Well, my election day predictions if not right on the mark were reasonably close. The Democrats have obviously worked on their ground game more than the Republicans in Florida and Ohio (a place maybe ruined for the GOP for a decade by the state party) while Virginia has tilted from a Republican stronghold to a real battleground. And North Carolina, often seen as a GOP state, has a history of batting from both sides of the plate.
I really think the debates sealed the win for Barack Obama, where he avoided sounding like a free-spending radical liberal as portrayed by his opponents and John McCain failed to make himself into some sort of alternative.
I don't think the country has tilted left or rejected conservatism. The voters bought into Obama's self-description of a pragmatist -- and a non-ideological problem-solver is what people really want. They have also roundly rejected Republicans who don't behave like Republicans. I think voters are relatively okay with politicians on both sides of the political spectrum as long as they act like they're supposed to. Republicans who go to Congress and spend us out of house and home end up getting spanked, and that's what's happened for two elections in a row.
The question is how each party should respond in order to maximize their gains for 2010.
Democrats: I fear Obama got off on the wrong foot as president-elect by trying to get Rep. Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. Emanuel is as partisan as they get, not the sort of guy we wanted to see in such a position. The new president is going to have to govern as the man we saw in the debates, not as the man who voted as senator, attended church in Chicago or went to meetings of community activists. He will also have to stand up to Congress. Bill Clinton found out early that even though he had the House on his side in 1992, there remains an institutional struggle for power between the legislative and executive branches of government. Guaranteed that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have big plans now that their guy is in the White House. Obama might not want what they're peddling.
Smart move, making John McCain a frequent if informal advisor on national security.
Dumb move, since John Paul Stevens is likely to resign from the U.S. Supreme Court within weeks of Obama's inauguration, he chooses Bill or Hillary.
Republicans: As mentioned above, the GOP got smoked because neither its president nor members of Congress governed as they said they would. They spent like crazy and opened the door for Democratic mis-steps to send the economy into a tailspin. This year's financial mess would have been much easier to handle if the government's house had been in order, but it was not. Therefore, the people responsible have to go and new leadership has to come in. I don't think a majority of people in the country take Sarah Palin seriously, but she does paint the proper path back to representation of the common man. That's the direction the GOP has to go. The best hopes for party leadership right now are Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal -- who can widen the path and take it farther -- and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who needs to stop trying to be a conservative and go back to being the pragmatist he once was. They also clearly have to find a way to reach the 20-something voter, whose brains are either in or just removed from the leftist college swamps. These people, mainly because of near-total control of mass media by the left, aren't even exposed to conservative ideals.
Smart move: working with Obama to help shape his policies for the good of the country.
Dumb move: seeking revenge for how Democrats treated Bush and using their hold on Senate cloture by fighting him tooth-and-nail every step of the way.
