Midterms deliver verdict of dissatisfaction | National Catholic Reporter

Midterms deliver verdict of dissatisfaction | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: 2016 will be very different from 2014 because the GOP will be on the defense for the Senate seats won in 2010.  This year was bad because it was the year 2008 was to be defended, which was a year Obama did very unexpectedly have coattails in such places as North Carolina.  A repeat was not in the cards.  It was the economy, not the message on the economy, that failed Obama.  This past year, the banks dumped a lot of homes in their foreclosure inventories onto the market.  Housing prices, especially condos, went down.  Young workers could not take advantage, but landlords can - and they were not voting for Obama anyway.



Pelvic issues only work for the Democrats if they are under attack - and sometimes not even then, as Wendy Davis found.  Cardinal Dolan stayed away from Congress this year - so there were no active fronts on the war on women (and the GOP gains on Trap Laws will soon be overturned by the Courts - sadly just in time for the right to life scammers to talk about the war on the unborn in 2016).  Was the strategy horrible?  Not really, since it fires up the activists in the Democratic Party - yet it does not really work unless the candidate is stupidly extreme on the same issues (like rape causing automatic miscarriages).  Because the GOP told its pro-life candidates to put a cork in it, there was nothing to respond to (unlike 2012 - when the GOP could have won the Senate except for its loudly pro-life candidates.



While one would hope, with Democrats for Life, that an economic campaign to make abortion rare would help (and I certainly favor that - especially a much larger and always refundable child tax credit - say one thousand dollars per child per month) - most pro-life voters despise such efforts as an affront to personal economic responsibility (although they are perfectly happy attacking personal sexual responsibility - unless that means abstinence - even for the married).



The youth vote was what the Democrats needed and they simply did not come out.  They hardly ever do in midterms and it is debatable whether the poor economy or voter suppression were factors - as in many places there were active GOP measures to keep college students from voting at their dorm addresses, making campus ID insufficient to prove residency at the polls.  Their actions are very likely unconstitutional, but the Department of Justice did not do a good job in challenging these dirty tricks and there is little evidence that the youth vote was any lower than in any other mid-term, although this will be a big issue for 2016.



The Speaker is in better shape this year than two years ago - simply because there is no obvious replacement for him.  That will change, since one will be elected - but the new Majority Leader will not have the strength to challenge for the Speaker's chair - although the governing margin is not so big that he can run roughshod over the Tea Party extremists in the Republican Steering Committee (which sounds just a bit fascist - because it is).  Whether the unholy alliance between Senator Cruz and the RSC continues depends on whether he runs for the White House.  If he does, Cruz will not be around to make mischief for the rest of the congressional party.



Will there be some magical change in the dynamic between Obama and the RSC - or the rest of the GOP?  Are you kidding me?  Absolutely not!  This majority ran on opposing Obama.  That won't change and any member who goes soft on the President, even on his own agenda, will be primaried by the Tea Party, whose funders and supporters (in that order), hate Obama for mostly his age - but probably is African origins as well.



The Senate passed immigration bill was never meant to become law.  It was meant to showcase how the House would never vote on it, even though it has most of what the GOP wants.  The GOP would not even pass the phone book - as a phone book - if Obama favored it.  That is the takeaway for the next two years.  Clip this sentence and put it on your shaving or makeup mirror and you can safely ignore what goes on in Washington for the next two years.  The bill fooled no one - especially not Latinos - who regard it as too punitive - which it is.  A better bill would have been one that McConnell would have stopped in the Senate - one without the punitive fines and waiting periods.  Blame this one on Harry Reid.



Trade bills likely will pass - which is good for consumers and bad for both domestic and overseas workers - and the Congress won't support any provisions that would make it less so.  While a thriving economy would hold displaced workers harmless - we don't have a thriving economy.  There is no way we could have because Obama caved to Rick Santinelli of CNBC (who promised a Tea Party - which came because of health insurance reform) and Larry Summers on not extending radical mortgage forgiveness to underwater borrowers - essentially leaving them to foreclosure and bankruptcy, which was the Romney policy.  Big labor won't like this, but they did not like NAFTA either - and they still supported Clinton for a second term.  As big labor is essentially an organ of the Democratic Party - especially teachers (who do respond to the war on women - as well as any effort on school choice - especially Catholic schools) - they are usually ignored on governing decisions, just like the House Democrats - who will fall in line on anything the Senate Democrats agree to.