It is not very hard to see what happened this election day. President Clinton the the Democrats were given full and complete credit for what they have accomplished. And the voters have said they do not like what they have done.
Every Democrat was tied to President Clinton's coattails and the entire Congress was changed. It was not a vote against incumbents as no incumbent Republicans lost in Congress or in the states. It was in fact a clear statement that the Clinton and democrat liberal accomplishments are rejected.
This is no different from Bush being rejected in 1992. Bush promised something and he was rejected with full credit given for what he had accomplished.
What we have here is the rather cynical attitude on both sides that people will in fact always vote their pocketbooks. The idea that incumbents should win in a good economy is now down the tubes. They do not. Bush was not rejected because of the economy, rather that he made a contract and he broke it. There were new taxes.
Clinton made at least a dozen contracts with America and he broke everyone of them. There are no two ways to look at it. President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton is a lying son of a bitch. And there is no way to hold the voters did not see that.
But there is an indication that voters are still looking for something. The House Republican contract with America was clearly and unquestionably something the voters also deliberately chose. Whatever is in that contract, that combined with what Clinton and company accomplished, was enough reason to reverse the power in the House after forty years.
The Clinton and liberal spin on this is now that the people still want the Clinton change despite the fact it is not what Clinton was elected on. It is a very strange attitude for a purportedly intelligent person to hold. It is difficult to believe that Clinton really believes people want what he delivered rather than what he promised in his 1992 campaign.
I do admit I am become rather tired to the point of avidly skeptical that Clinton has some sort of high IQ. It is not as though he has demonstrated it in any public forum. We keep hearing that he reads ten books a day or some such thing but there is no sign of doing that in what he says. We hear a lot of things about this person from the White House propagandists but we see no evidence of them being true.
And no where is this more clear than in his post election press conference. Several times he appeared ready to break out in tears when for the first time the press was not buying his opening remarks. His answers were not insightful. They addressed nothing of substance regarding the election.
Rather his remarks and answers were based upon the electorate really wanting what he had delivered. He demonstrated no ability to comprehend the meaning of the voting in any manner. And this is an intelligent man? Pardon me. Everyone but Clinton gets it.
It's the Clinton, stupid.
Now it is granted the incumbent party generally loses seats in an off year election. But it is also generally true that in presidential election years he carries candidates from his party into office so that over the four years it is generally a wash. When Clinton won the presidential election he carried no one with him.
Clinton was truly the last man left standing in the primaries. The system used by the Democrats to select a candidate means that he had to become the candidate and that had nothing to do with being the best candidate. Once in office he was a much in trouble with his own party as he was with the Republicans.
No matter what he might have wanted to do personally he was in constant conflict with his party to get it. Rather than face down his own party he grinned away his disagreements with them. And in so doing he and his party liberals became a single image in the minds of the voters.
All of this taken into account the failing is in arrogance. Knowing there would be a good economy they all bet that they could pass anything they wanted and as long as the economy was good they could stay in office. They were very wrong.
That arrogance of power was such that there is a good chance the Republican majority can put amendments to the Constitutional before the states on a balanced budget, term limits, you name it, even prayer in schools. And in doing so the Republicans can join with Democrat conservatives in the states to ratify them. [n.b. Submitting amendments to the Constitution to the states for ratification does not require Presidential concurrence.]
The only thing Conservatives need concern themselves with at this point is a similar arrogance. They need not work with Clinton, rather only create a majority constituency that will agree Clinton is blocking what they wish. With that position they need only find a winning Presidential candidate against a near empty field for the liberals.
The message is clear. Conservatives are in. Liberals are out.
And it means the country gets a conservative agenda for at least the next two years. Reagan and Bush working against a liberal Congress had the ability to appeal to the people for support for their platform. Clinton does not have that ability.
Clinton is now simply one person in the White House and nothing more than that. He has no control over the political agenda as he has no venue to introduce anything in either house that can get out of committee without Conservative approval. For example, Clinton's next year's budget goes directly to the Republican controlled House Ways and Means Committee. Perhaps they will not declare it dead on arrival as happened to Reagan's budgets.
The people have rejected Clinton and everything he and his fellow liberals have accomplished. And in so doing Clinton is now a lame duck president for the next 27 months. He has no way to accomplish much of anything in his favor in that time.
Worse yet, his fellow Democrats who can appear to have had a conservative change of heart are going to spend their time distancing themselves from him, that is not supporting him making the Republican majority even greater. At least six of them in the Senate will be looking at a Presidential bid and that will require they out conservative the Conservatives. When it comes to questionable issues or getting that 2/3rds majority for constitutional amendments it will the be presidential candidate wannabes who will provide it. Right or wrong even liberals are not dumb enough to ride dead jackass.