Last week I argued that there was a path to victory for Democrats in the House. That turned out to be wrong. It was a brutal night for Democratic Members of the House. Many lost by narrow margins — but a loss of any amount is still a loss.
What caused this disaster? First let’s talk about what didn’t cause Democratic defeat.
The Republicans will argue that their electoral success represented a ringing rebuke of progressive policies and values — and a popular renunciation of the Obama administration. That reading of this election would be completely wrong.
The polling shows that Americans still very much support Social Security and Medicare and want nothing to do with the Ryan “roadmap” that would privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicare and replace it with vouchers.
Americans support Wall Street reform and the reject attempts to allow the big banks to return to the recklessness that cost eight million Americans their jobs.
Americans do not favor eliminating the new law that prevents insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
Americans favor more investment in education, good public schools, money spent on infrastructure and spending by the government that creates new jobs.
Why then did they buy the Republican sales pitch and once again hand them the gavel of the House?

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This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
This is your comprehensive hour-by-hour guide to Election Night 2010. It will help you follow all of the bellwether indicators throughout the day and interpret the returns. So what are you waiting for? Print it out and keep it close during every minute of the agonizing countdown.
What to Look for Early on Election Day: There will be lots of anecdotal reports during the early hours of voting about turnout and the expectations* of both parties and many candidates. It’s colorful, but don’t believe any of it. Much of this chatter can be safely ignored as too unsystematic or, worse, as spin designed to suppress or motivate turnout. It’s also good to remain skeptical about charges of “voter fraud,” often peddled by Republicans in order to enrage the base and offset Democratic charges of voter intimidation and polling place chaos.
One distraction that generally won’t be available, at least in the East, is the type of early exit-poll rumor that was common before the 2008 election. The exit poll consortium of media outlets won’t get data until after 5:00 p.m. (all hours in this article are Eastern Daylight Time), and leaks prior to release time are becoming virtually extinct. In addition, exit polling is only being conducted in 26 states, and only of statewide races. So if anyone offers you exit poll data from VA-5 at 3:00 p.m., throw it in the nearest trash can.
Watch the weather. Early indications are that Election Day rain will be centered in the South, and some parts of the Northwest–but if the weather gets bad in other key swing areas, it can generally be assumed to benefit Republicans.
Beyond that, though, most of the day before early evening will be filled with tedium and hearsay.
The Late-Afternoon Rush: The first big hint of what’s to come will be at around 5:45 p.m., when media outlets begin reporting partial exit-poll data about the makeup of the electorate. These news organizations actually receive all the exit-poll data that is available around the country at 5:00 p.m., but they don’t use it to call races until polls close in the relevant states. Yet they are willing to report the non-candidate data from the exits earlier in the evening–and, if you read it right, that information can tell you a lot about who’s going to win. Here’s what to look for:
•Partisan/ideological composition of the electorate: In terms of self-identification by voters, if Republicans outnumber independents, it will be a very good sign for the GOP. If voters are divided into Republicans and Democrats plus “leaners,” any plurality by Republicans will be significant. Similarly, if conservatives outnumber moderates, and/or if conservatives exceed 45 percent of the electorate, look for big GOP gains.
•Age composition of the electorate: This is one of the most critical turnout variables. If 18-29 year-olds represent 10 percent of the electorate, Democrats are definitely going to pull some surprises. If, conversely, voters over 50 represent more than 60 percent of voters, this is probably an electorate that would have elected John McCain president two years ago, which is obviously a good sign for Republicans in close races, even in states carried by Obama.
•Total turnout: Turnout for midterms is typically around 40 percent of eligible voters. Anything higher than that is probably a sign that Democratic turnout was better than expected.
•Issues: Exit polls typically ask voters what issues were most important to voters. If “deficits,” “taxes,” “terrorism,” or “immigration” together amount to over what 20 percent of voters consider “most important,” it’s probably a very good sign for Republicans. “Jobs,” “the economy,” and “health care” are concerns shared by Dems and Republicans. And there’s always one question that asks whether voters would prefer a smaller government with less services or a larger government with more services. The small-government opinion almost always prevails (as it did in 2008), but any small-government number over 60 percent could be significant.
•Right track/wrong track; anti-incumbency: These are data points you should approach with caution, since voters for both parties are likely to express strongly “wrong track” or “anti-incumbent” sentiments.
First Poll Closings, 6:00 p.m.: At this time, polls will close in most of Indiana (it’s by local option) and in Eastern Kentucky. The results will provide the first indication of how Americans are voting–and it will also set the tone for the night’s network coverage. (Networks generally don’t like to “call” statewide races until all polls are closed, but sometimes do if the results are very clear.) For example, the networks will probably call the Indiana Senate race for Republican Dan Coats right away, which would be the first GOP “takeover” of a Senate seat. An early call of the Kentucky Senate race for Republican Rand Paul, who has become a heavy favorite in the last two weeks, would portend something like a double-digit win for Paul, and it would begin the night’s first big batch of hype about the Tea Party movement.
There are three House bellwethers in Indiana and Kentucky that bear close watching: IN-9, a perennially marginal district, where Democrat Blue Dog Baron Hill is a slight underdog to Republican Todd Young; IN-2, where a Class of 2006 Blue Dog Democrat, Joe Donnelly, is in a very close race with Jackie Walorski; and Lexington-based KY-6, where still another Blue Dog Democrat, Ben Chandler, who took the seat away from the GOP in a 2004 special election, is in a tough race with Andy Barr. This contest will say something about whether a candidate who voted for climate-change legislation can survive in a coal-producing state. If the GOP sweeps these bellwether districts, the odds are very high Republicans will control the House and could well exceed the 54 seats won in 1994.

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While fortifying myself for a long election night, I happened upon a very interesting piece by Jon Chait about the dynamics of election predictions, and particularly the tendency of conservatives to guess very high about Republican gains while progressives tend to be pretty objective. Here’s the key passage:

I think there’s a strange sociology at work here. Obviously, there has been a strong Republican undertow in Washington over the last year or more. The primary effect of this undertow has of course been to improve the GOP’s prospects. But the secondary effect has been to make conservatives giddy and liberals depressed. On the right, a can-you-top-this sensibility is at work in predicting the November bounty. And while there are many conservatives making outlandishly hopeful electoral predictions, and very few liberals doing the same. Nate Silver is, properly, the lodestar of liberal electoral analysis, and his prediction is admirably down-the-line. Not even partisans like Markos Moulitsas are challenging his median prediction of a 53-seat House loss.
And so, in a lopsided environment like this, it seems like all the social pressure is pushing pundits toward Republican-friendly positions. That’s why you see them making nonsensical guesses where they throw out a reasonable number (like 60-some seats in the House) along with a caveat that the number could be vastly higher. What does this show? It shows they’re afraid of guessing low but not afraid of guessing high. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of this wave. Nobody wants to be the mainstream reporter who is ridiculed by Republicans for not getting it.

There’s an amusing example of this phenomenon in the Weekly Standard this morning, where Jay Cost, a very smart guy who knows how to run numbers, ties himself into knots trying to justify a prediction of very large GOP gains. He even suggests that he’s bravely breaking away from the “herd” that is aiming lower, when (whether he’s right or wrong) he’s pretty clearly following his conservative buddies who are treating this election as an Epoch-Defining Event instead of a bad-economy midterm dominated by Rebublican-trending older white voters who are in part just lopping off the low-hanging fruit grown by previous Democratic landslides. In his enthusiasm, Jay winds up predicting things that don’t look that credible from available evidence, like a very competitive California Senate race and (I really hope he’s wrong about this) a gubernatorial win for Tom Tancredo.
Now some progressives look at this phenomenon, which extends far beyond election predictions into all forms of political expression, and argue that Democrats are giving up something valuable by trying to be objective, instead of countering conservative exaggerations and spin with their own. I understand the argument, but don’t buy it. For every advantage conservatives gain by hype, they lose something intangible but important in the long run: the ability to resist believing in their hype.
I think it’s very likely we’ll see this downside of “enthusiasm” in abundance after this election, when Republicans convince themselves they’ve won a mandate to undo all of the Obama administration’s policies and set the country on a rightward course that would have alarmed Ronald Reagan. Indeed, many Republicans are visibly buying into the ancient, threadbare conservative argument that the path to future electoral victories, in 2012 and beyond, is to move as far to the right as the hard-core party base (known lately as the Tea Party Movement) wants it to. So when they emerge from their victory parties fired up to repeal even the popular elements of ObamaCare, or to champion more high-end tax cuts, or to gut regulation of Wall Street, or to abolish the Departments of Education and Energy, or to immediately balance the federal budget (which means gigantic changes in Social Security and Medicare), they may not realize they’ve over-interpreted this election to their peril. I’d just as soon my party be less enthusiastic, and more in touch with reality.

This may seem like a strange question on election day, but how many times have you been annoyed when some friend or acquaintance says, often with self-righteous intonation, “I vote for the person, not the party”?
My answer would be, “a lot,” so commonplace the phrase has become in political discussions. My hunch is that there is a pretty good chance you have also heard the expression in the last couple of months.
It can be a conversation-ender, depending on your tolerance for political dialogue with those who don’t give politics much thought, unprincipled dimwits or otherwise intelligent but apolitical people. But the expression is emblematic of a larger problem, the failure of the Democratic Party to inspire broad-based loyalty of similar magnitude as progressive parties in other nations.
Steve Benen has an interesting observation about “The Limited Value of the ‘Vote for the Person’ Maxim” at The Washington Monthly. As Benen notes,

…I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard people say, with some degree of pride, “I vote for the person, not the party.” I get the sense those who repeat it consider it evidence of high-minded independence.
…The “I vote for the person” crowd is making an odd argument. These folks seem to be suggesting they’re not especially concerned with policy differences, policy visions, or agendas, but rather, are principally concerned with personalities. Maybe the candidate seems more personable; maybe they ran better commercials. Either way, as a substantive matter, the “vote for the person, not the party” approach seems pretty weak. Indeed, it’s what leads people to express a series of policy priorities, and then vote for a candidate who opposes all of those priorities — a dynamic that’s as exasperating as it is counter-productive.

Benen quotes Michael Kinsley to underscore the point:

…There is nothing wrong with voting for the party and not the person…. A candidate’s party affiliation doesn’t tell you everything you would like to know, but it tells you something. In fact, it tells you a lot — enough so that it even makes sense to vote your party preference even when you know nothing else about a candidate. Or even vote for a candidate that you actively dislike.

There are several reasons for the failure of the Democratic Party to inspire the kind of loyalty that motivates voters to support their candidates, even when a candidate’s charisma is lacking. Multiparty parliamentary systems seem to do this better. They have more ‘street’ or neighborhood presence, which builds solidarity. America’s culture elevates individual achievement over accomplishments based on ideological solidarity. And there’s no denying that the Democratic Party could do a lot better job of defining and projecting what it stands for.
I raise this issue today because the “I vote the person” maxim will have a particularly sour echo on a day like today. I find it hard to believe that majorities of voters really believe that Sharron Angle, Rand Paul or Nathan Deal are truly persons of superior character, competence or likability, compared with their Democratic opponents. In a way support for those candidates is based on party, but not party loyalty — numerous polls indicate voters don’t like the GOP very much. Rather, indications are that many are angry with Democrats for what they perceive as inadequate commitment to economic recovery.
Dems did not sell the very real economic achievements of their party during the last two years very well. I don’t recall seeing any ads in which Dems claim credit for saving the auto industry, talk about the impressive number of jobs created by the stimulus, explain that TARP is proving to be a cost-effective investment, or brag about the life-saving benefits of HCR. Instead they relied on interviews and speeches to get the message out, with limited results. As Joe Klein observed on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’

…This is one of the weirdest campaigns I’ve ever seen. The Democrats pass all this legislation — stuff they wanted to pass for 60 years — and then they run away from it. They don’t even bother to explain the stuff that they passed…

Painfully true. Lots of ads are necessary to tell a party’s story properly and unedited by outsiders, because TV editors clip interviews and speech excerpts, often drastically, to suit their programs.
But there is still hope that Dems can build a stronger spirit of party loyalty. The seeds are there, as James Vega has noted,

…During the 50’s and 60’s, in dozens and dozens of congressional districts blue- collar Democrats loyally voted for Democratic candidates who were much more liberal than they were on social issues. They did it out of a combination of party loyalty and trust that the Democratic candidate would be more pro-labor on economic issues.

Dems need a stronger commitment to assertively promote the party and its agenda, not just our candidates in their individual races. The image of the Democratic party has dwindled down into a collection of candidates who stand for different reforms in varying degrees with little solidarity between them. Party building is not just about recruiting good candidates; It’s also about creating a collective identity that inspires voters and invites them to be a part of it.

While there’s no doubt that Republicans are going to make net gains in congressional and gubernatorial contests today (as the “out” party almost always does in the first midterm after a new presidential administration takes office), there is some pretty serious mystery about how big those gains wll be, particularly in the House. That’s mainly because of an unusual degree of disagreement among the major polling outlets about the shape of the midterm electorate and the size of the GOP advantage.
Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com has a nifty write-up this morning of the problem, which includes a chart of final likely-voter generic congressional ballot polls showing a remarkable range of findings, from Marist/McClatchey’s dead even to the “low-turnout”-based Gallup prediction of an astonishing 15 point Republican margin.
Complicating the issue (which would normally dictate just averaging the polls and not worrying about it) is the fact that Gallup has historically been very accurate in its final generic ballot poll. Yet today their findings look like an outlier, off there nearer to the Rasmussen numbers (a 12-point GOP margin) than to such equally well-established and sober outfits like Pew (a 6-point margin) and ABC/WaPo (4 points). TDS contributor and advisory board member Alan Abramowitz of Emory University has been saying for a good while that something’s screwy with Gallup’s methodology this year. One theory is that Gallup is placing too much stock in subjective “enthusiasm” indicators that may over-estimate the marginal tendency of Republicans to vote. With other apparent outlier polls like Rasmussen’s, there is a suspicion that the firm has failed to sufficiently adjust for its inability to reach cell-phone-only households.
We’ll know the truth soon enough, but it’s comforting to know that the poll-assessment industry seems to be growing as fast as the public polling industry itself. Certainly Democrats hope that Gallup is making a mistake this year that rivals its famous prediction in 1948 that Dewey would crush Truman.

Assuming the representation of cell-phone-only respondents has been properly addressed in the most recent polls and absent a Democratic midterm turnout juggernaut of historic proportions, it appears likely that Republicans will win a majority in the House. Sabato predicts a net GOP pick-up of 55 House seats, with 39 needed to win a majority. Nate Silver sees the GOP gaining about 53 seats. Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium predicts a 52 seat increase for the Republicans. There seems to be a consensus among poll analysts that Dems will narrowly hold the senate.
Wednesday will bring the soul-searching, finger-pointing and “what if?” scenarios Eugene Robinson touched on in his WaPo column last week. As Robinson put it:

What if President Obama and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill had pushed through an authentic, righteous, no-holds-barred progressive agenda, perhaps with a thick overlay of pitchfork populism? How different might the political landscape look? Would predictions for the party’s prospects on Election Day still range from gloom all the way to doom? Or would triumphant Democrats be preparing to leave the GOP — or what remained of it — dazed and confused?
This question is being asked, in all seriousness, by thoughtful progressives. They argue that the Obama administration’s political mistake wasn’t pushing its liberal program too hard but not pushing it hard enough. And they contend that the White House seriously misread both the public anger and the national interest when it came to dealing with Wall Street’s greedy excesses — punishing miscreant bankers with love taps rather than cudgel and mace.

Numerous progressives have expressed versions of this contention, none more persuasively or with more cred than Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who has eloquently argued that the Administration’s stimulus was way too weak. And had Obama tweaked his Wall St. reform agenda with a little more “pitchfork populism,” who knows, it might have helped Dems some.
But Robinson also sees a sort of progressive myopia regarding the Republicans numerical strength in congress:

The problem is that for all the talk of changing the way Washington works, you still have to get actual legislation through an actual Congress. In the House, Democratic ranks are swollen with Blue Dogs and other moderates, many of them elected in swing districts as part of the 2008 Democratic landslide. The votes for a full-fledged progressive agenda — single-payer health care, for example — simply were not there.
In the Senate, the terrain was even less favorable. With the Republican caucus voting no as a bloc, passing any piece of legislation meant making concessions and compromises to keep together the needed 60 votes to bring a bill to the floor. The votes weren’t there for a health-care bill that would have been cleaner and more transformative than the one that passed, or for climate-change legislation with teeth, or for rules that could really transform Wall Street’s toxic culture, or for . . . fill in the blank.

Robinson concedes that progressives make some credible points and that President Obama’s unrequited bipartisan outreach amounted to “self-defeating concessions to Republicans who had no good-faith intention of seeking compromise.” That Obama had to make a strong initial appeal for bipartisan support is to me defensible. But the continued outreach to Republicans, which met with repeated rejection, appeared to waste time and political capital.
Robinson less persuasively dismisses the contention that Dems should have put jobs before HCR, noting “there’s no way the economy could recover 8 million jobs so quickly, no matter what Washington did. And health-care reform would still be a distant dream.”
Nobody expected the recovery of all 8 million jobs in two years, but a larger reduction in unemployment may have been possible. If Dems made 2010 the “year of jobs,” as William Galston argued, it may well have helped them. Robinson is likely right, however, that the “jobs first” strategy would have precluded any significant health care reform, even if it meant that Dems would be in better mid term position.
Speculation about the outcome of untried strategies is an enduring political ritual following every election, and, in the long run, Obama’s health care reform strategy may prove to have been the wisest course. In the end, however, “what if” scenarios don’t help much in terms of formulating strategy going forward. Regardless of all pre-election speculation, it’s more important that Dems learn the lessons of the midterms as revealed by the exit polls on Tuesday — and get focused on honing the best strategy for 2012.