I'm baffled! How is that the Democrats did not run on their legislative accomplishments of the las two years rather than prattle on about who ran who into the ditch?
Joe Klein's commentary is spot on:
Still, the Democratic performance this year was one of the more mystifying, and craven, in memory. Usually, a political party loses when it has failed to do its job. These Democrats lost because they succeeded in doing what they've been promising for decades. They enacted their fantasies, starting with health care reform, and then ran away from their successes. Why on earth would a political party enact major pieces of legislation and then refuse to take credit for them? It is too easy, though not entirely inaccurate, to argue that leaders like Nancy Pelosi stood too far from the mainstream — her forceful advocacy of cap-and-trade legislation certainly proved politically disastrous. Pelosi's myopia also allowed her party to lard the stimulus bill with a perennial Democratic wish list, much of which — like $2 billion more for Head Start — had little to do with the immediate economic crisis. House Democrats transformed the health care bill into a 16 million–person expansion of Medicaid instead of inviting those people into the more efficient health-insurance superstores, or exchanges, the bill created. But at the heart of that incoherent performance stands the President, as opaque a character as we've seen in the Oval Office in a great while.
Here's an interesting, largely unknown fact: the Obama Administration has been wildly successful in reversing the tide of illegal immigration across the Mexican border. The number of illegal immigrants declined by an estimated 800,000 in 2009. This was partly attributable to the lousy economy — not so many jobs here anymore — but it was also a result of the Administration's amped-up security efforts at the border. This is the sort of progress that politicians routinely trumpet. This President didn't, even though illegal immigration is an issue that has gut-level resonance with the working-class Democrats and independents who turned against him this year. This is political malpractice of the highest order, as is the President's inability — or unwillingness — to tell 95% of the public about the tax cut he bestowed on them, or the prescription-drug doughnut-hole he filled for senior citizens. He never explained, in ways the public could understand, the restraints placed on Wall Street in the financial-regulatory-reform act or the new rights inherent in the health care reform bill. Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, who inserted the popular provision allowing children up to the age of 26 to remain on their parents' health care plan, faced a difficult re-election fight this year. The President never saw fit to campaign with her and thereby publicize her idea. Dahlkemper lost.