5 Myths About the Midterm Elections (Time Mag article)

[a kennedy]

MYTH: The losses Republicans sufferend this election were no different than what you usually see in a President's sixth year in office.
REALITY: Redistricting minimized what might have been a truly historic shellacking.

The numbers alone do look like a typical midterm loss for the presidential party: 28 House seats, with 10 races still undecided. Republicans have clung to this math hard in recent days, with even Karl Rove pointing to electoral history to prove that things could have been worse. But Republicans spent most of the year boasting about how the redistricting of the past decade had made them all but bulletproof. Absent those new district lines, says the American Enterprise Institute's Norm Ornstein, "it could easily have been 45 or more." And there are other results that break with past patterns, Ornstein adds. Democrats did not lose a single seat — a feat the party had not accomplished since 1922. Even in the Republican sweep of 1994, the G.O.P. lost four of its open seats to Democrats. What's more, the wave swept all the way down the ballot — for instance, handing the New Hampshire House to the Democrats for the first time since 1922.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1560212,00.html?cnn=yes

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Liars

Everyone knows that this was a loss FOR THE DEMOCRATS of Rumsfailedian proportions.

Just ask the DLC.

[progdonkey]

7. maybe you should re-read that excerpt...

They're saying the myth is that this was on par with any other cyclical party changing, and that the reality is that this really was a catastrophic loss for the GOP, but the numbers of seats changing, etc., don't appear as catastrophic because the Republicans were "saved" by their corrupt gerrymandering.

Sounds pretty dead-on: we picked up X seats, and it would've (and should've) been X+30, were it not for the Republicans cheating through re-districting.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. Sorry, I Was Unclear

I was being sarcastic - I meant to joke that it was a loss for the Dems, as Carville is spewing. I edited it to clear it up.

[progdonkey]

10. ah, ok... :-)

I see what you meant. :hi:

[The Count]

13. Disagree on their spin on the significance of war:

MYTH: The election was all about the war.
REALITY: It's the dishonesty, stupid.


true, corruption was #1 on the list, but war was #2, with almost identical numbers (44 to 43%). Any discounting of this is disingenuous and dangerous.

[KingFlorez]

2. Redistricting made a difference

With the current gerrymandered lines, 28 seats is a tremendous pickup, it was amazing to pickup that many.

[gratuitous]

11. And with Democratic control of so many states

Maybe it's time for a little low-level payback with some between-census redistricting of our own, hmmm? It's not like the Republicans could squawk, since they were the ones who worked so hard the last four years to ensure their "permanent" majority. Restore a little balance to several districts, de-concentrate the Democratic voters a little bit, and the Republicans will have to fight for every seat. And bitch about it every second of the day.

[OzarkDem]

3. Oh, yeah

The GOP and their news flacks quietly acknowledged this after the election. Its a real sore spot with them. They had done a masterful job of gerrymandering Congressional districts (remember Delay and the Texas legislature's fugitive Killer D's? in 2003) and still got their asses whipped.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0823-08.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0514-07.htm

Without GOP gerrymandering it would have been a catastrophic loss for them on Nov. 7.

[underpants]

4. Excellent excellent article

Recommended.

Thanks for posting that. That is the most comprehensive analysis I have seen yet.

[grizmaster]

5. K&R

[Redbear]

6. Good Story

The media needs to do much more to counter spin.

[sniffa]

8. make it 5

[cui bono]

12. I like how deluded a lot of Repubs are about #5

MYTH: Republicans lost their base.
REALITY: The base turned out, they just got beat.

<snip>

Rep. Mike Pence (R-In.) is running for minority leader with a statement that posits, "I believe that we did not just lose our Majority — we lost our way. We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles." But, says the White House's political director Sara Taylor, the difference between base turnout in 2002 and 2006 is within the margin of error. And independent exit polls show the same percentages of voters who called themselves "evangelicals," "white born-again Christians," "weekly church-goers," "Republicans" and "conservatives" as in 2006 as in 2004. "The base turned out," says Taylor, "but independents made up a larger share of the electorate and they broke very heavily Democratic."


Let the WH keep thinking it's not that they have destroyed policies. Let future candidates believe it as well and "stay the course" in DC and we'll sweep the rest of them out in 2008.

[The Count]

14. That's an important one. backwas was always small, but inflated with

smoke, mirrors and ...Diebold.