By now everybody knows about the results of Tuesday's elections and we've seen tons of analysis. The predominant themes have been that only in hindsight did Romney run a horrible campaign, that the Tea Party extremism had been rejected by the voters, that this is truly Obama's mandate, all of the Republican forecasting models were horrifically wrong, and that the Republican party's only hope is to make drastic changes to its principles if it hopes to survive. Did I miss anything? It's natural to knee jerk or overreact when something unexpected happens, so I have advice for both sides: don't read too much into this election and base your next moves only on what happened Tuesday.
First, for the Democrats, you weren't given a mandate. You scored some impressive wins on Tuesday, and for that I congratulate you. You kept the presidency in a hard fought campaign. You managed to gain seats in the Senate, including one popular figure from your side in Elizabeth Warren retaking Ted Kennedy's old seat in Massachusetts. You got a referendum passed in Colorado legalizing pot, you got gay marriage ballot initiatives through in three states, and in California several measures to raise taxes and restrict economic freedom also went through. Combine this with President Obama's 333 electoral votes and it looks like you've got a clear mandate that the country is shifting leftward, right?
Not quite. When you look at the battleground states the president's victory only came by roughly 350,000 votes. Yes, I now what the final margin in the overall popular vote was certainly more decisive, but keep in mind that the president also got nine million fewer votes than in 2008. The Republicans gained seats in the House, and now has it's largest margin among Governorships that either party has had in 12 years. Your California measures only made an already hostile business climate even worse by raising taxes and assuring that the unions will still be able to force union members to pay for their political campaigning. Expect more businesses to leave your state and unemployment to rise even more. And be careful with the gay marriage wins - your side seems to be even more prone to overreach than the right is. I'm predicting you'll jump the shark on this issue when someone decides to file a lawsuit against a church that refuses to perform a gay marriage. Sadly you'll succeed in turning public opinion on this issue better than any conservative ever could.
Now for the conservatives. Yes, the Romney campaign was not perfect. I'm not even going to bother linking to any of the myriad of post game analysis articles on what went wrong. If you're reading this post you've probably read more than your share already. The day wasn't a complete disaster for the GOP, as seen by my earlier mention of the House and Governorships. Of course, the presidency was the big prize and the failure to defeat such an incompetent president is painful to say the least. While I've seen no shortage of reasons for Romney's loss to Obama, nobody has seen the most obvious reason that Romney failed - there is simply no way he could have beaten Obama.
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