The Republican took the House. Get over it already

USArmyParatrooper

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Wed Nov-03-10 05:57 PM
Original message

The Republican took the House. Get over it already

I knew in November 2008 the Republicans would take back quite a few seats. I didn't necessarily believe they would become a majority, but I fully expected large losses.

When Obama took office we were already fighting two wars, we had enormous deficits and the economy was on the brink of a total collapse. Not a recession, a complete and total collapse of our financial system, the entire US auto industry and the combination would have caused other industries to collapse. Before I joined the army I worked in the private sector through a number of recessions. What we were facing in 2008 wasn't even close to any of those, it was fucking epic!

The Democratic Congress and President Obama passed all kinds of different legislation aimed at long and short term investments in jobs and our economy, along with new consumer protections and financial reforms and oversights to help prevent this shit in the future. And they did all of this when a Republican opposition who had one, single goal in mind - STOP the Democrats from fixing anything at all cost. No matter how much anyone bitches about what "more" they could have done, nothing would have created a rosey picture by now.

We've progressed from facing an economic apocalypse to the recession having been over since July of 2009, a painfully slow recovery and high unemployment. And that last point is what this election was really all about.

Unemployment is still very high! The American people have a very short term memory. Most Americans don't remember or don't care about what we were. They don't think about what the economic shit storm could have turned into. Most Americans don't even think about or care about who's fault it is. Times are hard and the Democrats are in power. Period, point blank.

Here are three reasons the Democrats were destined to lose seats

1: The Economy (the fact that the Democrats aren't the ones who fucked it up is irrelevant)

2: The party in power in the Executive branch always has tougher times in Congressional races.

3: The Democrats had already won the past couple Congressional elections and had a huge majority. You can only win so many seats and hanging on to power for the long haul is a feat under any circumstances.

Could the Democrats have played their hand better and saved a couple seats? Sure, absolutely. But the overall reason for the ass whooping wasn't because of the public option. It wasn't because Obama tried too hard to compromise. It wasn't for any other reason people like to scream about on the internet.

For the life of me I will never understand some of the obsessive hatred for Obama I've seen from some people online. Under Bill Clinton's Presidency we lost both the House *and* the Senate right away, and he didn't have the cards stacked against him nearly to the point Obama had. Bill Clinton also didn't inherit anything close to the pile of shit Obama had to contend with and to make matter worse, the Republicans are even more nasty, and more disciplined now than they were through most of Clintons administration. They didn't really start honing their asshole skills until the Impeachment proceedings, and that was toward the end.

Still, we Democrats lost the House and Senate never to regain them under Clinton's watch. I wasn't surfing the web back then (thanks for this, Gore) but among fellow Dems in the real world I didn't see nearly the shit flinging toward him over it as I do now.

It happens. It's politics. Have your pet peeves all you want about how Obama tried too hard to work with Republicans. Lord knows I have my own, and I'm willing to be Obama quietly has his own regrets about naively thinking in a crisis Republicans would step up to the plate. But let's be real. In the end this was about the economy, stupid.

Now can we stop all of the silly shit and start going after the real enemy? I'll give you a hint. It has a huge penis for a nose and loves to eat peanuts.