Midterm Election Results
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2010-11-03/midterm-election-results
Republicans are back on top in the House, gained considerable clout in the Senate and picked up at least 10 gubernatorial seats. Many of last night’s winners said voters are sending them to Washington to cut the deficit, rollback tax increases and reduce government regulations, and concerns about the economy seemed to have been the driving issue in many races. Tea party favorites picked up wins in Kentucky, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Political analysts weigh in on last night’s results, key races that are still undecided, and what the election results may mean for President Obama.
Guests
Kate Zernike
national correspondent, The New York Times.
Ron Elving
Washington editor for NPR.
John Dickerson
chief political correspondent for Slate.com and CBS political analyst and contributor. Author of "On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star."
Andrew Kohut
director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Comments
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I get the fact that a lot of people hate the health care bill. What I don't get is how so many people are angry at the high rate of unemployment and then vote Republican.
After all these are the same people who brought you the savings and loan mess, outsourced millions of jobs to China and India and drove allowed our manufacturing base and its millions of jobs to go offshore while importing millions more illegal aliens to drive down the cost of Americans who are fortunate enough to still have jobs.
The republican idea of a good economy is one in which businesses and the executives who run them make higher and higher profits and bonuses while sending more jobs overseas and paying no taxes.
Of course first up on the agenda is reinstituting the Bush tax cuts. When that happens please remember that these are the same folks who were complaining about the deficit but have no problem giving away trillions of dollars in tax cuts.
This makes absolutely no sense.
I guess that's what happens when you only have two choices as illustrated by Chomsky's "Manufactured Choice".
If there's only Bubblegum and Peppermint and you want ice cream, you're gonna have one or the other. There's no Cookies and Cream in American politics. Personally, I don't care for either flavor but those are the only two on the ballot.
I guess a lot of Americans get sick of Bubblegum and then choose Peppermint thinking it'll taste different than it did the last time they tried it. Then in two years, they try Bubblegum again. yeah, it still taste the same.
I think a lot of people will miss my point.
So, what do we do now that the Republicans can not just use rhetoric, but actually commence working. They can not repeal the much needed Healthcare, as the president can veto it and they do not have 2/3 necesasary to override his veto. They are not willing to cut the big three and will not cut defense. So, let the two year shell game begin and tell the phony crybaby it is time to earn his paycheck instead of sitting back like a petulant child the past two years.
Good heavens, couldn't Diane find a single conservative commentator this morning ?
What a glorious election result across the country! A return to sanity for the USA. As a resident of MD, it is a pity we have been left behind in our liberal backwash. Most of VA seems to have awakened from their stupor, so perhaps there is hope for us in 2012. It is a pity that Diane doesn't have some conservative voices on her show, but she probably can't handle it emotionally.
The republicans don't have to do anything for the next two years - they are under no pressure at all. Boener even left slip that the next job is to defeat Obama in 2012 - NOT fix anything. They will propose absurd bills that won't get past the Senate or the President, then they will run in two years on the slogan that they had the right idea, but were blocked by the remaining democrats. They may also have the advantage of an economy in full recovery thanks to the efforts of the now lame duck congress. Of course THEY will take the credit.
You guys will continue crying to the end of time. What negative comment have they made about you and yours? As your girl in Nevada said, man up.
Can one of your guests please comment on the New Yorker article from the 8/30 issue that indicated that the Tea Party movement isn't actually a grass roots movement but is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers? Isn't this a little like the position that "what's good for GM is good for the country"?
Frustration is the obvious word for this election. What I find baffling is that in just 2 years the electorate seems to have forgotten that the Republicans under Bush took us to war - an unfunded mandate. Gave us NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND -an unfunded mandate. Gave us tax cuts for the rich (not the middle class - their favorite small business owners)- an unfunded mandate!!! If the Republicans keep it up they will break the back of the hard working Americans who really do support this country including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Taxes went down under Obama! Nobody has said that enough.
I really think that if the Democrats had run on their accomplishments, we wouldn't be in this sea of red we find ourselves in. Facts: Obama brought us the largest middle class tax cut in history, he actually lowered the deficit (!), instituted wall st reform, consumer credit protection, school loan reform, and of course health care reform. I'm leaving out several things.
Also, the dems should have forced the vote on extending the tax cuts for the wealthy before the election.
Bush lost Congress in 2006 and nothing stuck to the Democrats over the next two years.
2012 will be just like 2010, a referendum on Obama [especially in Illinois], and Republicans have little incentive to do anything. In fact, why should they when Obama will take all the credit. Politically it wouldn't make sense. Moreover, the Senate is full of entrenched liberal Democrats. How does anything get done anyway?
Young voters voted by not voting. Obama's celebrity came to an end as his competence to govern never materialized. Apparently Obama's brilliance can only shine if he is able to govern with only those who agree with him completely.
At 2,000 pages, healthcare reform was not just about guaranteeing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. That would have been easy. But it was really a not-so-subtle positioning for government takeover.
Obama railroaded his big, partisan packages. Let's see how bipartisan he is willing to be. I'm not holding my breath. He hasn't shown any capacity before.
Hank
I too, am frustrated with the lack of progress that the first 2 years have had. However, I am dumbfounded at how myopic the electorate in this country are in regard to the way in which we arrived at the position we are currently and WHO'S POLICIES & AGENDAS put us in this predicament; and now, incredibly they have been allowed back into a position to be able to reimplement the same policies & agendas. I am sorry that President Obama did not provide the leadership that he was elected to provide. While I agree that it is necessary to delegate & allow those who are given the task, perform. The President did not unify the party members and allowed the extremes to fracture the party and cause stagnation.
Kind of silly to say that Bush didn't cut taxes for the middle class, since those are the tax cuts that Obama and the dems want to keep of the BUSH tax cuts!
Another point. These commentators keep harping on race and ethnicity. Well, if African Americans and Hispanics voted their cultural values and their economic interests, the GOP would have a clear plurality, if not a permanent majority, with a lock on 45-50% of the electorate. This dog will bark some day. That is what Marco Rubio's election means for this country.
It's hard to know where to begin to reply to your naive comment. Let me try to put it in plain language.
First, Democrats have had control of the purse-strings since taking over the House and Senate in January, 2007. They created the mortgage crisis and fiscal collapse.
Second, jobs go oversees because the high corporate tax rate, again, the baby of Democrats, makes it more profitable to do business elsewhere.
Third, extending the Bush tax cuts is not "giving away trillions of dollars." That is OUR money, not the government's money. If you Democrats would let us keep some of OUR money, we would re-invest it in our businesses, create more jobs and stay here. Then tax revenue to the US Treasury would increase, not decrease.
Those of you who believe that it is the responsibility of the federal government to "create" jobs will soon see how quickly the Ponzi scheme leads to total collapse. Look at France.
Regarding "the current administration has been unable to put out the right message"
Could it be that the Democrates are trying to Govern, and the Republicans et.al. are trying to stop them!
If the Republican party worked with the government on issues like Job Creation, and appropriate health care reform, instead of taking issue on everything just to prevent the government getting the right stuff done, then we would probably have been out of this employment issue months ago.
absolutely. the two-party system benefits the two parties and no one else.
The midterm results prove two things:
1) Taken as a single entity, the American electorate most resembles a spoiled child. It wants what it wants and it wants it now.
2) Taken as a single entity, the Republican party is evil. Holding functional governance hostage in order to oust the other guy?
Putting two wars on the national credit card and cutting taxes, then crying about the deficit?
That doesn't seem very conservative to me
Being from the mostly Republican state of KS, I was in the minority with my fully Democratic voting. I'm excited to see how Pres Obama will handle working working with the strong number of Republicans now in the House and Senate. I was willing to trust him with his ideas and to give him a chance for 4 years to see how his plans worked for America. I'm disappointed to see so many people give up on him after his first two years. I believe he truly cares about America and was working very hard to pass legislation which would help the country as a whole. I trust him now to work well with the new elected Republicans. It's been stated that after the voting yesterday, many Americans have sympathized with the Tea Party movement. I don't know about other town's ballots, but nowhere on my ballot did it ask what I thought about the Tea Party. So that poll in my opinion is inaccurate, because not everyone was given the opportunity to respond. I'll respond right now, by saying I do not sympathize with the Tea Party because it seems to be a group of unhappy people just trying to be rebellious and who don't have any decent, sensible plans that would benefit our country.
The problem with the Republican and Tea Party approach to government is that they seem to get that government is "by" the people, and "of" the people....but totally forget that it is "FOR" then people. Not just for the rich or powerful people, but ALL people. When you stop to consider that significantly more than 50% of our national budget is taken up with military spending, the amount devoted to social security and medicare seem miniscule by comparison; particularly knowing that, eventually (God-willing) ALL the people will benefit from these programs.
I belong to a sub-group of the African-American demographic. The group is Africans from the continent of Africa that are first or second generation Americans. The discussion in our group is that the present electorate WILL NOT work with President Obama.
He's attempts to try and create a clear path for the country will be interpreted by special interest groups as arrogance and converted in like manner to the actions of the electorate we saw yesterday.
The final fact is that taking into consideration the President's demographic,the idea of his having a "brilliant presidency" will be subverted by all means possible.
Kate Zernike came across as honest, intelligent and well-informed. Even when a caller called in for confrontation, she skipped the argument and focused on moving the discussion forward while being respectful to the caller. She did not come across as having an agenda or being anything but a good reporter.
The Dianne Rehm is one of my favorite shows, but there have been a few female guests who have come across as biased or sexist in the past months (clearly I am not refering to the guest hostesses or Mrs. Rehm who are all unquestionably highly impressive people). Please bring Mrs. Zernike back whenever possible.
I could never lose enough brain material and IQ to put back in power the very people, party, and principles that caused the worst financial crisis in US history? If could never become so demented that I can forget that Republicans from 1994 to 2006 held virtual power in the country, including the first six years of the Bush presidency and still managed to totally screw up the nation? You would have to be blind not to see that Republicans cannot even live up to the lower standards they set for themselves, while cricitizing those who have higher standards.
I think what amazes me the most is what these people who will vote Republican actually think will happen? Any bill is meaningless without the President's signature, and unless it is some stroke of absolute biblical proportion, there will not be enough margin or political will to do a Presidential Veto override. So if Obama wants to be as obstructionist as the Republicans have been, virtually nothing will get done! And I would have to ask, if the Republicans can promise so much, which means having to work with the Democrats and Obama, why didn't they do this in the first place instead of standing by watching Americans suffer this long - just so they can point fingers?
Obama DID NOT create these problems, albeit maybe a few never got any better - THE REPUBLICANS DID! And now they have the solutions? They've learned their lesson? Since when. They are proposing the same things we know don't work? That's learning? These people tried to stop that last unemployment extension. They voted against small business tax cuts! They voted against health coverage for children! The list goes on and on. The Republican message is so clear only because it's the one they always use!
The Republicans only took the House. The Democrats took both in 06 and 08! What hurricane? What mandate? What "clear" message?
I love how we all bash and criticise those greedy greedy manufacturers. So my question is why should they keep jobs in the US? The labor here is certainly no longer the most efficient, and they certainly demand the most.
Yet we all depend on the industry began here to keep us employed. That is unless you work for the Government or an educational institution. But then if you do, is it not easy for you to criticise the very catalyst we all depend on? I am not saying they are any better than us, but certainly no more greedy than us who want it both ways. The question is, can you encourage those entrepreuners who produce products and jobs to keep them in our country, and regulate them too? This is where the administration has failed so far to date.
Your guest, Kate Zernike, said that the New York Republican candidate for governor was a "quintessential tea party candidate, racist and sexist." When a caller asked why you did not challenge her on her unacceptable comment, you denied that she said it and she tried deflect the comment. Perhaps she merely meant to say that the candidate was racist and sexist. However, her statement was much broader than that and you, as a journalist, should not have allowed it to go unchallenged.
Why is the health care bill demonized? What does it tell about people's values when a car insurance is considered normal but a health insurance is seen as something intolerable? For Americans cars are obviously more valuable than human beings.
I agree. I saw an article in cleveland plain dealer yesterday that said "republican control of the house means and end to spending on renewable energy". Really? Funny that the Plain Dealer didn't see the wisdom in running that article on November 1st, not that anyone couldn't figure that out on their own but come on...
You are correct. We have an electorate that lives in denial, can't figure out what is in their own best long-term interests and would rather be motivated by fear, conjecture and baseless emotions. It is a terrible state that the electorate chooses to live in. Of course, when you see a movie like Waiting for Superman, you actually begin to understand how critical thinking was pushed out of the American education system.