// Read more here: // https://my.onetrust.com/s/article/UUID-d81787f6-685c-2262-36c3-5f1f3369e2a7?language=en_US //
You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Was the Gargantuan Loss of Democratic House Seats a Massacre or Just a Disaster?

TNR bloggers are arguing among themselves and in the blogosphere generally whether the gargantuan loss of House seats by Democrats is a massacre or just a disaster.

The only real consolation for the party is what happened in New York and California. They are still true-blue.

And the only consolation for the country is that a few of the nuttier Tea Party waiters lost. But the true enormity came where intellectual liberals and liberal intellectuals almost never really look or act: in the 50 states and their representative bodies.

As a friend wrote me:

"Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats."

Press people are speculating that maybe Barack Obama will be a one-term president. Yet wouldn't it be better that, rather than have a Republican candidate trounce him in the general elections, a Democrat try to unseat him in the party primaries and at the convention. Surely, there are many sensible Democrats who realize that the "yes, we can" dream is, in fact, Obama's own hallucination.