Thunder on the mountain

This is the thunder on the mountain, the early warning that something bad is about to blow through the District of Columbia. I don’t think there’s anything anybody can do about it. The people have a limited role in this government – but where the people do possess power, they are like a force of nature. They cannot be stopped…

Democrats are going to be hit much, much harder than Republicans – yet the worst thing that anybody can do is interpret the coming rebuke through a partisan lens. Yet predictably, that’s what almost everybody will do. Republicans will see this as a historic rejection of Barack Obama’s liberalism, just as they saw the 1994 revolution as a censure of Bill Clinton, and just as Democrats saw 2006 and 2008 as admonishments of George W. Bush’s foreign policy. These interpretations are just half right. When the people are angry at the way the government is being managed, and they are casting about for change, they have only one option: the minority party. The partisans of the minority are quick to interpret this as their holy invitation to the Promised Land – but that’s not what it really is about. They were only given the promotion because the people had no other choice.

The entire political class needs to understand that the coming events transcend ideology and partisanship. Consider that the wave of 2010 will have been preceded by the waves of 2006 and 2006. That will make three electoral waves in a row, affecting both parties and conservative and liberal politicians alike. The American people are sending the establishment a message: we’re angry at the way you are running our government; fix it or you’ll be next to go.