Aftermath

 From Richard Fernandes at PJM:

Whether it is journalists caught on tape “discussing ways in which they could potentially embarass the Senate campaign of Republican Joe Miller” or Rep. Keith Ellison challenging an anti-voter fraud organization and getting counter-challenged himself, the political gloves on every side are coming off.  People are acting like they don’t care if they make enemies, as if the last lap or the last round of the bout has come. Maybe it has. The Guardian described the stakes, describing Obama at a poorly attended rally warning the “gains” of the last two years were in jeopardy.

Thousands of empty seats at Barack Obama’s last campaign rally of the midterm elections today highlighted the decline in his popularity and the potential meltdown facing the Democrats at the polls on Tuesday. …
Speaking in Cleveland at the end of a whirlwind four-state tour , Obama said it was an important election. “We have the chance to set the direction of this country for many years to come,” he said. He warned that the Republicans could roll back all the progress of the last two years if they won big.

Janet Daley, writing from Britain, warns her readers to “prepare for a new American revolution.” That declaration may be premature because the revolutionaries are still in the process of getting their objectives straight and casting around for the means to take back the political parties. The revolution will not take place on election day, but it may begin there. Seizing Congress will not by itself solve the problem.  However, the sheer ferocity of the campaign suggests that all sides see it as a Rubicon, which once crossed means that more is to follow. Perhaps nobody sees 2010 as an end, only as the beginning of a very fundamental struggle.
The proximate cause of the conflict, even though he is ultimately not its basic antecedent, is the president. The Washington Post calls Barack Obama the divider-in-chief. He didn’t create the fence; he simply made it impossible to straddle it.  The president has made it necessary to choose political sides. In a way,  Barack Obama has done more than any recent president to cast the issues starkly.

With the country beset by economic and other problems, it is incendiary that the president is not offering a higher vision for the nation but has instead chosen a strategy of rank division. This is an attempt to distract from the perceived failures of his administration. On issue after issue this administration has acted in ways that are weakening the office of the president.

One possible reason for the unparalleled degree of conflict is that the old truce is over.  The old “go along to get along” idea has vanished. It its place is a zero sum game, with “friends” and “enemies.” Washington is now simply not big enough for two contradictory ideas, neither of which can abide the other. Charles Krauthammer quoted the president:

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