If there is one thing to take away from the Massachusetts result, it’s this: People like to whine.
Voters granted huge Democratic gains in the 2006 and 2008 elections because they were whining about how the Bush administration was ignoring certain issues, issues that festered and only got worse on its watch. Buried under Obama’s rhetoric of “hope and change” was an underlying promise: the federal government was no longer going to sit on its hands and ignore the problems our country faced, a course of (in)action that the Republicans proved all to good at. So Obama- implausibly- secured the White House, and promised an era of responsive government.
So, now voters are whining that the government should not be as responsive as the Obama administration has- haltingly, it could be asserted- been in its first twelve months. The pattern could be broken down as thus: You’re ignoring my problems? I’ll elect leaders that respond to them. You’re responding to my problems? I’ll elect leaders that will ignore them.
