a little OT, perspectives on election

[MBS]

Yes, a little OT, but here are two opeds on election to provide perspective.

1. I thought this oped, by local Globe columnist Scott Lehigh, put the Repub spinmeisters in perspective Despite the fact that it basically outlined the battle to come, its reality-based perspective had a calming effect on me.


http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2010/11/05/listening_to_voters_with_one_ear/

some excerpts:

WE’VE NOW had our first look at the pattern of pose-and-parry politics that may well dominate the next two years. If opening moves are any indication, Republicans will repackage conservative nostrums as the clearly expressed wish of the people — and urge the president to pay heed.President Obama, meanwhile, will profess a desire to work with Republicans, even while highlighting the consequences of their plans.

The Republicans would listen to the American people, Boehner pledged. . .
McConnell was just as quick to proclaim the GOP the people’s tribune. “We’ll work with the administration when they agree with the people — and confront them when they don’t,’’ he said. That sounded less like an offer to meet Obama halfway than a declaration that the GOP was ready to rumble — the more so since McConnell recently declared that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.’’

But back to Boehner’s promises to listen. Some cause for skepticism soon reared its head. Queried about his intentions regarding the new health care law, Boehner replied: “I believe that the health care bill . . . will kill jobs in America, ruin the best health care system in the world, and bankrupt our country. That means that we have to do everything we can to try to repeal this bill . . . ’’ It hardly need be said that that is an ideological, and not an analytical, judgment. Certainly no credible analysis has arrived at a similarly apocalyptic conclusion. . . .

. . .
To defend his policies in the face of resurgent Republicans, Obama will have to put his faith in the force of facts regularly and effectively communicated. But that job may be made easier by an inclination toward overreach on the part of his newly energized opponents, who, to steal Simon and Garfunkel’s melodious maxim, seem to hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest.

2. from Mother Jones
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/11/liberal-overreach
Kevin Drum asks whether election was really a seismic shift (note that this was written the day BEFORE the election:

But there's also one other thing: the backlash against Obama probably isn't all that strong to begin with. As I mentioned on Friday, basic structural factors suggest a Democratic loss of 45 seats in the House this year. If Democrats instead lose 55, that's evidence of a backlash, but not actually a very big one. It means that we're still fundamentally the 50-50 nation we all talked about so much after the 2000 election, and a small shift among a small number of voters makes a big difference. It's true that voters are frustrated and tired, but I think it's a mistake to allow TV shoutfests to exaggerate just how frustrated and tired they really are.