You forgot to add:

65+ seats in the house, lose most of the competitive Gov's races, and control Senate by 1 vote at most.

Everyone you know will lose.

so...i'm trying to figure out if you mean the sensible majority and common sense will prevail or if we'll end up taking a huge step back towards the 1700s

I guess I was interested in who is losing their shit, and why it's "biblical".

I know you know this, but no one ever seems to mention that Democrats were already going to lose a chunk of seats this go-round, pretty much no matter what.

I just hope getting some right wing clowns placates the angry hordes a little, even though nothing will change. We already can't pass shit.

Dude, they passed the first major health care reform, which has been impossible in every prior administration.

They were always going to give back SOME seats, but no one figured that we would lose the house outright, plus most likely give the repubs a margin bigger than we hold now.

Plus, when you add in state houses, redistricting, etc, it's worse that 1994+2002+2006+2008 combined.

Pretty much every marginal seat gets lost, 90% of Blue Dogs, and when the DCCC is spending to protect people like Shuler or Grijalva, you better run away duck and hide out, because the Repubs are rolling real slow with their lights out, about to fuck up the program, shooting out the window of a drop top Brougham.

And Kyle - Tanner is right. This congress passed more meaningful legisylation than any single congress since 1964.

And none of 'em even know what it is they passed.

But every one of my southern redneck family / friends is up in arms about how little president has done... how can zis be?

Do you really believe this? I thought it was pretty much expected for a long time now. Maybe I'm giving Obama too much credit but I thought he pretty much knew that he was giving away control of the Congress when he pushed as hard as he did for Health Care Reform and the grab bag of programs in the stimulus bills. I thought he probably knew it would cost the seats but thought out of crisis came opportunity that wasn't there in the past and wouldn't be there in the future and that it was worth it. I also thought that was really the source behind a lot of the tension last year between Obama and Congressional leaders. Basically that they got it too.

I don't think either party were able to forsee this biblical event happening until after moderate incumbents from the GOP started to lose primary races and Democratic stalwarts started to lag badly in the polls to political neophytes with Tea Party support. It was around that time that you noticed a specific change in Congressional Democratic fundraising and they started to trot out Clinton and distance themselves from health care.
There is no way that Obama and the Democratic Party believed that some historically liberal house seats would be up for grabs or that a guy like McCain would nearly become a victim of the Tea Party movement.
They may have embraced the idea of losing the House, since being able to campaign against Boehner might actually win the Presidency for Obama again in 2012, but they certainly didn't expect the Senate Majority leader to be trailing in the polls with two weeks to go or that they would lose Obama's former Senate seat.
The way the Raul Grijalva race has went is a prime example of why the Dems clearly didn't expect it to end this way.

I think people have known for quite some time that with the economy in the tank and the country pissed there would be a shit ton of changes. Perhaps some Democrats were still holding out hope that the clusterfuck the Republicans have going on would gift them some better odds or that people would finally come out and you know, vote for candidates who hold positions they agree with or have a memory of more than six months to realize we are still digging out from serious problems at least somewhat created by politicos doing exactly what the Republicans are still promising to do. But really, those are all long shots.

I'm just praying for a few more Christine O'Donnells to start taking out electable Republicans for the next go round.

Of course, if we had the same voter turnout as we had for the Presidential election this would all be much closer and not nearly so dramatic, but we're gonna see way too many Democrats stay home and just let the other side take it.

Agree with you, BG. Both Pelosi and Obama have used the argument that sometimes it's more important to pass Big Things than to get reelected.



He's either done too much and should stay out of the economy, done too little because unemployment isn't 0%, is a dumb ingrate who wasn't ready for the job or a brilliant mastermind who has taken over all aspects of our lives and is transforming us into a Stalinist style penal economy where Christian Whites are fed into meat grinders. Very confusing

I would totally move here.

No way to deny being white, nobody. You gets the meat grinder, comrade.

I thought it was just the Christian Whites.

Damn, there goes my summer vacation plan.

Guys, NO ONE EVER, AND I MEAN EVER, PLAYS TO LOSE.

Promethium has a better handle on it than most, hes just saying "they might have figured on losing the house" to placate BG and Bloor.

You don't fight for 12 years to get the house back, gain 40 fucking seats in two cycles just to ram through some Bullshit. Remember, Power is it's own end. They truly believed that the Stimulus was needed, would work better, and that the GOP were rational actors up until about March of this year. But when Barney Frank is having to loan his campaign 200K, we're through the God Damn looking glass, and anyone who says they saw this coming is high on paint.

I don't believe this gar. Most of the stimulus is bullshit that has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Its a bunch of aid to the states and then a grabbag of programs that dems have wanted for a long time which they opportunistically passed under the guise of stimulating the economy. Obama is smart enough to know that he didn't have a mandate to pass healthcare and that it was unpopular. He probably also knows that he had a rare window to pass it and no matter how many seats the repubs win they won't be able to repeal it. For someone who drinks the kool-aid, it makes a lot of sense to overreach in return for giving up seats. Rahm Emanual even said something to the effect of "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

People have been predicating the repubs would take over the House for almost two years now, and Harry Reid (the symbolism of him losing aside) has been on the vulnerable list for a good while. I don't see any of this as particularly surprising other than maybe the repubs not fuhing it up themselves a little more than they have. The Kennedy Seat went Repub and you're surprised by this?

[

A third of the stimulus was tax cuts. Are those bullshit too?





Didn't have a mandate? He ran on reforming healthcare and won by a large margin. What part of mandate am I missing?

This is false as well. As recently as the late spring-early summer '09 there were still stories about the death of the Republican Party, etc. Until the healthcare debate, Repubs were very much in sky is falling mode, wondering whether they needed to dump the conservative wing over the side and go moderate just maintain any sort of electability.

Mostly yes. I like the business investment tax credit but I'd say the rest of it was bs





I get that he talked about it alot and of course people support the idea of lowering health care costs while increasing coverage and not affecting anyone who liked their current insurance. If he has a bill that will do that, he's got a mandate for it.

But more to the point, I don't think healthcare had much to do with why he was elected. He won because of some combination of:

* He's from a different party than Bush
* The Economy which people blamed Bush for and McCain seemed to know nothing about
* He promised to bring back the troops
* Hope/Charisma/Etc.
* He's not McCain

The country didn't suddenly become a lot more liberal.

You're right. I was too lazy to look up when the healthcare bill passed. I'd change almost two years to over one year and then we're probably in agreement.

But, nobody thought that basically 100 seats would be in play. They knew they'd give back some seats (like the one I helped win in 08) that were held in deep McCain territory, but again, the people that are vulnerable or losing now - no one saw this even a year ago. CALSEN? WISEN? WVSEN? I mean, in any "normal" midterm from the past 50 years, it all comes out in the wash because Dems beat waterheads like Nathan Deal for GAGOV and Rick Perry for TXGOV, but there the only seats Dems feel safe about right now are the ones with no opponents.

Are you telling me you would have figured Blanche Lincoln would literally be dead in the water right now? A fight on her hands ala Cleland in 02 I would believe, but 100% written off - no.

And it is all the Dem brand. We are seeing people with 65% personal popularity under water in terms of likely vote (Joe Manchin). They're HEMORRHAGING members at this point.

Gar I don't pay attention to the individual races outside my area. I could have probably could have made up congressional baseball cards for all the members from memory 15-20 years ago but I don't even recognize most of these names anymore or have any context to judge whether its surprising that they are in trouble. I don't know how the prognosticators were projecting individual races but I do know that they were predicting a republican takeover of the House for a long time now and the Reid seat being in jeapordy is old news.