On 2010-11-06, at 4:01 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> As I said, these people tend to respond by "punishing" the party in
> power if things do not go well. This I think explains electoral victory of
> Obama, as well as the outcome of 2010 elections outside the democratic
> strongholds.
It's only the beginning of an explanation. It's self-evident that incumbents are punished if things don't go well. The issue here is whether the Democrats as the governing party could have taken steps to make things better - or to at least go less badly. That's the issue which liberals and those to their left have been addressing. Their argument is that the Obama administration could have confronted the Republicans and pursued policies which would have sustained its popularity. Their model is the Roosevelt administration, which immediately and effectively moved to restructure the banking industry, create jobs, and prevent foreclosures in open defiance of the "monied interests" and "malefactors of great wealth" on the right who were frothing about its "socialist" policies. The Obama administration balked at going down this road and working class standards continued to deteriorate, so naturally as the incumbent party presiding over a continuing slide, it stood to be punished by the voters, including many of those who supported it two years earlier. No surprise there.