After election euphoria, liberals begin to worry about political fights to come
“There is a giant disjuncture between the concerns of the working class and the center of gravity for elite Democratic politicians,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
A center-left electoral coalition also doesn’t automatically mean a progressive majority in national politics. The same exit polls showing a resurgence in liberal identification also showed that self-identified conservatives edged up slightly to 35 percent of the electorate.
The next Senate will feature a record number of women, including new progressive voices such as Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. But Democrats will still be short of the 60 votes needed to close off the blocking maneuvers called filibusters…
Teixeira said in an interview that, despite his bullishness on long-term trends, he is “not that optimistic” about the near-term prospects for progressive change. Progressive policies flourish best in times of robust economic growth, he said: “It’s going to be difficult to do if we continue to have a bad economy.”
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LOL
Dack Thrombosis on November 22, 2012 at 11:53 AM
Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
AKA the Democratic nom for POTUS in 2016.
Woman, lesbian, historic all over again. A 2 for 1. The media are already excited just thinking about it.
Moesart on November 22, 2012 at 11:55 AM
Ah, so now you liberals begin to realize your predicament. You can find sympathy in the dictionary.
Sekhmet on November 22, 2012 at 11:58 AM
Oh, isn’t that too bad. If the Dems can’t get another person of color to run, they won’t get all of those who only voted when BO was on the ballot.
Voter from WA State on November 22, 2012 at 12:02 PM
These people are the Brezhnev Democrats.
Their hold on minorities is dependent on racial balkanization and the willingness to steal from Paul to pay Peter.
When Paul isn’t willing to put up with being looted, he moves his fabrication plant to Maylasia and kills the job that might have gone to Peter.
Progressives don’t get this. They are too busy calling Paul a racist while stealing the seed corn of the future to fund Peter’s food stamps and Obamacare.
Progressives are digging their own graves. There may be a Last Margin Call. There may be a point at which the Chinese or the Germans walk out of a U.S. Treasury Auction after giving Helicopter Ben the Middle Finger, but this doesn’t end well for the Spending Party.
victor82 on November 22, 2012 at 12:06 PM
No worries.
dingy is all over that.
BallisticBob on November 22, 2012 at 12:06 PM
Stop calling these people “progressive”. They are corrupt socialists, nothing more.
darwin on November 22, 2012 at 12:09 PM
That certainly will be a problem for them, since their progressive policies are going to ensure that we continue to have a bad economy. The other thing I think they are going to have a problem with are the very different groups that make up their coalition. I doubt they will be able to continue the high wire act of telling all these groups what they want to hear. The union workers are going to want the pipeline while the tree huggers are against it. The black people still don’t like gay marriage and the muslims hate the gay people. Black people still believe illegal Mexicans take their jobs. Muslims hate Jews, etc. What a circus.
Night Owl on November 22, 2012 at 12:10 PM
No one cheers a tyrant more than those he enslaves.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:13 PM
Hmmmm…
ChrisL on November 22, 2012 at 12:14 PM
The only positive to come out of this election is that Obama and his wretched supporters get to see the direct results of their policies.
LIB
justltl on November 22, 2012 at 12:14 PM
Obama will scroom every one of them, royally. The fools have no clue who the clown is.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:15 PM
Progressive policies flourish best in times of robust economic growth, he said: “It’s going to be difficult to do if we continue to have a bad economy
Ain’t seen nothin’, yet. Actions have consequences.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:16 PM
No worries, the left just unites them against the perceived enemy of all those groups … white Christian males.
darwin on November 22, 2012 at 12:18 PM
Seems like your kind of candidate.
hawkdriver on November 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM
Great post.
Once the currently fake/forced interest rate gets to 3% it will be a runaway train. These fools celebrate while they’re going to be run into the abyss, exponentially.
Schadenfreude on November 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM
The bobos will no longer be in paradise when tax hikes and an ailing economy takes its toll on their lifestyle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobos_in_Paradise
Punchenko on November 22, 2012 at 12:27 PM
“The problem with socialism is that sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”
-Margaret Thatcher
Wethal on November 22, 2012 at 12:43 PM
Reminds me of when I joined the CPUSA. They asked me why I wanted to join and I told them “I want the USA to be more like North Korea”
He told me he never heard that before, but fortunately we have a lot more to work with here than in NK.
It works out great in good economic times. Until it kills the economy.
bernverdnardo1 on November 22, 2012 at 12:49 PM
They’re afraid Obama is going to go to right….why?
Is it because Obama was re-elected by a small margin with far smaller vote totals than his previous win after waging a campaign of pure negativity against a weak but superior challenger?
Obama has NO mandate whatsoever, and he has to understand this much. If he doesn’t pretend to want to placate the right and governs like he has a mandate, the 2014 electorate is going to hand him a 2010 redux, which is something the Democrats might not be able to recover from anytime soon.
People are down on this election, but this really is the optimal outcome in the long-term: a Romney presidency would’ve been destroyed by the Democrat-media complex regardless of what prosperity he might’ve brought and racial hatred and resentment would’ve been stirred up by his election. This, on the other hand, gives America four more years to realize exactly how much they dislike a President who was enjoying underwater polling before he dragged Romney into the gutter with him, and once you go into the gutter, you don’t come out of it. He sank to uncharted depths to win re-election at the cost of any goodwill from rivals, which puts us in a fantastic 2014 and 2016 position considering the rising stars set to shine on the GOP stage come next election. Even the Democrats realize this, which is why they’re already working on Rubio.
Seriously, imagine where the Democrats would be today if we’d had 8 years of Jimmy Carter.
mintycrys on November 22, 2012 at 12:52 PM
Gotta agree with you on that. What has kept liberals from lionizing Carter for all these years was the fact Carter got stomped in 1980. If Romney could not landslide 0bama it may be best 0bama won for this very reason
Sekhmet on November 22, 2012 at 12:58 PM
This is something I noted months prior to the election: all of our candidates were weak, and if the inevitable establishment candidate, Romney, were to win, it might only be by a small enough margin (assuming Obama’s fully negative campaign) that he’d have no mandate, he’d take a pounding in the media for not being (D) enough for their tastes, and he’d have an uneventful and difficult presidency as a result of a newly-energized liberal base. The post-election totals pretty much confirm this fact.
In light of this, why waste too much time worrying about trying to remove the albatross around the Democratic party’s neck? After 8 years of Obama, the next Democratic candidate is going to have to run away from his record, and by that time, people are going to want….wait for it…
…change.
mintycrys on November 22, 2012 at 1:27 PM
Republicans have been pretty stupid. The Democrats didn’t win so much as the Republicans handed them a lot of victories in the past two years. I can think if FIVE Senate seats we could have TODAY had we not been knuckleheads over the past two years.
1. ANY Republican candidate for Senate in MO besides Aiken. He was the weakest candidate we had in polling against McCaskill.
2. Sharon Angle vs. Sue Lowden in Nevada. Lowden would have beaten Reid. Angle was the candidate Reid wanted to win the primary because he knew he could beat her.
3. Mike Castle vs. Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. Castle was an ex-Governor of the state and very popular. He would have won.
4. Lugar vs. Mourdock in Indiana. Stupidest move in 100 years. You don’t “cleanse” your party when you are in the minority, you wait until you have a solid majority to do that.
5. Norton vs. Buck in Colorado. Again, a weak “tea party” candidate hands the seat the Republicans should have had to the Democrats.
The party that is in the minority in the Senate often sees members cross over to vote with the other party. Ace had a graphic of that behavior on his website in the past year. It doesn’t matter who is in the majority, R or D, 99% of crossing over is done from the minority party to the majority. If you want to STOP the crossing over, first get a majority. This seeking of political purity is doing nothing but electing Democrats that will vote against you 100% of the time. It is STUPID. Where would we be today with those 5 easily takeable seats that we basically HANDED to the Democrats on a silver platter? We would have a tied Senate rather than 55-45 Democrat majority.
These political “purists” are the best thing to happen to the Democrats since Watergate.
crosspatch on November 22, 2012 at 2:13 PM
Akin won in a three-way primary because the Dems were running ads through a PAC pumping up his “conservative” creds because they wanted to run against him in the general. Akin’s wife was apparently a driving force behind his entering the primary (She was tired of just being a House member’s wife, and wanted to move on up to being a senator’s wife), and staying in.
Huckabee also contributed by supporting AkIn (if only to show that Huck’s endorsement could mean as much as Palin’s.) I don’t doubt Huckster kept privately telling Akin to stay in even after the “magic spermicidal secretions” junk science blooper because it was “God’s will” that Akin won the primary. (God doesn’t sometimes teach you humility, and graciously stepping aside?)
As for Mourdock, he might have won had Lugar even endorsed him. Lugar and his IN supporters refused to. Mourdock had promised to support Lugar if Lugar won the primary, but Lugar would not make the same pledge.
O’Donnell was a weak candidate, to be sure, but again, Castle refused to endorse her. The state GOP only reluctantly did about a week or so later after the primary. Some advice from the state party might have stopped the awful “witch” ad, and told he to just laugh it off as the usual college hanging otu with some of hte odder people.
RINOs have to be held to the rule conservatives have been required to follow: everyone endorses the winner of the primary.
Wethal on November 22, 2012 at 2:33 PM
Also, the GOP establishment bringing out old RINO retreads like Tommy Thompson and George Allen didn’t help, either.
Wethal on November 22, 2012 at 2:35 PM
That “retread” in Virginia beat the “Tea Party” candidate by 42 points.
Virginia wasn’t really the problem. It’s FIVE seats we should have had but wasted the opportunities in Colorado, Delaware, Nevada, Missouri, and Indiana in the past two years. In every one of those cases, the candidate winning the primary was the one polling WORST against the Democrat.
crosspatch on November 22, 2012 at 3:39 PM
And RINOs only cross over and vote with the Democrats when Republicans are in the minority. Get a majority and that behavior ceases immediately.
crosspatch on November 22, 2012 at 3:40 PM