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National results leave no doubt about GOP comeback

Tuesday’s election results—GOP victories in Virginia and New Jersey and a pretty clear turn by suburban voters against the Democrats—make clear that the tide has turned since the 2008 elections. As for the New York City mayoral race, in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg barely squeezed out a win against an underfunded opponent, it is as much an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment result as a philosophically conservative mood.

Still, with the Democrats controlling all of the principal branches of government, that is small consolation.

What happens now is the key. It is not unusual for incumbents to do poorly in off-year voting. Nor is there necessarily a correlation between local elections, which tend to have low turnout and emphasize parochial issues, and national results. If the Obama administration moves back toward the middle, or if Republicans continue their purge of anyone left of Sarah Palin, things could still turn around quite dramatically.

All that can be said is that if Tuesday’s results carried over to national elections, the Democrats would lose both Congress and the presidency in the next three years. That’s a pretty big change from a year ago, a change to which both parties need to adjust.

I’ll be back with some thoughts on the Pennsylvania results in the next couple of days.

November 4, 2009 at 10:38 pm

--Michael Livingston

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