A quick rundown of the winners and loser of yesterday's midterm elections: Victors? Republicans and the Tea Party. The Defeated? Barack Obama's agenda and his Democratic Party. But that's a little simple. The real story is much more depressing: Without a major change in the existing dynamics, the country faces two years of unsavory gridlock. Christine O'Donnell, the overhyped and underperforming Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, famously told voters, "I'm not a witch. I'm you." After her defeat, she could just as easily say, "I'm you. I'm a loser."
Rep. John Boehner, the putative Republican speaker of the House, welcomed his party's victory in that chamber with an emotional speech about how voters' decisions were a repudiation of Washington politics. Boehner, of course, has been a representative for nearly 20 years. Putting him in charge doesn't seem like a rejection of the Washington establishment. Neither does the election of Republicans like Dan Coats, a longtime lobbyist, in Indiana, or Rob Portman, a former Bush administration official, in Ohio.
Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, Republican Senate victors in Kentucky and Wisconsin, respectively, might say this was a victory for the Tea Party. Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller, Linda McMahon, and Sharron Angle might beg to differ, as their Tea Party-fueled campaigns simply burned out. Doug Hoffman, one of the original Tea Party candidates (he ran in a 2009 special election), once again split the Republican vote in an upstate New York congressional district, allowing the endangered Democrat to keep his seat.
True, the Tea Party's enthusiasm drove Republican turnout and brought about Republican control of the House, but their extremism was probably the sole reason Democrats held on to the Senate. They gave Republicans more responsibility than before but prevented the mandate and power that would come with winning both chambers. The newly elected Tea Partiers who did make it will need to figure out how to work with GOP leadership, long-standing members of the Washington establishment.
The conservative resurgence has been based on fears about the debt and deficit. In general, deficit reduction requires a bipartisan deal, with the deficit-cutting Affordable Care Act remaining an outlier. Yet Boehner already warned the president that he would not compromise. Republicans only control the House; if they won't meet Democrats in the middle, gridlock will ensue. This election isn't an endorsement of the Republicans, as some savvy victors, like Florida's Republican Senator-elect Marco Rubio, conceded yesterday. It's a chance, and they'll be held accountable in 2010 if they don't act to craft a more compelling vision for their party.
Thus far, what the Tea Party has accomplished is giving greater voice in government to Republicans whose priorities (extending the Bush tax cuts, which would, incidentally, blow up the deficit, and obstructing the Democratic agenda) haven't changed in the last two years. Boehner has promised that Republicans will immediately seek to repeal some or all of health-care reform, but the decision to pursue a partisan priority rather than share voters' focus on the economy will likely backfire. Do Tea Partiers have the pragmatism to put off promised attacks on the Affordable Care Act in favor of focus on a more difficult and more pressing issue -- jobs and the economy?
And that's where we all really lose. Congressional gridlock will not lead to legislation to fix the economy, no matter what solution you think might work. If, as expected today, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke cracks a bottle of champagne on the bow of what has been dubbed QE2 -- a second round of "quantitative easing," an aggressive attempt to use monetary policy to urge the recovery forward -- it could be the most important decision made in Washington in the second half of Obama's term. Congressional action would help QE2 succeed, but again, it's not likely to come.
It's clear Tuesday was a loss for the Democrats, whose shrunken majorities will severely limit their priorities. That's not to say, as you will hear, that the votes were a disavowal of their agenda; public-opinion polling suggests the electorate didn't dislike what the Democrats did but what they didn't do -- lower unemployment and produce growth. They may have done their best, but they didn't do enough.
Absent the ability to push big-ticket agenda items like immigration reform or a major energy bill, the Obama administration will seek to find common ground with the Republicans on small-business aid, deficit reduction, fixing the housing markets, corporate tax reform, and perhaps trade. A bigger part of the debate will be procedural battles around basics of governing -- the budget and appropriations -- where Republicans are already talking about a 1990s-style government shutdown.
So did voters end up changing Washington? Not by electing the same Republicans, who are already colluding with K Street and proffering their old policies. Will the rise of the Tea Party cut the deficit? Not anytime soon. Will we see a better economy under this Congress? Only by accident. And the Democrats won't continue their incredible spate of legislative productivity.
Sure, it's possible that the Washington deal-maker in Boehner can find common ground with President Obama -- who called the Ohioan to offer his congratulations, quickly releasing a photo to the press as a preview of today's official response to the results -- and divided government will result in some successful policy-making. More likely, we'll have to hope that the 2012 elections offer up a real winner.
