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A number of indicators suggest yesterday's election results are less an endorsement of the GOP than a repudiation of Obama's Democrats; a vote of "no confidence" in Harry Reid, and what one pundit termed "Typhoid Barry."
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The "performance appraisal" I wrote of early Tuesday morning happened as predicted. If anything, the pollsters overestimated the effectiveness of the Democrat turn-out machine.
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A smart thing was said by a TV pundit last night. A major reason Obama won reelection in 2012 was the Dems made sure key provisions of their big legislative achievements - Obamacare and Dodd-Frank - didn't take effect until after the election. The atmospherics of both laws were much better than their reality.
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A major factor in the Republican sweep yesterday was a greatly improved panel of candidates. Unlike the last couple of cycles, the GOP put forward no inept Tea Party candidates afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease. Sounding stupid tended to be a Democrat problem in 2014.
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The GOP got off the social issues bandwagon in 2014 and was rewarded for doing so. For better or worse, public opinion has "moved on" and the courts have recognized this.
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Whoever came up with the idea of having GOP candidates endorse over-the-counter birth control should get a gold star. It turned out the "war on women" meme didn't sell in 2014.
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It was predicted that President Obama would not take responsibility for his party's dismal midterm election showing, and once more the prediction has come true. See a CNBC story in which POTUS comments on the last two years of his presidency. He pointedly says nothing about the election debacle being his fault. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
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Statistician Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight blog notes the polls were biased against Republicans this year, as they also were in 1994 and 2002. The same polls were biased against Democrats in 1998, 2006, and 2012. He writes:The average Senate poll conducted in the final three weeks of this year’s campaign overestimated the Democrat’s performance by 4 percentage points. The average gubernatorial poll was nearly as bad, overestimating the Democrat’s performance by 3.4 points.
