The chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee (DCCC), Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, blamed high unemployment
numbers and spending on elections by outside groups for the party's historic
losses Tuesday.
"Tuesday's election was a perfect political storm
born out of the understandable frustration felt by the American people in
response to high unemployment caused by the worst financial crash since the
Great Depression," Van Hollen said in a statement. "The record amount
of secret money spent by right-wing outside groups turned this political storm
into a category 3 political hurricane."
President
Obama, meanwhile, told Americans he took a "shellacking."
At a White House press briefing this week, Obama told
them his party had received a "shellacking" in the midterms. Saying
he was humbled by the results, he vowed to try to work with the emboldened
congressional GOP, though he wouldn't agree that the voters had effectively
repudiated the policies he'd sought since taking office.
Meanwhile, the post-election post mortems are coming in.
Regarding Sarah Palin, many political observers say she
appears not to have been a big influence in elections.
She endorsed 60 candidates this year, but when dust
settled Wednesday morning, the biggest beneficiary of the "Sarah Palin
effect" was not necessarily the candidates themselves, but the Palin
brand.
Of the 34 candidates Palin endorsed for the House, only
15 won, a less-than-stellar average for someone vying to be the
difference-maker in Republican politics.
She did endorse one giant killer, Vicky Hartzler, who
took down veteran Democrat and House Armed Services Chairman Committee Ike
Skelton of Missouri.
But on the Senate side, only five of her 12 choices were
successful - with the most embarrassing stumble potentially being her
home-state Alaska pick of Joe Miller, who is locked with Palin foe Lisa
Murkowski in a tight battle that could end in a weeks-long recount.
Just two months ago, the incumbent Republican Murkowski
conceded her party's primary to little-known Tea Party-backed Joe Miller.
Shortly after, Murkowski launched a write-in bid to retain her seat.
Matt Felling, an anchor for KTVA-TV in Anchorage, said
the race could prove to be the "highest stakes spelling bee in American
political history."
"Now we are going to find out how many people can
put nine letters together that somewhat resemble Murkowski," he said.
The last US senator to win on a write-in campaign was
Strom Thurmond in 1954.
Some of the biggest losers appear to be those super rich
folks who funded their own campaigns.
Multi-millionaire Meg Whitman invested more than $143 million of her own
money in her 13-point loss in the California governor's race against Democrat
Jerry Brown.
Her cost per vote: $47. His cost per vote: $6.34. Her cost for each losing percentage
point: A little more than $11 million. The amount of personal net worth flushed
away: About 10 percent.
Whitman's spectacular crash-and-burn on Tuesday shattered
all self-funding records, including the $108 million Mayor Michael Bloomberg
spent to gain a third term as New York's mayor.
(But at least Bloomberg defied the self-funder's odds and
won.)
Whitman, a Republican who was CEO of eBay, was part of
the ever-expanding roster of the wealthy trying to buy their way to high office
with their own cash.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, only one
of the eight candidates running for Congress who contributed more than $3.5
million to their own campaigns won on Election Night.
Another big loser was Connecticut Republican Linda
McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, who spent about $47
million of her own cash on an unsuccessful quest to gain a seat in the Senate.
Others in the 2010 Losing Class includes Democrat Jeff
Greene, a billionaire who spent $24 million in a fruitless quest to win the Democratic
Senate nomination in Florida, and Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO
who lost $5.5 million and the race against Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The one winner in the group is Republican businessman Ron
Johnson, who beat Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, one of the Senate's most
ardent champions of campaign finance reforms that would limit the role of big
money in federal races.
History tells presidents not to panic too much over
mid-term election defeats. Ronald Reagan suffered serious midterm losses in
1982 and won reelection in one of the nation's biggest landslides. Bill Clinton
looked flattened after 1994, when Republicans ended 40 years of Democratic rule
in the House and added the Senate as well. He, too, easily won a second term
two years later.
But Tuesday's results showed just how much work Obama has
to do to turn around his presidency. Some say he lost touch with voters and his
coalition is now badly fractured:
Neither young people nor African Americans showed up Tuesday in numbers
approaching their turnout in 2008.
Obama has not lost often in his life. With the exception
of a loss in his first race for Congress, he has always arrived ahead of
schedule on a career path that has moved at an astonishing pace from community
organizer to Illinois state senator to US senator to president.
But what happened Tuesday represents the biggest and
broadest rebuke he has ever received. Asked at his news conference Wednesday
afternoon how it feels, he said, "It feels bad."
