Cruising the Web

Here's a statistic that might surprise you: the Republicans won a higher percentage of Senate seats than House seats in this election.

George Will celebrates the check that the GOP House will have on Obama's efforts to enact new regulations without legislative input.

Both Clarence Page and Guy Benson take note of the increased diversity that Tuesday's results bring to the GOP. It's funny how those supposedly racist tea partiers endorsed some prominent Hispanic and black GOP candidates.

James Taranto notes one important difference between the position that Bill Clinton was in after the 1994 elections and where Obama is now. Clinton failed to pass HillaryCare and so could move forward past that unpopular proposal. Obama won and enacted ObamaCare and now will be stuck defending it as more and more becomes clear of how awful the bill was.

Barney Frank seems to be furious that a Republican actually ahd the nerve to oppose him in an election. His victory speech was the most bitter, ungracious statement in many a year. One of his former supporters and voters, Margery Eagan throws in the towel on Barney Frank. It's all the more reason to celebrate that Frank will have to give up his chairman's gavel of the Financial Services Committee and will now be able to examine more carefully what went on at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Frank's support of those institutions.

Mayor Bloomberg has traveled overseas and blasted his fellow countrymen for their choices in Tuesday's election. In his tirade he told the Chinese, If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here, only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is." Way to blast your own country to our competitors, Mr. Mayor.

And this was inevitable: Hitler receives the news of Tuesday's election.

Cruising the Web

Obama aides point fingers at Rahm Emanuel to blame for Obama's mistakes. What fun.

Jon Stewart shouldn't get a pass for inviting Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, to play at his rally.

The teachers unions lost substantively this election. Good.

The "arrogance of Obama" meme gets some more traction from Politico.

Harry Reid's campaign's cooperation with Harrah's to get out the vote and pressure employees to go vote may have broken the law.

Some more data on how the results of Tuesday's elections will benefit the GOP big time when it comes to redistricting. David Freddoso now estimates that the Republicans will have control over 197 districts. That's why the WSJ is safely predicting that Democrats and liberals will soon make redistricting reform part of their agenda.

Sean Trende runs the regressions to demonstrate that the election was a rejection of Democrats in general regardless of how they voted on measures like the stimulus and ObamaCare.

Tax benefits for some companies, but not others

While you're listening to the debates over whether the Bush tax cuts should be extended even for those in the top brackets, ponder this. The Obama administration made an executive decision last year to reinterpret tax regulations to give General Motors a $45.4 billion gift.

Now it turns out, according to documents filed with federal regulators, the revamping left the car maker with another boost as it prepares to return to the stock market. It won't have to pay $45.4 billion in taxes on future profits.

The tax benefit stems from so-called tax-loss carry-forwards and other provisions, which allow companies to use losses in prior years and costs related to pensions and other expenses to shield profits from U.S. taxes for up to 20 years. In GM's case, the losses stem from years prior to when GM entered bankruptcy.

Usually, companies that undergo a significant change in ownership risk having major restrictions put on their tax benefits. The U.S. bailout of GM, in which the Treasury took a 61% stake in the company, ordinarily would have resulted in GM having such limits put on its tax benefits, according to tax experts.

But the federal government, in a little-noticed ruling last year, decided that companies that received U.S. bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't fall under that rule.

Ford must be wondering why their competitor should reap such tax forgiveness. Just remember this story when you hear that those earning over a certain amount of money shouldn't have the Bush tax cuts extended even though many of those individuals are small business owners. Some businesses deserve tax benefits; others don't.

Pelosi's plans a gift for the GOP

Word has it that Nancy Pelosi wants to stay on as the leader of the Democrats. Steny Hoyer has said that he won't oppose her. The Blue Dog Democrats have lost many from their ranks so it's not clear that they could launch a viable candidate against Pelosi.

What could be better for the Republicans to have Pelosi hang around as the liberal foil for what they're doing? Usually the House Minority Leader remains obscure to the American public, but Pelosi already has great name recognition and low approval rates. John Boehner might not inspire excitement, but he'll always have going for him the fact that he's not Nancy Pelosi.

The Democratic caucus in the House is now more to the left than it ever was since most of those who lost on Tuesday were from districts that had sizable Republican numbers. Of course, it is deeply questionable that any of those losers were truly Blue Dogs when they voted for Pelosi in the first place and many of them supported the whole Pelosi-Obama agenda. The remaining Democrats returning to the House mostly come from heavily liberal districts so they're more likely to be true believers. If they choose Nancy Pelosi as their leader after she led them into the Slough of Despond, they will deserve what they get.

Returning to the center

Charles Krauthammer makes the perceptive point that the election's results don't mean that the country has suddenly become conservative. No, what happened was that independents rejected the far-left agenda of the Democrats under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. The country is returning to the center.

Our two most recent swing cycles were triggered by unusually jarring historical events. The 2006 Republican "thumpin'" (to quote George W. Bush) was largely a reflection of the disillusionment and near-despair of a wearying war that appeared to be lost. And 2008 occurred just weeks after the worst financial collapse in eight decades.

Similarly, the massive Republican swing of 2010 was a reaction to another rather unprecedented development - a ruling party spectacularly misjudging its mandate and taking an unwilling country through a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism.

A massive government restructuring of the health-care system. An $800 billion-plus stimulus that did not halt the rise in unemployment. And a cap-and-trade regime reviled outside the bicoastal liberal enclaves that luxuriate in environmental righteousness - so reviled that the Democratic senatorial candidate in West Virginia literally put a bullet through the bill in his own TV ad. He won. Handily.

Opposition to the policies was compounded by the breathtaking arrogance with which they were imposed. Ignored was the unmistakable message from the 2009-10 off-year elections culminating in Scott Brown's anti-Obamacare victory in bluer-than-blue Massachusetts. Moreover, Obamacare and the stimulus were passed on near-total party-line votes - legal, of course, but deeply offensive to the people's sense of democratic legitimacy. Never before had anything of this size and scope been passed on a purely partisan basis. (Social Security commanded 81 House Republicans; the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 136; Medicare, 70.)

Tuesday was the electorate's first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama's agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it - and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.

This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. (Which is why he was the most popular, sought-after Democrat in the current cycle.) The lesson of Tuesday is that the American game is played between the 40-yard lines. So long as Democrats don't repeat Obama's drive for the red zone, Democrats will cyclically prevail, just as Republicans do.

Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag [P.J. O'Rourke - why not give him credit?] put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.

The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.

The president, however, remains clueless. In his next-day news conference, he had the right demeanor - subdued, his closest approximation of humility - but was uncomprehending about what just happened. The "folks" are apparently just "frustrated" that "progress" is just too slow. Asked three times whether popular rejection of his policy agenda might have had something to do with the shellacking he took, he looked as if he'd been asked whether the sun had risen in the West. Why, no, he said.

Conservatives might not like the pull to the center, but that is where national elections are won. Persuasion may be able to pull the center a bit to the right - but it takes talented politicians who can explain the policies and why they are improvements. And it takes the right policy choices.

Why Republicans can't win in California

The WSJ tries to explain why the GOP is unable to make much headway in either California and New York. They reach a conclusion that should be very depressing to anyone who wishes those states well.

At some level, this Democratic immunity can be blamed on unforced errors like the dysfunctional Empire State GOP establishment, or on the fact that California's Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by 13 points over the national average, according to exit polls. But the larger warning concerns the power that lies at the iron triangle of public employee unions, high taxes and social budgets that are larger than the economies in other states.

The fiscs in both Albany and Sacramento are perched atop a shrinking base of taxpayers, many so wealthy that they don't care what tax rates are. The highest-earning 1% funds nearly half of the New York budget. The liberal political class then feeds these dollars to its union constituents—not least in the form of gold-plated benefits and pensions—who in turn spend mightily to protect their patrons, even as the state budgets lurch ever closer to Grecian territory.

One of the most powerful forces in Golden State politics is the militant California Nurses Association, which might as well be a government workers union given the size of MediCal, the state Medicaid program. The nurses call Ms. Fiorina "Princess Carly." In New York, there's the Working Families Party, which is an adjunct of the public-sector labor movement and spent heavily to elect the Cuomo-DiNapoli-Schneiderman triumvirate.

As this agenda squeezes the middle class and drives jobs out of state, it leaves politics to a coalition of well-off knowledge professionals, public employees and lower-income workers who depend on the state for transfer payments. The well-paid elites in finance, fashion, media, tech or Hollywood tend to view environmental issues like cap and tax as enlightened social statements unrelated to economic growth.

The only hope is that Jerry Brown faces up to the reality of his state's catastrophic situation and does a Nixon-goes-to-China about-face on what has to be done to cut back on state spending, trim government pensions, and lower taxes. If not, everyone who is able will try to pull up and leave the state. They'll be left with just those paid by the government to funnel money to groups receiving aid from the government.

The problems Harry Reid will face in the Senate

The Senate is an especially difficult place for any Majority Leader to run. Think of how many recent Senate leaders have emerged diminished from that job: Bob Dole, Bill Frist, Tom Daschle, Trent Lott, and Harry Reid.

Harry Reid is going to have an especially hard time running the Senates for the next two years. He might have a majority, but a significant group of his members are up in 2012 in states that are more conservative than when these senators were elected in 2006. Fred Barnes has the list and explanation of what that means.

Ten Democrats whose seats are up in 2012 come from right-leaning states or saw their states scoot to the right this week: Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jim Webb of Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Jon Tester of Montana, and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico.

It's a good bet that some or all of them will be sympathetic to cutting spending, extending the Bush tax cuts, scaling back ObamaCare, and supporting other parts of the Republican agenda. With Democratic allies, Republicans will have operational control of the Senate more often than Majority Leader Harry Reid and Mr. Obama will.

As the debates go forward on extending the Bush tax cuts, we'll see if those senators have woken up to their potential problems in 2012 and are going to adjust their votes accordingly.

Cruising the Web

Timothy Carney breaks down the House seats that the GOP won in this election and determines that almost all of them were either seats that the Republicans had lost in either 2008 or 2006 or part of the long-term realignment in Southern or rural districts. There were five seats won in districts that split their votes in choosing a president and a representative. There were only five victories in districts that both Obama and Kerry carried. The upside of his analysis is that these districts will be easier to hold in the future than if the majority of seats had been won on Democratic turf.

With the victories on Tuesday, Republicans have won big in state legislators and a bunch of state school superintendents. This might be a chance to address needed school reform, especially since some of the necessary reforms that rein in benefits for the teachers unions or charters are actually good for the budget.

Residents of India wonder why Obama has to come to their country and to Mumbai right in the middle of Diwali. Major parts of the city will be shut off and they won't be able to have fireworks (part of the regular celebration for Diwali)in the part of the city where Obama and his entourage will be staying.

Add one more election where the result is in dispute - governor of Connecticut. The Republican, Tom Foley, has pulled ahead of the Democrat, Dannel Malloy. The AP has had to withdraw its call of Malloy as the winner.

Bernard Goldberg has a good question: why are voters only "angry" when they're voting against Democrats? They weren't considered angry or throwing a temper tantrum when they threw Republicans out of office. Then they were full of hope and optimism.

George Will explains why the election was a rejection of big government liberalism.

The NYT looks at how the Republicans began plotting their comeback, starting in January, 2009. Yes, they could.

What a shame: no UFO panel for Denver.

Advice for Speaker Boehner

The Republicans will have to demonstrate that they've learned the lessons from what Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Nancy Pelosi did wrong. The U.S. government can't be run from the House. But the House can set the agenda and be a block to the expansive agenda of the Democrats. And their first task is to give the business world confidence in what is going forth so that they will unleash the money they've been saving to help the economy grow. The WSJ has some very good advice for the House GOP>

This means focusing above all on policies for faster economic growth and job creation. In one sense, this is easier than it sounds: First, stop doing more harm. Merely putting an end to any new taxes or regulation will contribute to business confidence, removing the fear of new higher costs.

The immediate priority is extending the 2001 and 2003 tax rates, which expire on January 1. Democrats are already angling for some classic insider fudge, such as extending lower rates for the middle class permanently but only for a year for upper incomes and dividends. Or perhaps raising rates only on those who make $1 million or more.

The best growth policy and politics is to extend all of the lower rates permanently. Temporary tax cuts don't provide the same assurance for business investment or hiring, and the top marginal rates on income and capital investment are the ones that most affect economic growth.

Conceding the class war argument after picking up 60 or more House seats would also be a terrible signal of political weakness. If Republicans hold firm on tax cuts for everybody, they can force Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats facing re-election in 2012 to oppose an extension for the middle class simply to punish the rich. We think they will fold.

House Republicans will also find political running room to cut spending. President Obama will want to improve his own dreadful fiscal record going into 2012, and Mr. Boehner can use that leverage to reduce domestic discretionary spending to 2008 levels, or lower.

Here is where we'll find out how much Republicans in both the House and Senate have learned from their own failures of the last decade. The culture of spending runs deep in both parties, especially among the lifers on the Appropriations Committee. Rather than reappoint one of the spending cardinals, Mr. Boehner can send a message to the tea party by appointing a younger spending hawk as Chairman.

The same goes for ending earmarks, which is as much about political symbolism as it is saving money. If Republicans want the public to support their budget-cutting, they are going to have to show they can also discipline themselves. Presumptive Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke yesterday about extending a moratorium on earmarks, and Mr. Boehner can underscore that message by naming an earmark critic like Arizona's Jeff Flake to the spending panel.

Republicans can also help the economy by shining the light of hearings on costly new rules and mandates. A friend of ours suggests that the GOP devote each week to highlighting one way that government is inhibiting investment and hiring—say, the slow-roll on Gulf drilling permits, or obstacles to exploring the Marcellus Shale gas deposits, or the next burdensome ObamaCare rule, or the FCC's re-regulation of the telecom industry.

It sounds like a very good start. Paul Ryan has some good ideas. Here is one to help start reining in federal health care spending.

He'd introduce Medicare vouchers, for example, that could lower prices by turning seniors into informed bargain hunters for healthcare. The concept is that market discipline would lower prices, giving middle class consumers more buying power to cushion the lower benefits that, Ryan says, are inevitable legacy of future promises that can't be met.

Holman Jenkins has another proposal for a similar method to address the "ObamaCare train wreck" headed our way since we are not going to be able to repeal the thing as long as Obama is in the White House.

Happily, a path back to the future exists that just might be politically actionable in a divided Washington. It involves not repealing ObamaCare but adding something to it—an optional federal charter for health insurers.

Under this charter, let's permit insurers to design their policies free of ObamaCare's mandated benefit levels and free of state regulation. Let's let these policies be purchasable with pre-tax dollars and allow them to satisfy ObamaCare's mandate requiring individuals to have insurance and employers to provide it.

Yes, we know the ObamaCare mandate is objectionable on philosophical and constitutional grounds, but since we're seemingly bent on taxing ourselves to make medical care available to those who can't or won't pay for it themselves, an individual mandate perhaps is the only way to short-circuit a collapse toward government-run, single-payer health care under the burden of free-riding.

What's the first thing the new nationally-chartered insurers would do? Rush out cheap, high-deductible policies, allaying some of the resentment that the mandate provokes among the young, healthy and footloose affluent. At the same time, these policies would quickly re-revolutionize ObamaCare from within. Here's why:

First, these folks could buy the minimalist coverage that (for various reasons) actually makes sense for them. They wouldn't be forced to buy gold-plated coverage they don't need so the money can subsidize the old and sick (the hidden tax logic of ObamaCare).

Secondly, this relatively healthy cohort would be covered for a rare major injury or illness. The rest of us wouldn't have to pick up the tab.

Thirdly, and when paired with a health savings account—as would happen as employers large and small rush to take advantage of a better option than ObamaCare now affords them—it would provide a much-needed kick of consumer discipline to the medical complex's pants, which has always been the conservative alternative to a creeping government takeover of medicine.

There's already a base of sensible Democrats who've championed exactly such reforms. And because it can be sold as expanding the options under ObamaCare and lessening the burden of an unpopular mandate, a lot of other Democrats (who can read the election returns) might vote for it too. Even more so when they realize it would allow backing off the unaffordable subsidies required to make ObamaCare's individual mandate go down with the public.

This sounds like a very intriguing idea. What young people need is catastrophic health insurance just like they need collision coverage for their cars. Instead of mandating that everyone buy the same one-size-fits-all plan, let's get some competition in the marketplace. If people have control of their own health-care spending, they'll exercise some discipline and that is just what our health care market needs instead of everyone relying on third-party coverage which drives costs way up.

These are interesting ideas and would be a great start for the GOP in the House. Maybe they won't be able to enact such proposals, but they'll get the conversation started and the ground prepared for when the Republicans once again control the White House.

Success, but not total

Expectations were so high, that Republicans are feeling perhaps let down that it wasn't even bigger. But let's not let disappointment about California or Nevada get us down. The swing in the house is historic and a major repudiation of the liberal agenda pursued so doggedly by Nancy Pelosi. The Republicans have a crop of very promising figures who should excite conservatives. Marco Rubio will be an inspiring new voice on the national scene. Taking the governor's seats in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico will give conservatives a chance to demonstrate what their policy preferences can do for a state's economy.

In my state, North Carolina, Republicans have won control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since a federal army occupied the state during Reconstruction. [Correction: there was a brief two-year period from 1896-1898 when the Republicans fused with the Populists to control the government. Then a vicious white supremacy campaign in 1898 allowed the Democrats to regain control.]

And don't forget the impact that the Republicans local victories will have on redistricting.

One lesson that conservative voters should learn is to not fall for someone who says all the right things on selected issues, but has lots of baggage as a candidate. Losing Nevada hurts - was Sharron Angle the only person in Nevada who could lose to Harry Reid? Or would Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian have turned out to be just as vulnerable to Reid's negative ads? We just don't know. And Christine O'Donnell? Enough has been said about her. At least the GOP won't have to be cringing for the next six years over gaffes by Angle and O'Donnell. They'll be gone from the scene and we'll still have very credible new senators like Ron Johnson and Pat Toomey who may become conservative stars on the scene.

The victories of Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer in California sure are disappointing. Well, the state will reap some more of what the Democrats have been sowing there. And at least we have a marked example that money alone will not win elections after Whitman reportedly spent about $140 million of her own money to try to win that race.

And 2012 should be interesting. There will be incumbent Senate Democrats from red states like Montana, Virginia, Nebraska, and North Dakota up for reelection. We'll see if senators who won in the 2006 wave election will be able to hold on. Such pondering will have to wait a bit while we see how the next two years shake out.

Oops, Obama: never mind about that whole "enemies" thing

President Obama is trying to walk back that whole "enemies" dig at the Republicans when he urged Hispanic listeners to punish their "enemies." He says now that he should have called them opponents, not enemies. But he still would like to punish them.

And I said, well, you can't punish your friends when -- the folks who've been supporting it. Now, I did also say if you're going to punish somebody, punish your enemies, and I probably should have used the word, "opponents" instead of enemies. Now the Republicans are saying that I'm calling them enemies. What I'm saying is you're an opponent of this particular provision, comprehensive immigration reform, which is something very different.

Perhaps it would behoove Obama to remember the words of infinitely superior man whom he purports to admire and want to emulate.

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

It's not the economy, stupid

Democrats will console themselves as they absorb whatever happens in today's election by the mantra that they were doomed to lose seats because of the state of the economy. But that wasn't written in cement. Fred Barnes reminds us that, while the President's party might have lost seats this year due to a sluggish economy, it was not absolutely certain that they would lose the House and come close to losing the Senate.

Yes, the economy is always a factor in elections. But a wretched economy doesn't automatically doom Washington's ruling party to disaster in a midterm election. Since World War II, the average midterm loss by the president's party is 24 House and four Senate seats. In 1982, despite a deep recession and joblessness above 10%, Republicans lost only 26 House seats and none in the Senate. The difference between 1982 and today is that President Reagan's policies—cutting spending and taxes, firing striking air-traffic controllers—were popular.

And, by the way, a prosperous economy doesn't guarantee midterm success. In 1994, Republicans capitalized on President Clinton's liberal policies to win a rout despite a generally strong economy.

If people had had faith that the Democrats' measures on the economy were going to lead to economic growth, Democratic losses today would still happen, but they wouldn't be in the numbers we're likely to see tonight. Gallup wouldn't be showing the biggest Republican lead among likely voters in its polling history.

To test whether it's all about the unemployment numbers, test a contrafactual history. What if Obama had governed like his rhetoric in 2004? What if he'd pulled in Republicans from the first in crafting the stimulus bill instead of telling them right away "I won" and then excluding their ideas from the table? Even if they had passed a similar stimulus bill but added in just enough of Republican ideas to gain some Republican votes, it wouldn't have seen as just a partisan porkfest stuffed full of measures pulled from the liberal wishlist they'd been keeping in a drawer for just such an occasion. And then, what if the Democrats had responded differently to Scott Brown's victory earlier this year? Barnes imagines what could have happened.

There's a simple way to test whether Democratic policies, rather than the economy, are the dominant factor in the midterm election: Consider the alternative. After Mr. Brown was elected on Jan. 19, Mr. Obama could have abandoned his full-throttle blitz to pass health-care reform and other legislation, instead seeking compromise with Republicans. The bipartisan route, adored by independents, was open to him.

Mr. Obama could have yielded on health care and settled for a scaled-back bill that provided coverage for the uninsured and those with pre-existing conditions. He also could have proposed meaningful spending cuts or a second stimulus that included broad-based tax incentives for private investment. And he could have chosen to extend all the Bush tax cuts for another year or two.

On each of those issues, Mr. Obama would have attracted significant Republican backing—and he and his party wouldn't be in such dire straits. Democrats would still lose House and Senate seats, but not nearly as many.

It is not only conservative commentators who realize how badly the Democrats erred in their overreach. One of their own members is making the same consideration. John Fund talked to a Representative Brian Baird, a six-term Democrat from Washington state, who is retiring this year. And he's quite frank about the mistakes he saw his own party make.

"It's been an authoritarian, closed leadership. That style plus a general groupthink mentality didn't work when Tom DeLay called the shots," Mr. Baird says. "We've made some of the same damn mistakes, and we were supposed to be better. That's the heartbreak."

Mr. Baird, 54, is a loyal Democrat who voted for all of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's legislative priorities, including the stimulus bill, cap and trade and ObamaCare. But he admits all three have serious flaws.

Mr. Baird recalls that he was "very excited" when his party took control of Congress in 2006, but he saw ominous signs early on. Before the 2006 election, he says, Mrs. Pelosi had 30 members working on a rules package to make the House more ethical and deliberative. "We abandoned all that work after the election, and leaders told us we should trust them to clean things up. I don't know a single member of the Democratic caucus who saw the final rules package before they voted on it."

Democrats also watered down efforts to practice fiscal responsibility. "We initially had numbers a bit more honest than the Republicans—we at least included war costs in the budget," he says. "Now we're authorizing programs for three years instead of five in an attempt to pretend we're saving money."

When President Obama was elected in 2008, Mr. Baird was again optimistic that Democrats could bring real reform. But fierce Republican partisanship and the White House decision not to focus on job creation as its "number one, two and three" priority dashed that hope.

"Obama decided we weren't going to have a highway transportation bill because it might have required a gas tax increase," he recalls. After passing a misdirected stimulus bill, Mr. Obama made the fatal error of pushing forward with other priorities: cap and trade, financial services reform, ObamaCare. Each became compromised quickly.

"You don't get real reform by pandering to every special interest. With cap and trade we wound up with a bill that didn't accomplish much, was enormously complicated and expensive." Mr. Baird is especially upset that "good solid members will lose this fall because they took a tough vote for a cap-and-trade bill that never made it through the Senate." He has told environmental groups that they lost sight of the goal of reducing carbon emissions by focusing on the minutia of regulation to achieve it.

He continues his criticism of the financial reform that didn't deal with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Although he voted for ObamaCare, he is still critical of how it was crafted and all that it entailed. He recognizes that Pelosi and the Democratic leadership thought they were sacrificing a few Blue Dogs and ended up selling out their entire majority.

And that supposedly golden-tongued president who was going to make all the difference between 2010 and 1994 with his campaigning for endangered Democrats? Well, he's turned out not to be so inspirational. Dorothy Rabinowitz reminds us of his descent into churlishness.

Whatever the outcome of today's election, this much is clear: It will be a long time before Americans ever again decide that the leadership of the nation should go to a legislator of negligible experience—with a voting record, as state and U.S. senator, consisting largely of "present," and an election platform based on glowing promises of transcendence. A platform vowing, unforgettably, to restore us—a country lost to arrogance and crimes against humanity—to a place of respect in the world.

We would win back our allies who, so far as we knew, hadn't been lost anywhere. Though once Mr. Obama was elected and began dissing them with returned Churchill busts and airy claims of ignorance about the existence of any special relationship between the United States and Great Britain, the British, at least, have been feeling less like pals of old.

In the nearly 24 months since Mr. Obama's election, popular enthusiasm for him has gone the way of his famous speeches—lyrical, inspired and unburdened by the weight of concrete thought.

About the ingratitude of Democratic voters the president brooded in a September Rolling Stone interview. "If people now want to take their ball and go home," he declared, "that tells me folks weren't serious in the first place." His vice president, Joe Biden, had a few days earlier contributed his own distinctive effort to seduce Democrats back to the fold by telling them to "stop whining."

The results of this charm campaign remain to be seen. What's clear now is that we've heard quite enough about the "angry electorate"—a peculiarly reductive view of citizens who've managed to read all the signs and detect an administration they were not prepared to live with.

Nothing wakened their instincts more than the administration's insistence on its health-care bill—its whiff of totalitarian will, its secretiveness, its display of cold assurance that the new president's social agenda trumped everything.

But it was about far more than health-care reform, or joblessness, or the great ideological divide between the president and the rest of the country. It was about an accumulation of facts quietly taken in that told Americans that the man they had sent to the White House had neither the character or the capacity to lead the country.

Their president was the toast of Europe, masterful before the adoring crowds—but one who had remarkably soon proved unable to inspire, in citizens at home, any belief that he was a leader they could trust. Or one who trusted them or their instincts. His Democratic voters were unhappy? They, and their limited capacities, were to blame.

These are conspicuous breaks in the armor of civility and charm that candidate Obama once showed—and those breaks are multiplying.

At a Democratic fund-raiser a few weeks ago, the president noted, in explanation for the Democrats' lack of enthusiasm, that facts and science and argument aren't winning the day because "we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared." The suggestion was clear: The Democrats' growing resistance to his policies was a product of the public's lack of intellectual capacity and their fears.

Rabinowitz then goes on to remind us of how FDR rallied the public during the Great Depression and World War Two by speaking to the public in a respectful manner to educate them, as in his "Map Speech" at the low point of our efforts in 1942 to educate them about the status of the war around the world. We just can't imagine President Obama speaking to the public honestly and respectfully in that way about the health care bill. He lectured us and lied to us about what the bill means. And he ignored what the American people were clearly trying to tell him about their objections to the bill. And he encouraged the Democratic leadership to make the necessary backroom deals and to take advantage of every legislative maneuver they could find to cram through the bill without a new vote in the Senate that wouldn't withstand a filibuster.

Think back to Fred Barnes' alternate history and you can well imagine a totally different climate for today's election. With the same unemployment rate, but a more conciliatory president and leadership, the Democrats might still be facing a continued majority. Unfortunately for them they chose otherwise. Now the Republicans are reaping the benefit of the public's disgust. It will be up to them to show that they've learned the lessons from the mistakes of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and Nancy Pelosi. Otherwise, we'll be saying that this was the high water mark of the GOP comeback.

The teachers union is never about the children

Here is a great example at one blogger's school of what really matters to the teachers union. Here is what Right on the Left Coast reports,

We have a librarian at my school only 2-1/2 days a week, as she must split her time between 2 high schools. When she's not there, parent volunteers staff the library so that it's available to students.

A union grievance was filed, and today we were told that the library cannot be open anymore when she's not there. Teachers can take their classes in there, but books cannot be checked out. The library will no longer be available for students to do make-up tests in on the days when our official librarian isn't on site.

The next time a teachers union tells you something is "for the children", you remember this story.

As I have written before, the teachers union are like any other union - they're out for themselves, not the children. This story about the union working hard to make sure that children can't check out books tells us all that we need to know about the union.

Ah, the consistency of E. J. Dionne

It is almost too easy to find E. J. Dionne contradicting himself as he criticizes Republicans for what he once praised in Democrats, but here is his newest entry, courtesy of William Voegli.

E.J. Dionne, "No Final Victories," November 1, 2010: "Much of the post-election analysis will focus on ideology, on whether Obama moved 'too far left' and embraced too much 'big government.' All this will overlook how moderate Obama's program actually is. It will also pretend that an anxiety rooted in legitimate worry about the country's long-term economic future is the result of doctrine rather than experience... The classic middle-ground voter who will swing this election -- moderate, independent, suburban -- has always been suspicious of dogmatic promises that certain big ideas would give birth to a utopian age."

E.J. Dionne, "A New Era for America," November 5, 2008: "Barack Obama's sweeping electoral victory cannot be dismissed merely as a popular reaction to an economic crisis or as a verdict on an unpopular president ... In choosing Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress, the country put a definitive end to a conservative era ... Since the Nixon era, conservatives have claimed to speak for the 'silent majority.' Obama represents the future majority... [T]he [economic] crisis affords [Obama] an opportunity granted few presidents to reshape the country's assumptions, change the terms of debate and transform our politics."

When voters choose a Democrat, they're making a definitive and transformative statement. If they vote for Republicans...not so much.

More good advice

This series of advice for young'uns pondering their career choices is frighteningly accurate. Here is the latest: So you want to get a Ph.D. in Political Science?

He's not a Keynesian; he was born in Hawaii!

Ah, a funny sampling of those at the Comedy Center rally who are very upset to see a sign by a person from Second City asking whether Obama is a Keynesian.

Moral indignation trumps actual knowledge.

Why public sector union campaigning should trouble us

While we're supposed to get our panties all in a knot over the $30 million or so that Karl Rove's group has spent on the election this year, that number is dwarfed by how much public employee unions are spending on this election. Totaling up the spending from AFSCME, SEIU, and the NEA and they're spending about $172 million to elect politicians who will then turn around and work to give those union members better salaries and benefits. Jeff Jacoby explains why this is such a pernicious trend.

“It’s their money!’’ the president of AFSCME declares, and the heads of the NEA and SEIU would presumably agree, but where does “their money’’ come from? From satisfied customers paying for goods and services they voluntarily purchased? From profits earned by designing safer cars, serving tastier meals, developing cleaner fuels? From investing prudently in the marketplace?

Of course not. Every dollar the government pays its employees is a dollar the government taxes away from somebody else. As it is, public employees generally make more in salary and benefits than employees in the private economy: For Americans working in state and local government jobs, total compensation last year averaged $39.66 per hour — 45 percent more than the private sector average of $27.42. (For federal employees, the advantage is even greater.) Which means that AFSCME and the other public-sector unions are using $172 million that came from taxpayers to elect politicians who will take even more money from taxpayers, in order to further expand the public sector, multiply the number of government employees, and increase their pay and perks.

Campaign contributions from public-sector unions, National Review editor Rich Lowry writes, drive “a perpetual feedback loop of large-scale patronage.’’ Not only don’t the unions deny it, they trumpet it. “We’re the big dog,’’ brags Larry Scanlon, AFSCME’s political director. “The more members coming in, the more dues coming in, the more money we have for politics.’’

Unlike labor unions in the private sector, government unions can reward politicians who give them what they want and punish those who don’t. The United Auto Workers has no say in hiring or firing the president of the Ford Motor Company, but public-sector unions like AFSCME and the NEA can use the political process to help elect the “management’’ that will have to negotiate with them. The unions flex their muscle to push not only for ever-more-lavish wages and benefits (including the exorbitant pensions and health plans that are devouring government budgets), but also for more government hiring and bigger government programs.

That's why public sector unions are behind measures to increase taxes in Washington state. This is what they will always want - more taxes from all of us to pay for their benefits. Americans are just waking up to this dangerous cycle and we're learning how dangerous that patronage feedback loop is. Just as civil service reform to end the corruption behind the spoils system was a necessary cleansing in the 19th century, addressing the pernicious power of the public service unions is a necessity in this century.

One more creepy detail about Charlie Crist

One thing we can be thankful for this election cycle: the rise of Marco Rubio has not only given the GOP a new start on the national stage, but it has also exposed Charlie Crist for the creep that he is. Remember that just two years ago, this guy was thought to be such a strong leader that he was on the short list for John McCain's vice presidential candidate. Now, two years later, we know that Crist has absolutely no principles. He will do whatever he can to get elected whether it's switching parties, making dishonest allegations about his opponent, or scheming to get his Democratic opponent to bow out of the election. When Kendrick Meek wouldn't go along, Crist made sure that the story got out just to undermine Meek as much as possible.

And now we get this little tidbit of how he tried to convince Meek to drop out by giving the Democrat, Crist's sister's cross.

“He said, ‘If you were to drop out and work with me and help me we together can beat Marco Rubio,’” Mr. Meek recalled. “I said, ‘Governor, that’s a non-starter.’

“Then he dug down into his pocket and pulled a small cross out,” Mr. Meek continued. “He said his sister gave it to him and he wanted to give it to me so I would think about it.”

Who does things like that? The guy is just creepy and it will be a pleasure to see him sink into a well-deserved political oblivion after this election.

Cruising the Web

Mark Hemingway reports on how some Democrats along with their union masters would like the government to take over our 401(k)s. That Senators Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders would even hold hearings on such a proposal is scary indeed. If they thought people are angry over government moving in on health care, imagine the uproar if the Democrats pushed for a government take-over of our retirement savings.

One more reason to cheer for the defeat of Harry Reid - his forced retirement could reopen the Yucca Mountain proposal. It is about time for some rationality on storage of nuclear waste.

Hans Spakovsky explains how the Alaska Division of Elections' decision to allow lists of write-in candidates' names to voters violates not only Alaskan regulations, but also federal law. But of course don't expect the Obama Justice Department to do anything about that.

Here's a selection of the worst and best political ads this year.

It's usually not good for a speaker to engage with hecklers, but if you are going to do it, at least have the facts on your side. So when President Obama decided to respond to some hecklers who want more funding for global AIDS, he should have done better than try to blame the Republicans. After all, it was his much reviled predecessor, approved by a Republican Congress, who tripled spending on fighting AIDS around the world. But it's just part of Obama's style to encourage such division as telling hecklers to go heckle the "other side."

The LA Times profiles a small Michigan community where a tea party-like group took over the government. We're supposed to be horrified at the cuts that they have made in the town's spending. Somehow, canceling a free giveaway of Halloween candy to the town's children doesn't upset me all that much. Such community events are all very nice, but when a town doesn't have the money for such extras. Towns across the nation will have to get used to such austerity programs as we recover from years and years of reckless spending.

Ed Morrissey takes apart the lameness of the Alaskan CBS affiliate's excuse-making for being caught on tape strategizing how to make Joe Miller look bad through their coverage of the Palin rally for him. They claim that they were talking about what others might do to sabotage Miller, but they ignore the first-person pronouns they were using.

Matthew Kaminski looks at why the Democrats are so scared of Marco Rubio. Clinton's desperation efforts to get Meek off the ticket in order to stop Rubio betrays how worried they are about Rubio getting on the public stage. It rather reminds me of how the Senate Democrats pulled out all the stops to block the confirmation of Miguel Estrada to the DC Circuit Court. They knew that this would put him on the fast track to the Supreme Court just as Rubio's victory tomorrow could put him on the fast track perhaps six years from now for a place on the GOP ticket.

The Obama administration ignoring human rights abuses of children

Even though the Congress has passed a law two years ago to institute penalties on regimes that employ child soldiers, the Obama administration has decided not to do so. Rather, they prefer to give them a pass for this year and hope that countries such as Sudan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen will change their ways. The Cable at Foreign Policy has the report from a conference call in which Samantha Power, the director of human rights on the National Security Council tried to convince upset congressional staffers and human rights activists that this is an optimal policy.

Power defended the president's decision to waive penalties under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008, which was set to go into effect this month, for Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sudan, and Yemen. She argued that identifying these countries as violators while giving them one more year to stop recruiting underage troops would help make progress.

"Our judgment was brand them, name them, shame them, and then try to leverage assistance in a fashion to make this work," said Power, adding that this was the first year the Obama administration had to make a decision on this issue, so they want to give the violator countries one more year to show progress.

"In year one to just say we're out of here, best of luck, we wish you well... Our judgment is we'll work from inside the tent."

But Hill staffers and advocacy leaders on the call weren't buying what Power was selling. They were upset that they learned about the decision via The Cable, and challenged Power on each point that she made.

For example, Jo Becker, advocacy director for the children's rights division at Human Rights Watch, pointed out that the law was passed two years ago.

"The law was enacted in 2008, so countries have had two years to know that this was coming down the pike," she said. "So the consequences of the law really shouldn't be taking anyone by surprise, so to say countries need a year to get their act together is really problematic."

She also disputed Power's contention on the call that "there's evidence that our diplomatic engagement and this military assistance has resulted in some changes."

"The U.S. has been providing training for years already with no real change on the ground," said Becker. "We haven't seen significant changes in practice so far from the engagement approach, so that seems to indicate to me we need to change the approach, maybe withholding programs until we see changes on the ground."

But perhaps it should be enough that Barack Obama is president. Weren't we told that his mere presence would change the behavior of rogue nations?