Does anybody get it?

As
pundits and politicians muse about whether President Obama “gets it” after the
shellacking that Democrats took on election night, the same question might be
asked regarding the winners. Do they really believe that the electorate has
taken a sharp turn to the ideological right just two years after the Democratic
sweep of ‘08? What, exactly, did they think that outcome meant? Did they
believe then (and let’s not forget ‘06 while we’re at it) that voters had
registered a strong endorsement of activist government and large deficits?
Probably not, judging from their opposition to Obama’s every move over the past
two years. So why was 2008 not a policy mandate, but 2010 is? Why was the
former election not a repudiation of the losing party’s ideology, but this one
is?

Politicians
are like athletes: When they win it’s because they played well, and when they
lose it’s because they played badly – not because the other side was better.
Similarly, when a candidate or party wins an election, it’s a mandate; but when
they lose – especially if they’re the incumbents, turned out of office – it’s
never a mandate for the other guys, but rather a verdict by voters that they
(the vanquished) failed to implement their ideological game plan properly. If
only they had remained faithful to the party’s core values, all would surely
have ended well.

On
election night this year, one of the network talking heads kept insisting that
the result wasn’t an expression of voter anger – it was a rejection of the
Democrats’ lurch to the left under Obama. Excuse me? The Tea Partiers and
others of their ilk (at both extremes) notwithstanding, most Americans are not
ideologues. No, they don’t like huge deficits or expensive programs that don’t
work properly no matter who is in office. But they also like many of the
programs that generate deficits, and tax rates that are much lower than they
used to be. Marco Rubio is correct: The electorate did not embrace Republican
policies on election night, they simply gave the GOP another chance to clean up
what is perceived to be a mess both in Washington and around the country.

Is
there any reason to believe that Republicans possess the vision it will take to
make that happen? Based on how most of them appear to view what happened on
November 2, and on their actions the last time they were in this position
(remember the Contract with America, which ultimately helped to re-elect Bill
Clinton in 1996?), one can’t help but have doubts. An academic colleague of
mine, Larry Diamond of Stanford University, suggests that we have two bankrupt
political parties that together are bankrupting the country. Perhaps one or the
other of them will finally “get it,” or maybe a third-party movement
(presumably of the center) will emerge that offers voters a different path.
Alternatively, and probably most likely, we can look forward to another
election night some number of years down the road when victorious Democrats
insist that they have been given a mandate by voters who are sick of continued
Republican failures. If Americans are not angry now, just think how not angry
they will be then.

Stephen C. Craig is a professor and director of the
Political Campaigning Program in the department of political science at the
University of Florida.