Another Sign Of The Fall: 2012 Election Edition

Caption: A screenshot of today's running average generic congressional poll at Real Clear Politics. Today, Republicans are on top. No one stays there for long these days, though. Click to enlarge.

Image credit: Screenshot of this RCP poll by Cujo359


It's an astounding record, when you think about it. Back in 2008, I wrote this:

They own the news. They get a pass nearly every time broadcast news looks at them. They've dominated talk radio for decades. It took all that to make the Democratic Party and liberalism labels that some Democratic politicians considered slanderous. Yet all we needed to do was let the Republicans run things for a while to make the Republicans ashamed of their own party affiliation[.]

Homer Simpson Is A Republican, For Now

Which, it turned out, were pretty prophetic words. The Republicans lost the White House, as well as quite a few seats in Congress. It didn't take long for the Democrats to screw up, though, as I noted early in 2010, right after the disaster of the Massachusetts special election:

[N]either the Democrats nor the left-wing punditocracy today seems to get it. Read Krugman, Silver, or Yglesias, and you come away thinking that Massachusetts voters must be the most insane people on the planet for not loving the Senate's idea of health care reform. I have news for these people - Massachusetts is the one state in this country that has experience with the sort of system the Senate bill is seeking to create, and they don't like it. That is the message - if that's the best you can do, take your broke shit and go home. We'll find someone who can fix it, or at least not make it worse. Anyone who looks at the history of the race and checks the exit poll should know that. Yet these people continue to believe in unicorns.

Of Senators And Sharpies

I spent the rest of 2010 warning that a big disaster was impending, which, of course, it turned out to be.

Now, we come to not-so-early 2012, and once again we see that one party only had to be in charge for a little while before they completely lost the plot:

While women typically are more likely to identify themselves as Democrats than men are, that difference widens to a chasm in the USA TODAY poll. By 41%-24%, women call themselves Democrats; men by 27%-25% say they’re Republicans. – A Widening Gender Gap Boosts Obama Over Romney

Republicans announcing forced procedures in state after state make women turn off their message, which clearly contains a strong vein of men telling women what we can or can’t do with our own bodies as a means of controlling us.

It’s the 21st century and women want answers about economics and financial equality, but we’re not likely to take from a political party who thinks it’s their job to design our life for us, butting in on private decisions that isn’t anyone’s decision but our own.

Republican War on Women Erases 2010 Midterm Gains

The only difference this time is that I didn't have to write those words. Taylor Marsh saved me the trouble. Taylor is referring to one particular poll, by the way. The Real Clear Politics chart that leads this article is an aggregate poll. It doesn't matter, really, it's pretty clear that there's been a shifting back and forth, just from what's on that RCP chart.

So, every two years, at least a part of America large enough to swing the popular vote becomes disenchanted with whatever party is in power, and votes for the other one. Or so it seems, at least. What this tells me is that we're either completely ungovernable as a country, a proposition I can't entirely dismiss, or we have really lousy taste in our political leaders.

As I've mentioned a time or two (NOTE 1), I'm not enchanted with any of what passes for "leadership" in modern day political America. Often as not, our leaders are self-involved hypocrites whose only real concern is holding onto power long enough to profit from it. The rare exceptions appear to be unable to have any useful effect on the process.

So, I don't find any of this surprising. Come 2014, it will undoubtedly be the GOP's time to shine again, because by then the economy will still be in the tank, and we will have finally seen the true "benefits" of ObamaCare. If it's not that, it will be some other excuse for the Democrats to trip over their shoelaces on the way to the race track.

NOTE 1 That's just what was on the front page. When have I not talked about this lately?