One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State

Lower than average voter turnout rate? Seriously?

         Well, I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious: the Democrats took a good thwacking in midterms--Republicans gained control of the house (the current total being 239 R seats to 187 D seats with 9 undecided) and edged into a larger minority in the senate (now 53 D seats to 46 R seats with one undecided).  This was an overwhelmingly national trend, with Republicans making substantial gains in traditionally Blue areas of the map.  Everywhere, of course, except California, which, strange as usual, decided to utterly buck the national trend and vote in a Democratic Senator, Governor, and NOT replace any House Democrats with Republicans.  I guess everyone must have gotten sick of Meg Whitman.
          I digress.  Not long after the majority of the elections had been officially called, the former House Minority leader and Heir Apparent for Speaker of the House, John Boener delivered a speech that essentially said "the people have spoken, and we have received the national mandate," et cetera.  Midterms are, by nature I suppose, opportunities to vent frustration and anger on the the party of the president/the party in control Congress.  This was no exception.  Whether or not the Republicans and their more radical Tea Party Brethren (who, admittedly did not do quite as well as they had hoped), actually received a national mandate is unclear--less than half of those registered to vote exercised their right to do so on Tuesday, and many of those that didn't were liberals and moderates--but what is clear is Obama is going to have to adapt his strategy to incorporate combatting gridlock within congress in order to maintain a successful presidency.  If he doesn't, I fear for him in 2012; regardless of how little control a president has over certain aspects of the legislative branch he will be blamed for legislative mistakes and lack of cooperation.  Such is politics.
          However, it's not all bad for those of us that are democrats, right? Gridlock isn't all bad, right? Besides--a friend of mine said it best: "now that midterms are over, we can start campaigning for 2012." There's always something to look forward to.  And this time, this time I'll be voting.