Obama gets it

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As he said on 60 Minutes last night:

I think first and foremost, [the election] was a referendum on the economy. And the party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting.

The bad economy doesn't fully explain what happened, of course. There were many other factors in play. I'm sure I don't have to rehash them here.

But it was the economy that fueled the anti-incumbent sentiment that swept much of the country and that lent a false sense of Zeitgeist to the Tea Party.

It was pretty much inevitable that the Democrats would lose quite a few seats, especially in the House, after their "wave" victories in '06 and '08, but what made this year's Republican "wave" more significant was the economy and what Obama and the Democrats had to do to get it moving in the right direction again (or at least to prevent it from falling off the cliff), namely, the stimulus and the bailouts, which from early on in Obama's presidency fed the Republican narrative of "socialism" and big government run amok.

Of course, Obama and the Democrats could have done a much better job trying to explain to voters just how bad things might have been without such government intervention -- as they basically campaigned without any overarching narrative of their own -- but it's not clear, given other huge advantages Republicans had (like the fact that, post '06 and '08, Democrats had to defend numerous seats in largely Republican districts, many held by right-leaning Blue Dogs), that they could have prevented even a minor "wave" from sweeping them out of power in the House and reducing their majority in the Senate.

Simply put, 2010 is a Republican year -- and that's largely because of the economy. It may not be Obama's fault, but voters certainly took it out on his party last week.