of crisis, it can spread like wildfire, and it is hard to extinguish. Democratic strategists should be studying this phenomenon, because it is not likely to go away, and it could carry the day for the forces of reaction in 2012.