What to make of the election

So merely a day off of my gloriously correct prediction (Rush Limbaugh style, I'm going to call that an accurate prediction... it was well within my hedging language), I wanted to offer some commentary as to "what we can glean" from the election. A couple big points stand out.

1) Running as a moderate is the way to win elections: In the last two elections, the Republicans have nominated moderates and then forced them to run to their right. That is NOT the way to win an election. We can argue over whether Obama is an idealogue or a pragmatist or whether he's truthful or a pervasive liar. But what is inarguable is that his campaign rhetoric was HEAVILY slanted towards the moderate stance. His STATED POSITIONS (and note, I'm very clearly trying to differentiate from what individuals THINK he's actually going to do) are those of a left-leaning moderate. Romney's positions on the other hand were much more in the middle of his own party and well to the right of the middle of the national spectrum. Romney didn't really run as a right wing nut job (as much as the Obama camp wanted to paint him that way) but it was occasionally easy to paint him into that corner. This is the real true strength of the incumbent. The incumbent can ALWAYS race to the middle early (while their opponent is still muddled in their primary battle) and then the contender is forced to run right or left of middle to create differentiation. Elections are won in the middle and future candidates set that wisdom aside at their own peril.

2) Apparently Americans like divided government: No, really. What else can you glean from the fact that the turnover rate for house and senate seats was at an all time low and the Presidency was unchanged? The Democrats are going to have a couple higher seat count in the Senate (thanks largely to Akin and Murdoch giving away their races) and a couple higher in the house (largely thanks to the statistical unlikelihood involved in 435 events turning out the same way twice consecutively) but this will essentially be an unchanged government in every way that matters. Expect a lot of press noise with the same underlying current, "What were people thinking?"

3) The market hates Democrats: Already the trade publications and even some of the big media players are connecting the dot on the market's down turn today with the election results. Consider, however, that the market is actually reacting to the reelection of the same people that brought us such hits as "Debt Ceiling '10" and "2 and a half years without a budget". The prospect of seeing Boehner, Pelosi, Reed, McConnell and Obama "fixing problems" for the next four years has the market spooked.

4) We're going to find out how political people are: Particularly McConnel, Boehner and Obama. One school of thought is that Obama is a reasonably pragmatic non-idealogue (left leaning, yes, but not a wingnut) and that he pushed left on certain things (KeyStone being the big one that gets mentioned) to shore up his base before the election. Another school of thought is that he's a powerful ideologue who got pushed to the middle by the Davids (Plouffe and Axelrod) in order to secure election and that the shackles are off and he can push the left leaning agenda that he REALLY wants. We'll find out in the next 6 months which is true. Similarly, Mitch McConnell famously stated that their number one legislative goal was "making sure that the President didn't win a second term." Now that that goal is lost and there's no "third term" possibility on the table will McConnell move to get stuff done (a budget would be a GREAT first start guys!) or will they continue the obstructionism that has plagued our fiscal house for the last 2 years.

5) At least the people who made the problem have to fix it: The flip side to the above is that at least with this election, we don't have to worry ourselves with lots of lame duck shenanigans and political football ducking. Largely the people that leave at the end of the year will be coming back in February. They can't punt on these problems and they can't hide behind a "voters have spoken" dodge of their responsibility. How they fix things is a big, open ended question. But they have to address them nonetheless or they face very, very serious blowback.

As my friend said at lunch, "The next 6 months will be 'stab yourself in the eye' interesting." Yup. That's about right.