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- Since it's been clear for months that Republicans were very likely to take over the House, I'm less interested in talking about the election results than I am about how a Republican-controlled House is going to work with Senate Democrats and the White House. And the question for me is simple: Are Republicans willing to make compromises now that they're in the majority? It would unquestionably be a good thing for Republicans to get serious about policy. There's also good reason to be skeptical this will happen. But two full years of uninterrupted legislative gridlock is frankly difficult to imagine.
- It was entirely predictable that the political media would rapidly pivot to 2012 election coverage before all the 2010 ballots have even been counted, and I could make the usual critique that the horse race gets more coverage than public policy, or that the power of the presidency is vastly overrated, or that a defect of 24/7 news is that there isn't always news to talk about. But what I don't get is that the stage has already been set for high political drama in the aforementioned divided government we now have. Let's have some wild speculation about that instead!
- It's a safe bet that conservatives still widely believe that the election was a mass rejection of the "liberal agenda." Here's Rich Lowry last night: "If this election were all about the economy and not the Democratic agenda, Pelosi wouldn’t be such a liability. No one blames her for the economy, but she embodies the Democratic program." I'm sure a lot of Republican voters were motivated by a loathing of San Francisco liberals, but everyone else was expressing dissatisfaction with the state of the economy irrespective of who the House speaker was.
- Remainders: As someone who takes the "lessons" of Atlas Shrugged literally, it's unsurprising that Rand Paul believes we should all bow down to our wealthy overlords; libertarians think the public is made up of "newly empowered consumers and entrepreneurs [who] are well-equipped to solve many of our most pressing problems"; I'm sure glad I don't live in Oklahoma; and Ralph Nader has absolutely no idea how American politics works.
--Mori Dinauer
