Another Election, Another Wave

Two years ago this week, triumphant Democrats were throwing around the word  “realignment,” as in the kind of Democratic majority that could endure for a  generation or more. Wednesday morning, those same Democrats awoke to find that their  majority had not lasted for even another election cycle.

The question that will dominate the conversation among Democrats in the days ahead  is how it came to this, especially since Republicans offered little to voters beyond  an emphatic rejection of the president’s policies. Some Democrats believe they fell  victim to the inevitable tide of midterm elections. Others blame the economy, plain  and simple, while a growing chorus accuses Mr. Obama of failing to communicate the  party’s successes.

The truth is that all these explanations probably played some role in the unraveling  — though, in the case of Mr. Obama’s message, the failure may have deeper roots than  his critics assume.

Start with the issue of inevitability. It’s fair to say that Democrats set  themselves up for something of a letdown in 2010 by performing beyond any reasonable  standard in 2006 and 2008. Democratic candidates in those back-to-back “wave  elections” picked up dozens of House seats that had generally trended Republican,  including some in states like Indiana and Virginia.

Democrats were bound to lose a significant number of those vulnerable seats during  the subsequent midterm cycle, when voters, having had their catharsis, generally  feel some buyer’s remorse about the incumbent president’s party.

Then there’s the sluggish economy and its attendant unemployment. As recently as  last summer, White House aides were gamely hoping that voters would feel some  momentum in the months leading up to the elections. Absent that, the administration  was forced to argue a negative — that is, to claim that the stimulus spending and  bank bailouts of 2009 had saved many jobs that otherwise would have been lost.

That brings us to the question of whether Mr. Obama stumbled in making a case for  his proposals to right the economy and remake the health care system. The answer may  be yes, but if Mr. Obama failed to communicate the urgency of his agenda to the  voters, then that failure may have less to do with anything he did in 2010 than with  his strategy in 2008.

Mr. Obama ran his presidential campaign much like Republicans ran this one, as a  referendum on the status quo. Sure, there was what Sarah Palin calls the “hopey,  changey stuff,” and plenty of standard talk about affordable health care and clean  energy, both of which candidate Obama was for. What there wasn’t was much mention of  what change would entail, in terms of taxation or deficits. Ending the war in Iraq  and rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy, Democrats said, would pay for everything.

No doubt Mr. Obama’s team believed there would be plenty of time to make more  complicated arguments after the election, when Mr. Obama would be able to reassure  and cajole the nation from behind the presidential lectern. But then a couple of  things happened to derail that plan.

First, the same wave that carried Mr. Obama to a resounding victory also brought in  the largest Democratic majorities in Congress since the 1970s. Suddenly, Democrats,  especially in the House, were giddily talking of a liberal renaissance in the land,  and they were confident that the electorate had issued a blanket endorsement for  whatever new investments they might see fit to make. They weren’t inclined to sit  around while Mr. Obama went to the voters and asked permission again.

Second, the economic crisis that greeted Mr. Obama was deeper and more jolting than  anyone had anticipated, and the White House thought it had little choice but to  offer major spending proposals immediately aimed at heading off a depression, even  without the benefit of a long public hearing. Mr. Obama’s advisers believed that  voters would thank them for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending once  the economy began to rebound, as it inevitably would.

But the economy didn’t rebound, and Mr. Obama, beset by crises and absorbed in  negotiations on Capitol Hill, never did get around to making a sustained public  argument for his most divisive policy choices. The independent voters who had sided  with Mr. Obama by a margin of eight points over Senator John McCain, according to  exit polls in 2008, drifted inexorably into the Republican camp.

It may be the case, as a lot of Democrats now contend, that Mr. Obama offered an  inconsistent pitch over these last several weeks, jumping from a critique of the  Bush years (how Republicans drove the national car into a ditch, and so on) to an  indictment of campaign cash from outside groups. But it’s probably also the case  that, by that point, public opinion had hardened. Some 62 percent of voters in exit  polls Tuesday said the country was on the wrong track.

If there is a lesson in all this for both parties, perhaps it’s that merely piling  up votes on Election Day doesn’t confer on you a mandate for any ambitious agenda —  unless you have presented the voters with the difficult choices you intend to make.  For Republicans, this argues against overinterpreting the meaning of Tuesday’s  gains. For Mr. Obama, it probably means that the campaign for the next agenda begins  right now.

•Culled from the New York Times.

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