Much has been made about the importance and significance of the Republican sweeps in Virginia and New Jersey yesterday. As expected, the relative importance of these elections depends on which party is speaking at the time. I saw an exit poll on CNN this morning suggesting that 60% of NJ voters and 56% of VA voters said Obama had no impact on their votes. What is amazing to me is that implies 40% of NJ voters and 44% of VA were at least partially using these elections to express a view on the Obama administration and current Congress.
My vote was definitely influenced by my disapproval of what is going on in Washington at the moment. I don’t like the big government, tax hikes, seemingly uncontrolled spending agenda that is being pushed around DC and wanted to do what I could do today to show my displeasure. We as voters don’t have option to vote again on Obama until 2012 and Congressmen until at least next year. I did not have strong feelings towards any of the Virginia candidates, but hoped my vote for the Republicans across the board would be interpreted in DC as a vote against the current agenda. The coming days and weeks will show whether that happened or not.
Back to the polls, I think it is very interesting that so many people said their vote in a particular election had something to do with a President and administration that were not on the ballot. The healthcare debate has proved to be very divisive amongst our citizenry and hopefully this message we make its way to Washington. I wonder how Obama, Pelosi et al respond to this. I was very surprised by Harry Reid’s initial comments about not having a timetable on healthcare although he subsequently issued a statement saying he believes it will get done this year. I hope we see a serious rethinking on government run healthcare, cap & trade and an endless list of spending plans by the Democrats.
It seems to me if you are a moderate or conservative democrat up for re-election in 2010, you have to read into this that the American public is not happy with what has been going on in Congress. It’s been a year since the new administration won election and a full nine-months being in office. The credit and blame for policies should now fully fall on the current administration and this election suggests the American public is voting NO on the direction of Obama and Congress.
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