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American Zeitgeist
Author: BobR    Date: 05/19/2010 12:32:33

Pundits love to pontificate on what they believe Americans think. To them, we can all be boiled down into just a handful of "types", and in their minds our feelings are easily read and our reactions easily predicted. There are specific segments that can certainly be counted on to have knee-jerk reactions to events (typically the arbiters of the left and right), but how most Americans will react is much more fluid. Like clouds they are always changing, and differ depending on where you are in the country.

The elections held yesterday tell a few tales, mostly of a "vote the bums" out variety, but not so much an anti-democrat or anti-liberal variety.

The biggest surprise is that Arlen Spector lost in the Democratic primary to Joe Sestak. I'll always respect Arlen for being one of the few Republicans (at the time) to stand up to Bush when Bush was trying to usurp Congress's power. However, his change of parties seemed disingenuous and self-interested, and I'm guessing the voters felt he might not be a "real" Democrat.

Blanche Lincoln also "lost" in that she didn't win a majority and is headed for a runoff against a more liberal opponent. After the counting, her lead is less than the statistical margin of error. A third candidate in the race siphoned off enough votes to be a "spoiler"; the runoff should be interesting to see which of the remaining two candidates get those votes.

On the other side of the ideological coin, Teabagger Rand Paul won the Republican primary over GOP-anointed Trey Grayson. This is also a loss for Mitch McConnell, who supported Grayson. Should McConnell be worried? Probably...

The Rand Paul victory should also be a wake up call to liberals and progressives who gleefully think the teabaggers are going to be spoilers for the Republicans. They are only going to be spoilers if they run as third parties in the general election. If they are winning Republican primaries in heavily Republican areas, things are only going to get uglier in Washington.

There are also the smaller races to consider. The Tea Party is doing something the Green Party was never able to do - build a foundation from the ground up. Perhaps because they understand that it takes work and dedication; simply running a presidential candidate every 4 years will not create a viable 3rd party. Keep an eye on your local races.

For now, the supporters of the tea party seem to be almost entirely the right-wing of the GOP, not "independents" or true Libertarians as they claim. The predicted demise of the Democrats in this election year has not gone as predicted. One of the races that Democrats were expected to lose was the special election for late Paul Murtha's seat. Democrat Mark Critz won that seat, and won it by a healthy margin (8 points). Given the political analysis of the American zeitgeist by the pundits, this should have been an easy Republican win.

To me, this all says that the voters are becoming a bit more polarized. With more liberal and progressive candidates winning, and the tea party candidates winning, it seems that the voters are tired of the squishy middle. They want action, and they want it now. What exactly that action should be varies based on their political ideology, but it seems that watered down legislation that emerges after months of negotiations is NOT making anyone happy.

Still to be determined in November: Whether the majority of voters want to shift Congress to the left or to the right. That's a mindset that no one can predict at this point. I'm hoping, though, that as ugly stories like this, this, and this become part of the discussion, that there will be a voter backlash against this kind of stupid hatred and suspicion promulgated by the tea partiers and right-wing pundits.


 

63 comments (Latest Comment: 05/20/2010 01:17:42 by trojanrabbit)
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