The Real Message of the Election

On Tuesday voters in Virginia, a national swing state, and New Jersey, a solidly blue one, voted overwhelmingly for Republican candidates. Across the country races of lesser standing went for Republicans far more than for Democrats. In Westchester County, New York, one of the country’s most affluent counties that is solidly Democratic, the two term Democrat incumbent County Executive was routed from office.

Twelve months after turning the Federal government over to the Democrats in resounding fashion the nation voted for an abrupt about face.

Republicans are painting this as a precursor to a comeback by their party in off year Congressional elections next year, but that could be reading too much into these results. We don’t believe this election was necessarily about health care reform, which most Americans do not grasp and whose policy effects they do not yet feel. Rather, voters vote their pocketbooks.

As President George H. W. Bush (41) found out in his unsuccessful run for reelection in 1992, an economy just out of recession, similar to our current situation, is often a hostile environment for incumbents. Employment is the last indicator to turn and voters are not interested that GDP has resumed expansion when an inordinate percentage of them remain out of work, stoking fears of the employed that they could be vulnerable. Democrats can be thankful that they have another year of recovery before they must face the electorate again.

The real message of the election is that the president and his party now own the economy. This might seem elementary. After all, presidents tend to get far too much credit when the economy is performing well and too much blame when it’s not. But President Obama has been unique in this regard by routinely reminding the public that any problem on his plate is one for which his predecessor bears responsibility.

With their votes on Tuesday the electorate has sent him a clear message: blaming his predecessor is a dog that will no longer hunt. He now officially has ownership of the nation’s economic performance and a year to improve it sufficiently to keep off year elections losses, which are typical for the party that holds the White House, to a minimum.

Ironically for Republicans last nights results are more likely to help the Democrats. Moderate Democrats will now be emboldened to resist the agenda set by the White House and liberal Congressional leadership. This agenda includes, among other growth crushing initiatives, raising the top federal income tax rate to 45% on the class that starts the most businesses that yield the most jobs, and Cap and Trade climate legislation that would vastly increase the price of energy.

People the world over want to know the secret to American success. And it is simply this. Our political system was designed in such a way that power is sufficiently diffused so that it is nearly impossible to veer too far from the center. Nowhere is that principal more on display than in the likely effect of these elections.

Upon taking office the president’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, noted that the administration would take far reaching steps to remake the American system using the financial crisis as cover to get things done that could not be accomplished under more normal circumstances. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he said at that time. Yet in the months ahead he is likely to find that Tuesday’s election laid his opportunity to waste.