GOP's Pyrric Victory

President Obama is right. The Democrats got a "shellacking" in the midterm election. But not from the people who voted. And in a sense, the pundits and prognosticators are maybe half right. The president and his part were sent a message in this election. But not from the people who voted. Want to know who administered this midterm "shellacking" and delivered the message of the midterm elections of 2010? Want to know what how to avoid another "shellacking" in 2012.?

Do the math.

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People are angry not at what the Democrats did after 2008, but what they didn't do. They didn't "buy" what the GOP was selling. Like a shopper who ordered one thing and got another, American voters ordered transformative change in 2008 but got the same old transactional politics instead. The midterms of 2010 is their letter or complaint.

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Despite Kathleen Parker's smarmy post-election advice to Democrats that "You can't sell people what they don't want," people actually don't want what the GOP is selling. And they didn't punish Democrats for not selling it to them. They want what they were sold, and what they enthusiastically voted for in 2008. They punished the Democrats for falling short on delivery, not by voting for Republicans, but by staying home and not voting at all.

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Hemmed in by by a base that wants one thing, major (though anonymous) donors that want another, and an American voters angry that not enough been done to ease their economic pain — and who want more done — Republicans won't be able to make it work without abandoning their base, their donors, the basics of conservative philosophy, or Americans demanding solutions that the GOP doesn't have.

It won't work. That's what we face for the next two years. The best chance Democrats have for 2012 is to give voters a clear choice that does work, by offering solutions founded in progressive values, making the case for them, and fighting for them.

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