There is certainly no lack of opinions about last night's midterm elections. The (we) Democrats definitely got walloped, and the Republicans over-performed the average poll by about 5-10 seats. Fivethirtyeight predicted about 55 seats lost, whereas the number is closer to 60. The senate was anticlimactic, with almost all of the results known beforehand. Harry Reid surviving was the only real surprise of the night.
There are many ways to view this. Most of them aren't that bad.
Rationalization 1: Obama is Reagan
Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. From then to November 1982 the unemployment rate went from 7.2 to 10.8, and growth was stagnant emerging from the recession. Reagan's popularity sagged to 42%, and as you can see from Pollster's excellent chart, his popularity fell in almost exactly the way Obama's has.
Then came Reagan's first midterm election. The Democrats picked up 27 seats. This number, however, hides that fact that after the election Democrats had a humongous 103 seat edge in the House! Last night, the Dems lost a whopping sixty seats, but the Republican lead in the House will be only about 51-53 seats.
And in spite of all this, Reagan was a transformative figure. The marginal tax rate was slashed, a new cabinet department was established, regulations across the board were shaped in the image of supply side economics, and the Religious Right became a seemingly permanent fixture in political life.
Arguably, Obama will be even more effective, since he already has his major agenda items done. Yes, all of them were half measures, but they were significant, and will have a long-term major impact. If Obama can further reform education along with the Republicans, the next 20 years could be a resurgence of progressivism.
Rationalization 2: The failure was message
The American public on the eve of the election believed several false things. They think their taxes either went up or stayed the same since Obama took over. They believe health care added to the budget, that the economy is shrinking, that the TARP money was almost all lost. All of these are unambiguously untrue.
The messaging here was terrible. This is especially true on the first point: the administration deliberately obscured that fact that federal taxes went down as a result of the Reinvestment Act (AKA the stimulus). The thinking among Larry Summers and the NEC was that if you highlighted the fact that Americans were getting more of their money back, they would save the money; but, if they didn't notice, it would just be figured into their budget, and hence spent. It didn't work. So we got the worst of both worlds: the candidates lost a talking point and the economy still grew slowly because of lack of aggregate demand.
On this and the other issues, the administration has a lot of room to improve. Nixon gave 37 oval office addresses, Clinton 15. Obama has given 1. If the administration learns from this and Obama starts talking on TV in prime time, he can start to combat these misconceptions, and perhaps greatly improve the Democrats' standings.
Rationalization 3: Progress Costs Seats
America is finicky, and it is especially so in the face of great change. If you make a huge change like the Affordable Care Act, like the Restoring American Financial Stability Act, like the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it is going to lose you seats. All of these are popular in the abstract, but none are popular in the specific, at least not all of the aspects to all of the people. So, instead of viewing this defeat as a repudiation of Democrats, it may be prudent to think of it as an unfortunate but unavoidable cost of progress: you lose seats. This doesn't preclude winning them back in 2 years.
Rationalization 4: Pelosi can up-end the Tea Party movement
The new House Majority Leader Eric Cantor looked quite foolish in an interview last night, when asked about the US debt ceiling. Would the new Republican majority, pushed in on the waves of a populist small-government movement, be willing to raise the debt ceiling in a few months? Cantor wouldn't answer Laurence O'Donnell's question. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, the government has to shut down. We are constantly operating at a loss. Now, suppose Pelosi marshalls the Democrats, as she's proven quite effective at doing, to unanimously vote no on the motion to raise the limit; what will the GOP do? Likewise, Pelosi can refuse to compromise on the budget, making the government face a shutdown. Boehner knows well what the 1995 shutdown cost the party, and so do the Democrats.
My point here is if the Republicans refuse to negotiate on anything, they might have to do some things that their fair-weather supporters find, to say the least, distasteful, and to say the worst, treasonous and evil. If they are willing to negotiate, then the Democrats can continue their task of enacting moderate progress, if at a slower pace. This doesn't sound too bad to me.
Finally...
Rationalization 5: Democracy has failed
Well, democracy has failed in the past. The classic story is about Athens, a city state brought to its conclusion because of whimsical voting on military leaders. We have now extended the vote to anyone born here, aged 18, with a pulse. In the US today we have simultaneously moved into a highly complex, technological time, while not keeping education in pace. The result is a populace of un-civic, uncivil, uneducated children willing to think no further than their own immediate wallet and lifestyle when voting. 6% of young people vote, so our demographics are never represented, and hence moderate progressive liberalism founders. The result is a nation of suffering, fat, indebted or bankrupt, idiots watching a show called "Ow My Balls".
Well, this is a doomsday scenario. President Palin opens as many coal producing power plants as she can, the earth warms 5 degrees celcius, massive hurricanes and flooding ensue. Human suffering is almost unimaginable. At the same time, we become nativist and isolationist, rapidly sink to the GDP of a third world country, a rotting corpse of a country populated by insulin-dependent, bigoted retards.
But you know, I think Rationalization 5 is the one I find the least likely.