This is why I have a stubborn belief in the American people

While perusing the horserace news this morning, I noticed two polls in particular. One is the NY Times/CBS News poll that riverdaughter already discussed in her morning roundup, and I’ll get to my thoughts on that in a bit. The other is this polling news from Bloomberg, with a headline to love: “Republicans Win House, Get No Mandate in Poll Favoring Clinton.” From the link:

Republicans are poised to retake the U.S. House next week without a mandate from voters to carry out their policies, a Bloomberg National Poll shows.

Okay in an ideal world, the Democrats wouldn’t have waged political malpractice from 2006 to 2010 and would not be losing the House, et cetera et cetera. That part isn’t lovable and will always be a sore spot, but this trend hasn’t changed for months now, so it is no surprise.

However, I love that “Get No Mandate” part. LOVE. IT.

When I saw it, immediately I thought to myself that this is exactly where my stubborn belief in ordinary Americans–ordinary people–comes from. We-the-people’s collective bullshit detector have gone off over the last decade–some of us long before others, Cassandras that we are, but I think we are finally reaching a critical mass in that regard. All of Washington–both parties–are in the political doghouse with President Obama. He is not the only one we are ‘talking about this way,’ ahem! We-the-people are deeply dissatisfied with the DINOs and the GOP. And, Republicans taking the House gives our self-proclaimed moral president no mandate to carry out the Red Doggy Biscuit policies. So when Obama tries to further undo the social safety net that the FDR/LBJ legacy had established, citing a Republican Congress as his handy woe-is-a-DINO excuse, it won’t just be the GOP that has to answer for it in 2012. The buck stops with Obama. He will have to answer for it, too.

Of course the “in Poll Favoring Clinton” part of the headline is bittersweet, too.

The Bloomberg poll, which was conducted from October 24-26, shows that the GOP “leads 47 percent to 44 percent when likely voters are asked how they plan to vote in their congressional election.” This finding is in line with all the other evidence that has been pointing to a Republican takeover of the House. The only ones left denying this are basically Democratic party figures who have no choice but to try to rally the troops with wishful thinking at this point. Of course, there is Obama who won’t even endorse the Democratic candidate for governor in Rhode Island, so he’s not even one of the people who would invest much energy in trying to deny it. He and his inner circle have long ago stopped making any secret of the fact that the Democrats will be losing the House. Instead they have been preparing us for all the Democratic agenda that nice, conciliatory Mr. Bipartisan President will have to sacrifice to work with a Republican Congress.

At the beginning of this year, President Obama infamously said the“The Big Difference” Between 2010 and 1994 “Is Me.”

The real difference between 2010 and 1994? Bill Clinton was not actively trying to lose. He wanted to win. That he pulled it together and turned things around working with a Republican Congress and was able to win re-election came afterward. It was not part of the plan.

More from the Bloomberg poll:

The margin is wide enough that if it holds over the next five days it likely would give Republicans the net 39-seat gain needed to capture the House.At the same time, voters either are divided about or opposed to the policies and approach that Republicans have said they would offer once in control, particularly on cutting spending; voters also want the parties to work together.

What’s that? No deficit squawking from the majority of Americans? Can it be? YES!

The favorable political landscape for Republicans in the closing days of the campaign is largely the result of support from independent voters. They back Republicans over Democrats, 47 percent to 34 percent. That advantage stands in contrast with the 2008 presidential election, when Obama won by an eight-point margin with independents, exit polls showed.

One independent poll respondent, David Mullins, a 59-year- old airline pilot from Indian Trail, North Carolina, says he is voting for Republicans this year, even though he doesn’t expect the party to make tough decisions.

“I don’t have any love for the Republicans,” Mullins said. “They can’t cut Medicare and Social Security; they can’t cut the military.”

See, the message about to be sent to Washington is NOT shaping up to be “taxed enough already.”

It’s stop spending our taxes on everybody but the American people.

To wit:

The poll finds Republicans in an unusual position: on the brink of making political gains while the party and its policies are unpopular. Likely voters are evenly divided on the Republican Party, with 47 percent holding a positive opinion.

This contrasts with midterm elections in 1994, when the insurgent Republicans gained congressional control after polls showed voter attitudes tilting toward them. Before that election, the party had a 7 point advantage in positive ratings among registered voters, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Republicans have said they want to cut $100 billion from the federal budget as early as January. That would amount to 21 percent of the government’s so-called discretionary spending and target programs such as college loans for low-income students or medical research at the National Institutes of Health.

Less than one-third of poll respondents — 31 percent — say they support cutting federal spending in areas such as education and health care, excluding Social Security, Medicare and defense.

This is NOT 1994. And, if Obama thinks he can rub shoulders with the Republicans to cut back social programs and not pay for it, he better hope the GOP nominates its worst candidate, because that is the only way Obama will stand a chance. Frankly the GOP slate is full of a lot of contenders for worst candidate, so if he can’t beat most of them, he will have no one to blame but himself. He is running on the party that used to have the winning policies — he just isn’t governing like an actual member of that party or espousing or strengthening any of those policies.

I hope if things pan out as pessimistically as they seem they will at this point that the seniors all ditch the Ds in 2012 when they find out what kind of sham was pulled on them by Obama and the Democrats not disclosing upfront their intentions on SS before the midterms. I know third term parties are questionable from the perspective that power always coalesces around the two basic ends of the see-saw, but we really need something drastic here to shake up the system and restore anything recognizable as a Democratic party. If a third party or independent movement can accomplish that, I won’t be opposed to it. We have tried for decades, especially the last decade, to work within the D/R system and it has just allowed the Democratic party to get lost in the K-Street vortex.

I do not recognize today’s Democratic party. Lying through their teeth like they’ve ushered in equal pay for equal work when they’ve done nothing of the sort. Lilly Ledbetter was important to pass, but it doesn’t have a practical effect if you don’t pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (which by the way was first introduced by one Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton back in 2005).

Which brings me to my thoughts on the NY Times poll. Here was the interesting finding that jumped out for me:

Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Roman Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents. All of those groups broke for Mr. Obama in 2008 and for Congressional Democrats when they grabbed both chambers from the Republicans four years ago, according to exit polls.

If women choose Republicans over Democrats in House races on Tuesday, it will be the first time they have done so since exit polls began tracking the breakdown in 1982.

More:

In the case of women — a traditionally Democratic-leaning group that the White House has been courting actively in recent weeks — the shift toward the Republicans was marked in the latest poll, especially when compared with their stated preferences in the last Times/CBS poll, in mid-September.

In the earlier poll, women favored Democrats over Republicans by seven percentage points. In the latest poll, women said they were likely to support a Republican over a Democrat by four percentage points, suggesting Republican gains among women who were undecided as of last month.

Well that’s just great. The Stupakistan gambit during the HCR debate (which resulted in the Stupaksis disease spreading and creating mini-Stupaks across the nation–heads up this link goes to a pdf), the Democrats failure to make any pitch to women voters on the economy but to instead fall back on that tired, cynical, duplicitous old one trick pony of “ROE! SCOTUS! VOTE D!,” the relentless obsession with Mama Grizzlies and calling them whore, bitch, witch, etc… it is all coming home to roost! If the Democrats lose women to Republicans in the midterms, they really have LOST IT. And, don’t tell me it’s just some bitter old women obsessed with the vajayjays of female politicians. That ain’t what this is about. Study the entrails. Your spokesperson Donna Brazile told us to stay home every day of that election she got on CNN and pretended to be an impartial, “undeclared” superdelegate.

We knew when we were trampled on. It wasn’t about Hillary, though she was part of it. It was OUR election too. It is our country too. You don’t think we have any right to hear a substantive policy agenda backed up by actions. Just spit on our primary votes, shout Roe, run our economy further into the ditch that Bush dug and pay no attention to the glaring lights screaming JOBS! Yeah that will get us to pull the lever for the good ol’ D. Real smart plan. Fantastic. And, then just roll out the talking points: Ann Dunham, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Lilly Ledbetter, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, minus a Christina Romer, and a fleeting position for Liz Warren to advise on a Consumer Protection Agency she fought for.

No, sorry, the positive contributions of any one of these women or what they have fought for does not undo the way YOU, Mr. President, have failed to communicate with us. If you’ve lost women, you’ve lost America. They have been suffering a Stockholm Syndrome/learned helplessness with the Democratic party for years and you could have had them knocking door to door right now to save the Democratic Administration and Democratic Congress, but nope. That did not fit into your grand idea of a New Coalition and Democratic realignment. And, some realignment it has been.