Post-mortem

Well, many people woke up this morning to some surprises for sure.  Republicans have taken over in some places where you thought they would never get a hold, like here in Maryland, where a Republican basically ousted the Lieutenant Governor who was now running for Governor.  In a state that's as blue as this one, that's basically like beating an incumbent.  You kind of expected Kentucky to stick with the Turtle Man, and Arkansas going Republican is no big surprise, but Illinois and some other Democratic strongholds also flipped.
Now the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the Democrats look dazed and confused.  Even some of the Republican analysts seem a little befuddled about exactly how this happened,  I think I have a grip on the dynamic at work here, and I don't think it's good, but not because I tend to lean to the left.  I think it's bad news for all of us, including the new wave of GOP folk who just took power.
What is happening is that people are sick and tired of the status quo, and this is a trend that goes beyond the current election cycle.  Republicans figured out that the best way to win back the power is to point out how ineffective and dysfunctional the government actually is, while trying to spin thing in such a way that people didn't notice that they had a big hand in making it that way.
Obama has won his two terms by promising change during the electioneering and playing it pretty safe during the actual Presidency part of his life.  The pretty much sure fire way to win an election in an era where there's so much that's obviously broken is to say that you can fix it.  People want to hear it, and they'll give you the benefit of the doubt, until you prove that you're just the same as all the rest.
Only if things are good, i.e. Clinton's second term, can you run on the, "hey let's just keep rolling" platform.  Things are not good, the economy is sputtering, even if the catastrophe has passed, wages are low, taxes and cost of living are high, we are always on the brink of some war or other catastrophe, and most of us just want things to change.
The Maryland Gubernatorial race was a perfect example.  Anthony Brown was the Lieutenant Governor of two term Governor Martin O'Malley.  O'Malley has the record of a "typical" Democrat, tax and spend, fix things by throwing other people's money at the problem.  People were pretty fed up with O'Malley, during my time in Maryland, I have heard very few people, even dyed in the wool Dems, say anything good about him.  Brown did not really distinguish himself from O'Malley, and the Republican challenger, Larry Hogan, seized on that fact.  Hogan labeled Brown's candidacy "a third term for O'Malley."  Hogan carefully avoided talk of social issues, and according to one commentator, didn't so much run against Brown as he did against O'Malley.  It worked.
This should not be a shock to anyone, people can be very easily pulled into reactionary thinking, especially when things get tough.
The Republican party, though this may be wishful thinking on my part, has peeled away from the Tea Party mentality and leaned back towards the center.  They have gauged the winds and found out that people maybe aren't as afraid of gay marriage as they used to be.  They may have even learned that people, even Republicans, actually like having health insurance.  This allowed them to present themselves as a new creation, with new being the operative part of that phrase.
The reality of the political situation in this country is that both parties have sort of stopped generating any new ideas.  They have divided ideologically and pragmatically into separate camps and have essentially painted themselves into political corners.  The thing is their corners are not really that different from one another, and the sense among average people, myself included, is that it really matters very little which group runs the show.
That is probably true, I don't think the Republicans are going to fix what's broken, all their motivation to change evaporated the second those ballots were cast.  Ask the Democrats, inertia doesn't get you anywhere nearly as far as it used to.
The dominant political motif of this era is frustration.  You hear it from Republicans and Democrats alike.  Some have said that this might be a formula for revolution, if we weren't so engaged with our bread and circuses.  Sometimes I wonder though if the charade of politics isn't just another diversion.  Sometimes I wonder if our allegiance to a political ideology and/or the party that represents it, is even as deep as our rooting for our favorite football team.
Even if I'm puzzled, I'm not particularly shocked or concerned about yesterday's results, we just changed the color of our tie, the suit still fits as badly as it did on Monday.