I realize that many on here are too young to remember 1994. Some folks need to chill the fuck out.

[ncteechur]

this is nothing compared to 1994. NOTHING! And President Clinton won reelection in 1996. He survived impeachment. He made a difference and did some very good things and is still a rock star. People kept saying that he would be challenged from the left. Bullshit.

President Obama will learn from this. He will govern with a GOP house (if necessary).

Am I happy? Nope.

I'm pissed. But it is what it is.

[Historic NY]

1. Maybe the lesson is that elections have consequences & not voting does too.

[Bitwit1234]

27. Yes but President Clinton had more of a fighting attitude than

Obama had. Clinton didn't let the republicans take charge. I am afraid Obama doesn't have the guts to go after them like Clinton did.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

33. Did you watch any of his exchanges with Republicans at their own conference this past Winter?

Democrats- at all levels- should have watched the video of that 1.5 hour exchange before the general election this year and taken copious notes on how to totally "serve" them.

:wtf: are you talking about?

[shanti]

2. NAFTA

I'll not forget that :(

[moobu2]

4. Opps

[county worker]

5. Workfare, repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act

[leftstreet]

9. Telecom Act

:grr:

[MrsCorleone]

34. Yep. This was the final dismantling of media regulation, giving big industry control

over our naive electorate via concentrating media ownership.

Thanks for your part in dumbing down the American peeps, Bill!

[EFerrari]

10. Yep. You all beat me to the big ones. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Quite right. 1994 was a bloodbath.

This isn't great but it's not as bad as a lot of the talking heads predicted. Some regrettable losses (Feingold), to be sure. But now let's imagine the Republicans trying to get anything done and showing their true colors. And Obama still has veto power and I sure as hell hope he uses it regularly. I'm not especially depressed. '94 was much worse, and it eventually backfired on them.

[mahina]

8. I'm not giving up on Russ.

[virgogal]

6. Too young to remember 1994? That's the year I retired. :-)

Nice post,by the way. This too shall pass.

[Naturyl]

7. Clinton was another centrist DLC appeaser

To give Repukes a woody, he threw the poor under the bus with welfare DEform. That's never going to be forgiven.

[VMI Dem]

11. C'mon..just a little happy. More centrist crap? New Democrats?

Thats a win for DLC'ers.

[K8-EEE]

12. It's not that bad. It's a normal midterm

The party in power always loses a few seats. The teabaggers and country clubbers will eat each other alive by 2012 and these people like Rand Paul will be a huge embarrassment.

[Blue_Tires]

13. '94 was the first race i voted in (against Oliver North)

but this incoming group of jaggoffs makes the '94 clan look like MoveOn by comparison...

[Upton]

14. Agreed..and I dont care what anyone says

Bill Clinton was a good president....

[sally cat]

15. Seems like most everyone agrees with you that it's no big deal.

[kenny blankenship]

16. Oh yeah, I'm confident he'll get along just fine.

[InfernalJustice]

17. Thanks for the calming message.

1994 was horrible and I couldn't vote (only 16) but it pushed me to action in 1996.

[walldude]

18. K&R.. It ain't the end of the world

[donheld]

19. Oh boy!

Were the stakes as high then as they are now?

[melody]

20. Exactly n/t

[murielm99]

21. We've seen worse.

Some of us have lived through cities on fire and Nixon.

[Scurrilous]

22. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Bigmack]

23. Nope... much worse stakes are higher, now than 1994....

economy worse, two wars, banks collapsing, housing collapsing, mortgage mess... and NOW the fucking Repubs take over?

I'm moving more money to Canada. I'm buttoning down for a really bumpy ride.

The chances that Pres Obama will be able to do anything are zip. The Repubs are gonna investigate, subpoena, and obstruct every fucking thing he tries.

The chances for gracefully backing out of our disastrous Empire just dropped, too.

[Mojorabbit]

26. I agree

Things are in horrible shape and to have them take over now is just awful. Obama kept us from an even deeper recession but I am worried now that safety nets will be withdrawn and things will go downhill fast and he will be blamed for it. Times now are nothing like 94.

[Lisa D]

24. Thank you! n/t

[BlueDemKev]

25. I remember '94 very well....

...I'm not that young! And yes, it was the worst night ever. I was certain the Democrats would never recover and that Clinton would just coast along his last two years and be gone in '96. I was gravely mistaken.

Tonight has been bad, I think we've known for about a year now that it would be. We are trying to recover from the worst economic downturn in 80 years, we passed health insurance reform which took up a lot more time than originally thought and it took away the Dems' time from focusing on job growth.

Overall, we did a lousy job at communicating our accomplishments of the last two years. Most people aren't even aware they received a significant tax cut from the stimulus (heck, even I had forgotten about it until about 2 months ago when Obama mentioned it on the campaign trail), we allowed people to falsely believe that the government has taken over health care, when all we've done is tighten a couple of loose screws on the private insurance industry.

The first thing Obama should do now is propose a huge tax hike on ANY American company which exports a single job overseas. It will resonate well with the public and if the Republicans oppose it, you can rest assured that Obama's approval ratings will go up 10% almost overnight he will take an early lead in the "popularity contest" he'll be having with the GOP Congress over the next 24 months.

Hey, Boxer just won in California! That puts us at 50, barring a shock in Hawaii. We have kept the Senate! :toast:

[MadHound]

28. Yes, and much like Clinton,

This defeat will give Obama cover to go right and go corporate.

And thus our political discourse moves even further to the right in what is truly a bipartisan effort.

[Blue_Roses]

32. nice "positive" thinking there...

NOT! It's no wonder we have nights like this with people who have this type of mentality on our side--supposedly.

:eyes:

[Johonny]

29. We weren't in the second great depression then

sorry but I have lived through both and the difference is we had a strong liberal safety net that saved this country. I don't know if that exists. I get that the Republican congress then got credit for the economic turn around caused by the previous congress. I think that's likely to happen again... if they do nothing. But these people are so much dumber than the Republicans of 1994. I think they may * it up. I don't think many DUers here will survive another economic down turn.

[w4rma]

30. The DLC cost us Congress in 1994, too. (nt)

[Proud Liberal Dem]

31. No, this isn't (quite) as bad as 1994

It still sucks, though. and I'm more than a little nauseated about the thought of seeing Boehner's ugly mug on a more frequent basis and him sitting in the Speaker's Chair come January and thinking about all of the things that won't get done (that need to get done) over the next two years because there is no way in hell (that I can think of) that Boehner and his Republican cabal will be pushing anything even mildly acceptable to President Obama and the remainder of the Democratic caucus in the House and I have no idea how anything decent is going to make it out of the Senate. Thinking about what might happen with Bush's Tax Cuts makes me a little bit nervous now too, especially given Senator Menendez's comments earlier today. :banghead:

The silver lining is that the Dems will be keeping the Senate, thereby being able to block anything particularly nasty coming up from the House and we will still have Obama in the WH to veto anything that somehow manages to make its way through the Senate. I just hope we don't get a huge shift to the right from President Obama, though, based on his past record, I'm not even sure what moving further right would look like for him. Even though the Republican Tea Party Machine regularly accuses him of being "Socialist", he's clearly (at least to me) been governing more center/center-left. I'm probably a little more hopeful than most that he won't tack as far to the right as Clinton did following the 1994 midterms because, as much as he's tried working with the Republicans, he hasn't hesitated to call them on their BS and has advanced his agenda largely in spite of their obstructionism but we won't really know what kind of situation we're dealing with until next January. Republicans will be under tremendous pressure to do SOMETHING during the next two years or they're going to be out on their asses like so many Democrats (unjustifiably) are tonight, so maybe that awareness (if it even exists in their minds at all) will help "bring them to the table". The "non-teabagger" Republicans (such as Boehner) are probably going to have a really rough time corralling Bachmann's "Tea Party Caucus", which will probably be much more busy clamoring for impeachment hearings and investigations into things like President Obama's birth certificates and trying to figure out ways to literally shut down the government than on actually doing anything meaningful for the public.

I'm definitely NOT counting President Obama and/or a Democratic (re-)victory in the House out for 2012 and, in fact, believe that it is rather likely.

Still wish we could've held on to the house............%$*%()$*%&. No more Speaker Pelosi (for at least the next two years) *sniff*

[paulk]

35. the unemployment rate in '94 was 6.5%

by election time in '96 it was closer to 5%.

Our current rate is 9.6 (the real rate is over 16%)

You cannot compare the current situation to that of 1994.



This election is a fucking disaster, both for the Democratic Party and the country. The Republicans have no plan to fix the economy and will block anything the Democrats try. They are not interested in "governing" with Obama. Things are going to get worse, not better.

The economy is the biggest determining factor in any election -

It is what it is...

[notesdev]

36. I remember 1994 quite well

Look at the numbers. This is worse than 1994, worse than losses the party has taken since 1920.

I think denialism has just about run its course - do we really need to go through this again in two more years? Is that seriously what you want? As long as there is a steadfast refusal to pay attention to numbers and facts, that's how it's going to be.

Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with alcoholics who refuse to even admit that drinking is a problem.