It may have been a historic triumph for Republicans, and a rebuke to President Obama, but the 2010 election doesn’t mean the nation is making a dramatic political shift to the right.
Rather, Tuesday’s election could be seen as another swing of a political pendulum that keeps moving back and forth according to the whims of independent voters.
“A lot of it has to with this huge unanchored group of independent voters,” said Ross Baker, a Rutgers professor and political scientist. “When you have that many people who are totally unmoored, then whatever momentary wave sweeps over the public, they are going to go with it.”
Peter J. McDonough Jr., a part-time lecturer who served as communications director and press secretary under former Republican governor Christie Whitman, agreed.
“This election was driven by independents who two years ago voted for Barack Obama,” said McDonough, who teaches a graduate seminar at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. “It was driven by the same independents who four years ago threw the Republicans out.”
McDonough also said that the influence of the Tea Party was exaggerated. “I certainly see a move to the right, but the Tea Party is beyond the right,” he said. “The Tea Party is some libertarian thing.”
Both Baker and McDonough were among the panelists Wednesday at The Morning After panel discussion sponsored by the Eagleton Institute.
Baker said one of the reasons why Democrats lost the election is their longstanding weakness in articulating their policies and vision to voters.“They speak over the heads of the American people,” he said. “It's as if they assume that everyone has gone to graduate school for public policy.
Baker said the health care reform package was particularly poorly explained. And he said Democrats also failed to tout the various projects paid for with the stimulus plan. He noted that drivers on area highways will pass construction projects that say “paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
“Does anybody know what that means? It’s the stimulus,” Baker said. “If you’re going to get cuffed around for the stimulus, at least get credit for the stimulus.”
Another key factor in the election, Baker said, was the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that ended a ban on political spending by corporations and other groups. That cleared the way for independent expenditure groups to pay for advertising and other campaign tools to back specific candidates.
“It was very effective in expanding the zone of conflict in the House of Representatives,” Baker said. “They were able to get money to people who never would have gotten the money.”