President Obama's Ultraliberal Agenda Even Brought Down Democrats Who Opposed His Agenda

It appears that 53 House Democrat incumbents were defeated for reelection last week. Of those 53, 50 had voted for one or more of President Obama's three most irresponsible and unpopular proposals, which could be described as the bêtes noirs of the American electorate: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka Porkulus), the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (aka, Cap and Trade), and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Voting "Aye" on all three brought about the defeat of even some Democrats sitting in districts that have not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in over 20 years, to wit, Oberstar in MN-08, Hare in IL-17, Maffei in NY-25, Klein in FL-22, and Patrick Murphy in PA-08. And voting "No" on one or two of these bills was not enough to save dozens of Democrats sitting in Republican-leaning districts.

But the most impressive thing about the destructiveness of President Obama's agenda to Democrats sitting in Republican-leaning districts was that even the three Democrats who voted "No" on all three bêtes noirs could not escape the taint of the anti-Obama tidal wave that engulfed the heartland of America.

The only three Democrats to vote against each of Porkulus, Cap and Trade and Obamacare were Walt Minnick (ID-01), Gene Taylor (MS-04) and Bobby Bright (AL-02). It was not surprising that they voted against all three repulsive bills, as they represented three of the four most Republican districts currently held by Democrats: President Bush got 69% in ID-02, 68% in MS-04 and 67% in AL-02. The only other Dem-held CD in which President Bush got as high as 67% in 2004 was Chet Edwards’s TX-17, where President Bush got 69%. Minnick, Taylor and Bright lost competitive reelection races (Minnick by 9.8%, Taylor by 4.8% and Bright by 2.2%) despite avoiding the gruesome threesome of votes; Chet Edwards voted for Porkulus but then turned around and voted against Cap and Trade and Obamacare hoping to save his seat, but never really had a chance against Bill Flores and he would up losing by 25.2%.

There is a clear lesson for liberal Democrats: passing irresponsible, unpopular programs will result in Democrats sitting in conservative districts losing *even if they voted against such bills*. The D next to their names was enough to doom them, given that Obama, Pelosi and their liberal cohorts had made the word "Democrat" synonymous with irresponsibility and disregard for the will of the voters. And since there are far more conservative districts than liberal districts, liberal Democrats have doomed their party to minority status for at least the next few years (and because they poisoned the Democrat name right before an election in which control of redistricting was on the line, they will likely remain in the wilderness for at least a decade). But I will bet you a steak dinner that liberal Democrats will draw the exact opposite conclusion from what happened, and will stubbornly cling to the theory that they lost because they were too timid in passing their liberal agenda. That’s because liberals are, with notable exceptions, incapable of rational thought, in part because they do not recognize the legitimacy of rationality, and instead rely upon how they *feel* about things. Well, now they get to see how it "feels" to be in the minority for the next dozen or more years.

GOP Wins House by Winning Seats that Already Voted Republican for President, Not by Expanding the Playing Field

Recently, liberal commentators have espoused the theory that the Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives in the November 2, 2010 elections because the so-called Blue Dog Democrats didn't embrace President Obama's liberal agenda, using as evidence the fact that most liberal Democrats survived while most moderate (practically none are actually conservative) Democrats lost. This is, of course, twisted logic, akin to saying that expeditioners in Mount Everest wouldn't freeze to death if only they wore swimsuits like surfers in Hawaii (who rarely freeze to death). While Blue Dogs, many of whom had held their seat for decades, were disproportionately the victims of the electoral carnage that befell the Democrats, this is because they tend to sit in districts that generally vote Republican for president, and we have seen that the presidential vote is increasingly a leading indicator of congressional electoral performance. GOP candidates fell well short in most of the heavily Democrat districts where it was polling well (think Barney Frank’s MA-04, Dingell’s MI-15, etc.), and the Republican Party's victory was due to it winning almost all of the districts that had been carried by President Bush by 6% or more in 2004; meanwhile, GOP candidates won exactly half of the districts where the presidential-vote margin in 2004 (whether for Bush or Kerry) was less than 6%, and won only won 4 districts that were carried by Kerry by 6% or more (with the largest Kerry margin of victory being his 7% in MN-08).

Assuming that the GOP doesn't end up winning CA-20, GOP congressmen now hold 13 districts carried by John Kerry in 2004:

FL-22
IL-10
IL-17
MN-08
NH-02
NY-25
PA-06
PA-07
PA-08
PA-11
PA-15
WA-08
WI-07

This is actually 5 fewer than the 18 districts that voted for Kerry in 2004 but elected a GOP Representative that year (when the GOP had 232 Representatives, likely 11 fewer than it will have next January):

CO-07
CT-02
CT-04
CT-05
DE-AL
FL-22
IL-10
IA-01
IA-02
KY-03
NH-02
NM-01
NY-25
PA-06
PA-07
PA-08
PA-15
WA-08

In fact, the 13 Kerry-GOP districts of today are only 6 more than the 7 Kerry CDs held by Republicans right before the elections (when the GOP held only 179 House seats).

DE-AL
HI-01
LA-02
IL-10
PA-06
PA-15
WA-08

With respect to districts that voted for Bush in 2004 but elected Democrats to the House, there are now only 25 such districts (assuming that the Dems win in CA-11):

AZ-08
AR-04
CA-11
CA-18
CA-47
GA-02
IN-02
IA-03
KY-06
MI-09
MN-01
MN-07
NY-23
NC-07
NC-08
NC-11
OK-02
OR-05
PA-04
PA-17
TX-15
TX-28
UT-02
VA-11
WV-03

(By comparison, there are 52 GOP congressmen from districts carried by Obama in 2008; we’ll see in 2012 how dozens of those districts carried by Obama were absolute flukes.)

After the 2004 elections, there were 41 House Democrats from seats carried by Bush that year:

AL-05
AR-01
AR-02
AR-04
CA-18
CA-47
CO-03
FL-02
GA-02
GA-08 (numbered 03 back then)
IL-08
IA-03
KS-03
KY-06
LA-03
MI-01
MN-07
MS-04
MO-04
NY-01
NC-02
NC-07
ND-AL
OH-06
OK-02
OR-05
PA-17
SC-05
SD-AL
TN-04
TN-06
TN-08
TX-15
TX-17
TX-27
TX-28
UT-02
VA-09
WA-03
WV-01
WV-03

And prior to the 2010 elections, there were a whopping 83 House seats carried by Bush but held by Democrats:

AL-02
AZ-01
AZ-05
AZ-08
AR-01
AR-02
AR-04
CA-11
CA-18
CA-47
CO-03
CO-04
FL-02
FL-08
FL-24
GA-02
GA-08
ID-01
IL-08
IL-11
IL-14
IN-02
IN-08
IN-09
IA-03
KS-03
KY-06
LA-03
MD-01
MI-01
MI-07
MI-09
MN-01
MN-07
MS-01
MS-04
MO-04
NV-03
NH-01
NJ-03
NM-03
NY-01
NY-13
NY-19
NY-20
NY-23
NY-24
NY-29
NC-02
NC-07
NC-08
NC-11
ND-AL
OH-01
OH-06
OH-15
OH-16
OH-18
OK-02
OR-05
PA-03
PA-04
PA-10
PA-17
SC-05
SD-AL
TN-04
TN-06
TN-08
TX-15
TX-17
TX-23
TX-27
TX-28
UT-02
VA-02
VA-05
VA-09
VA-11
WA-03
WV-01
WV-03
WI-08

My conclusions from all this are that:

(i) the 2004 presidential voting results are a truer measure of the partisan bent of congressional districts than the hopey-changey presidential voting results of 2008;

(ii) there has been a massive reduction in the number of voters who vote one way for president and another way for Congress, making presidential voting percentages an even better leading indicator of how a district will vote in House elections than it already was; and

(iii) GOP House gains in 2010 were overwhelmingly a result of districts that voted Republican in presidential elections now doing the same at the congressional level.

If the Democrats can no longer count on Blue Dogs holding districts that vote Republican for president, they will need to find a new way to 218 House seats, because Democrats holding conservative districts have for decades formed a major part of Democrat House membership. Given that there are far more conservative districts than liberal districts (given that there are more conservatives than liberals in America, and that liberals tend to be concentrated in heavily Democrat urban areas and minority-majority districts, it appears that House Democrats will be out in the wilderness until they can forge a major political realignment.