The 2012 Election: It is NOT Mr. Obama vs. a To-Be-Named Republican

Lessons in Politics and Elections and Government

First of all, appearances and campaign ads to the contrary, voters are smart.  They grasp the nature of candidates, they understand issues and they recognize their limitation as voters.  They know that they often cannot elect good leaders and that their only impact is to keep the Worse from taking office by electing the Bad.

To understand the 2012 election requires a short (very short) course in recent political history and an understanding of elections since Mr. Clinton left office.  In 2000 and 2004 voters narrowly elected George W. Bush because they correctly perceived that as unsuited and unqualified for the Presidency as he was, his opponents were even more unsuited.  The first six years of his Presidency confirmed the voter’s opinion that Mr. Bush was not qualified to be President.

As a result, in 2006 voters began the process of taking control from the Republicans and giving it to the Democrats.  In 2006 they gave the Democrats control of the Congress and two years later gave the Democrats control of the government. 

Lesson 1:  Voters elected Mr. Obama because he was not George W. Bush and defeated Mr. McCain because he was George W. Bush. 

Mr. Obama won the election because voters felt that a unified government was necessary to manage the problems of the Great Recession, regulatory reform of the financial industry, health care cost control and the process of extracting the U. S. from Iraq.  The mandate of Mr. Obama was to govern effectively.

Lesson 2:  Voters want effective government and competent leadership, partly independent of the specifics of the issues.



How Voters Viewed  Democrat's Management
of the Federal Government



In 2009-10 the governing ability of the Democrats was a political and managerial disaster.  The stimulus plan was heavily flawed and over-hyped and inadequate, the health care reform produced a complex structure that no one understands and few people support and regulation of the financial system does not appear to have corrected the housing market or prevented continued abuses, particularly in foreclosures.

Rightly or wrongly, Speaker Pelosi gave the apperance of a level of arrogance and condescension that made her the poster child for Republicans, and Senate Majority Leader Reid came across as more interested in protecting Senate traditions, (which allow 41 Senators to block legislation and even allows a single senator to block appointments) than he was in governing.  With a huge House majority and 60 Senators, voters expected effective government from Democrats.  They didn’t get it.

Lesson 3: Voters don’t care about the intricacies of the House and Senate, they just want the job done.

In late 2009 and early 2010 voters sent the Democrats a message by electing Republican Governors in Virginia and New Jersey, and by putting a Republican in the Senate seat held by the late Senator Kennedy in Massachusetts.  The message was particularly loud in Virginia, where a radical conservative turned pragmatist walloped a moderate Democrat by almost 60% to 40%. 



The Democrat is the
One on the Right



Lesson 4:  The 2009 elections were a wake up call for Democrats.  Democrats slept through it.

After the 2009 election the Democrats did not heed the voters.  So in 2010 voters sent the strongest message possible to Democrats, and handed them a defeat so devastating that even today many Democrats have no concept of how large that defeat was. Had the Republicans not nominated unelectable candidates in Nevada, Colorado and Delaware they would have had 50 Senate seats in addition to their other victories.

Lesson 5:  Voters will sometimes vote against incompetent and ineffective government, even if it means replacing bad government with worse government.

In 2011 Democrats still controlled the White House and the Senate and voters expected them to start to get the message and start to govern effectively.  The result was a stalled economy and a debt ceiling/deficit reduction battle that left Democrats looking like a party that did not deserve the power to govern.  The continued political ineptitude of the President and his party raises questions of how they even managed to get elected in the first place.  In two special elections since the debt ceiling/deficit reduction debacle the Democrats lost by a huge margin in Nevada and they lost a safe seat in New York.

Lesson 6:  Democrats and the President had an opportunity to take firm leadership in the debt ceiling negotiations and economic policy.  They didn’t and their approval is sinking as a result.

This brings us to the 2012 election.  Unless they make catastrophic mistakes, the Republicans will retain control of the House and take control of the Senate. Voters support Democratic positions, but think, with ample reason and evidence that the Democrats are just too incompetent to implement those policies.

So the 2012 Presidential election is a decision is not about the candidates, it is about whether or not to have

1. a continuation of divided and dysfunctional government for four more years

or

2. a unified and effective government under Republicans, who will implement programs and policies that voters strongly disagree with.

If a Republican is elected President in 2012 it is not because the voters support Conservative Republican positions.  It will be because they have no confidence that Mr. Obama can govern effectively for four more years and in their minds there is a chance, albeit a small chance, that things would get better if Republicans were in charge.

That is the decision voters are faced with.  The actual players don’t really matter to a great extent.   Mr. Obama and Mr. Perry (or Mr. Romney or Ms. Bachmann) are merely stand-ins, public faces of this very, very bad set of choices.