How about those elections?

[SlayerRondo]

Aielyn said:

thranx said:

When Obama was elected for a second term I was pretty dissapointed. But I did see the silver lining. I hoped that after 8 years of his "rule" people would be awakened and see what the dems are all about. Here we are 6 years in, and the people have lost more faith in the dems than I could have imagined. Just as bush blew it for over spending over reaching repubs, Obama has done it to the Dems. So will americans start going back to the center, and not to the xtreme left and right? What are your thoughts on the electon results?

As an Australian, I'd like to say that, if you think Obama is "extreme left", then you are completely and utterly wrong. By the standards of most of the world, Obama is a right-winger. He's closer to centre than the Republicans by a fair margin... but the Republicans have moved so far to the right that I'm pretty sure that, if they were in Smash Bros, they'd have already been KOed. There are few Democrats who could legitimately even call themselves left-wing (with Elizabeth Warren being the only one I know off the top of my head).

What's more, the election result is pretty obviously an example of republicans being lying manipulators and democrats being too spineless to stand up to the republicans. Even from Australia, it's obvious that Democrats have spent their whole time running away from what should be a strong platform - lower deficit, lower jobless rate, stronger economy, better healthcare coverage at a lower cost (both to the individual and to the government), etc. And all of that with a hostile House that refused to compromise on anything.

Rather than actually emphasising these points to the electorate, the Democrats let the Republicans define the terms of the election, and ran away from Obama's record. And they should have been emphasising that, if voters get out there and support them, they can achieve even better things if given the chance. Instead, all of the talk was about how they needed to minimise their losses.

In short, the Democrats lost the moment that they decided that it was a matter of trying to "hold onto the senate" rather than going full-force towards reclaiming the house.

The Labor party here in Australia did a similar thing - instead of talking up their achievements at the last election, and emphasising a bold vision for the country, they instead let the Liberal party (the Liberals are a conservative party) define the terms of the election, and seemed to keep trying to reduce the gap between the two parties, with things like anti-asylum attitudes. They lost, massively, as a result.

The Labor party would have had to have achieved things to talk up for that to work as a strategy.

They ran up a large deficit, introduced highly unpopular new taxes and tried to implement an internet filter within Australia.