Convince me to vote, someone.....

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

The trouble is that the voters are divided and don't know what they want (other than for everything to get better in a pain-free manner). The same concern that put Obama into office (disappointment with the current state of affairs) is going to put the new faces in office tomorrow. Obama misread his sweeping victory as a mandate for a Progressive agenda and he'll pay the price tomorrow. The new GOP bunch will likely do the same. Even Dubya called his 2004 reelection a mandate, the result of which was him trying to push stuff the public didn't want. This ultimately caused the Obama tidal wave.

The newly elected GOP'ers have already forsworn compromise with the Dem's on anything. Just what do they thing they're going to accomplish with the Dem's still having a majority in the Senate and the Presidency? Tomorrow's GOP victory, if it happens, may be just the thing to guarantee that Obama wins a second term. I see a redux of 1994.

If politicians spend their time reading polling data and nothing else, sure, I can see where one might draw a conclusion that voters "don't know what they want." However, I think that most folks, on both sides of the aisle, reflexively believe that bigger government is not an answer, but a cause, of many of our economic challenges. Most voters believe that more of their income than they are comfortable with is exacted from their wallets, the the overall return on that "investment" seems to get smaller every year. They think that the crop of politicians that has been sent to Washington is out of touch with their concerns, and those same politicians seem distracted by special interests.

Specific to this current batch of politicos, the average voter cared far less about health care and global warming than they did about their own economic security. They drive though their town and they see the "for lease" signs that dot the landscape in storefronts, office buildings and industry, and they see their economic opportunities at risk. They wonder why so much time had to be spent to get such a crappy health care product, when health care was never at the top of their list of "must do's".

Clinton and Carville had it so right in 1992: "Its the economy, stupid!" Bush Senior forgot it, and paid the price for it. Clinton forgot it by the end of 1992, and ushered in mid-term defeat for the Dems. In 1995, he declared that "The Era of Big Government is Over!", moved to the political center, and fared far better. He would have fared even better, of course, if he'd have kept it zipped.

As bad a candidate as Gore was, Clinton did so well that Gore nearly won in 2000. Bush Jr. was an immensely popular president, but the war was more the agenda than the economy in 2004, and neither the war or the economy was popular in 2004, and the poll results showed.

2008 gave the Repubs a weak candidate who didn't have much of a message on anything, and a national euphoria about a candidate who promised "change" - though no one really bothered to ask him what he meant by "change". But Obama is also now paying the price for forgetting that "its the economy, stupid."