When You Don't Own It, They Will

It's been interesting reading all the punditry about how and why Democrats lost so many seats on Tuesday.  When it comes to reactions, at this point, I'm focused squarely on Democratic progressive reaction. I can tell you what the right is saying without even reading it. There's no point in learning their reasons.  They won. Let them have it. I'm a Democrat and proud of it and what's happening on my side is much more important to me.

For starters, history is against the tide of the president when it comes to his first midterm.  Did history play a role?  Yep.

Secondly, America is currently jobless.  When the economy is bad, the incumbent party always pays the price.  I think even if unemployment was at 7% Democrats would have still lost seats just not the House majority.  People want things to get better.  People want jobs.  And people are sick of Congress giving themselves pay raises, running up huge amounts of debt, letting bankers off scot-free and things not getting any better for them.  They are past their breaking point when it comes to ineffective government.

Most importantly, never bring a knife to a gun fight.  In other words, ineffective messaging proved consequential.  Instead of directly taking on the health care debate, Democrats stood speechless.  Instead of celebrating their successes ( and there were many) Democrats treated them like failures.  Maybe the easiest debate to ever frame, in my view, is one where one side gets to fear monger while the other side sits idle.

By this I don't mean out-crazy the crazy.  You don't have to fight smears with smears.  There was no need to fight back with smears to defend a piece of legislation that expanded health care to 32 million people, reduced the deficit and was completely paid for.  If you have to smear your opponent to defend that then you have taken for granted people's coherent ability to think for themselves proving you deserve to lose.

No where did I see a single Democrat beg to differ about HCR being a government takeover.  If it was a government takeover, why are hospitals privately owned?  Why aren't doctors and nurses now federal employees?  Why does the legislation require 300 million Americas to buy private insurance instead of a government-run type? Actually, where is the government-run insurance program even at?

There was no answer from Democrats, that I saw, when their accomplishments were treated like socialist takeovers.  This only led to the confusion being abated by the other side.

There were many factors playing against Democrats this year.  None proved a greater liability than not being proud of what you have accomplished and daring somebody to question you on it.