Mandates and referenda

We seem to be interested these days in talking about what the election means. As far as I'm concerned, the meaning is obvious: Democrats won more than half of the house seats out there, plus a lot of Senate seats, plus a new governor's chair and, oh yeah, the presidency. The Republicans won some state reps around Dixie and a handful of congressional seats in the South, but unless I'm mistaken, these seats don't really give the party much to work with on the question of where to go next. Three of the felled Dems--Nick Lampson, Don Cazayoux, and Nancy Boyda--were representing ultra-conservative districts that more or less "came home" after electing Democratic representatives in protest. (Why Lampson shrugged off a run at higher office is something of a mystery to me, but oh well.) The other two--Tim Mahoney and Bill Jefferson--were scandal-ridden incumbents in more Dem-friendly districts that the Democrats will presumably have another chance at in the next election cycle. Steve Benen gets it right:

Republicans have the smallest House minority in nearly two decades, and the smallest Senate minority in nearly three decades. They got trounced in the presidential race, and are now easily outnumbered in the nation's governorships. But they managed, with surprising difficulty, to hold on to a Senate seat in the deep South, while beating a scandal-plagued incumbent, currently under felony indictment, elsewhere in the deep South.

As silver linings go, this is rather thin.

Notice how none of these victories represented Republicans changing independent or Democratic minds. The only race where that might have happened--the Pennsylvania square-off between Republican Lou Barletta and Congressman Paul Kanjorski--turned out to be nothing to worry about. This isn't to say that all of the conservative folks in districts represented by new Democratic congresspeople have sworn off the GOP forever, and it is entirely possible that they will return home after an election cycle or two when the memories of the Bush years abate and Obama's agenda sinks in. Any such movement back, though, will almost certainly not be due to new big government programs, as the level of economic conservatism within the GOP base is vastly overstated. If Obama doesn't raise taxes on the middle class and the economy turns around I suspect that most people will like universal healthcare and stimulus just fine.

The GOP's best chance is that Obama pushes too hard on social issues--so much as to cause a backlash. I suppose Obama could screw up a national security or foreign policy decision pretty badly, but Obama won't do anything as bad as Iraq, and considering his canny cabinet selections so far, I'd say anything majorly bad is unlikely and there would be a fair amount of insulation between Obama and the consequences, between conservative types like Bob Gates and Jim Jones in the security apparatus. I know that Bill Kristol probably hopes the Iraq withdrawal will be botched or that a civil war will break out after we leave, so as to blame Obama and keep the neocon flag flying. I still think that the social issues present the greatest challenge--if Obama signs a Freedom of Choice Act that is too far "left", or repeals DOMA in a way that leads to widespread court challenges to force Nebraska to recognize gay marriages from Connecticut--the GOP would have another chance to reclaim those voters. Absent that, they'll have to reform.