On Election Day, voters gave the GOP a very large House majority, and an eight or nine sweet swing in the Senate, enough to take a large majority. Yet this is how the New York Times’ Carl Hulse interprets that result [emphasis added]:
I supposed “punctuated” is a vague enough verb that this might not be inaccurate, but this is an odd premise. The whole focus of the piece is whether Congress can get along and get stuff done. But I don’t read last week’s election as a referendum against “gridlock.” I read it as a referendum against Democrats.
Consider these points:
• Not a single Republican senator lost his or her seat.
• Not a single Republican-held open Senate seat flipped to Democrats.
* Not a single state government went from divided control to Democratic control.
• Only one new Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate.
• Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., derided in the press as the master of obstructionism, won re-election easily.
More to the point of gridlock:
• Voters wholeheartedly gave the U.S. Congress to the party that’s opposed to the president.
• In a few Democrat-run states, voters elected enough Republicans to create divided government.
The polls reinforce the idea that this was an anti-Democratic sentiment, not an anti-gridlock sentiment. As my colleague Susan Ferrechio reports:
That’s the largest margin the GOP has ever held on that question.
As far as “getting stuff done,” the most powerful issue in this past election was not something left undone by gridlock, but was something Democrats did: Obamacare.
The public is always unhappy with dysfunctional Congress, but the lesson of this election is a little simpler: Voters don’t like Democrats.
