Analyzing the Election

Okay. I'm no expert on these things, but there are some curious numbers floating behind the narrative of the elections as a rejection of the Iraq War and/or its handling. David Moore at Truthdig takes a look at exit polls and finds that the economy, corruption, and terrorism all come before Iraq in importance for voters. The basic message is that the election was not simply an antiwar election, although the typical media narrative seems to want to push the antiwar message.

This strikes me as both interesting and strange for a number of reasons.

First, recall the discussion about accountability below (Digby has an interesting post on this theme today), which bounced off of a post my colleague, Peter Levine, had written and on which I believe we're both in agreement. That is, a political witch-hunt would be damaging, but investigations into criminal conduct, corruptions, and other malfeasance must be pursued in the name of accountable governance. What the election seems to have shown is strong support for that pursuit.

Second, it appears that enough people have wised up to the fact that when one uses the stockmarket as a way of judging the health of an economy, lots of important elements of good policy, labor issues, environmental problems, and a number of other things we have good reason to value are dropped out of the picture of the "healthy economy." The stockmarket has leveled out - the point is for the stockmarket always to grow. That is its nature. To say that it has achieved record levels is to say something banal about the economy. But this claim served to gloss over serious concerns about the economy, about jobs, about job security, perhaps even about healthcare.

Third, the terrorism concern is actually kind of difficult to parse. Without having seen other numbers, it's difficult to say whether this falls on the Republican side or the Democratic side. Further, the domestic fear-mongering that has constituted such a large part of this administration's "War on Terror" obscures propaganda-induced concern from genuine concern makes the battle against terrorism an even more difficult fight to wage. Could the concern be based in precisely this conjecture? That is, given that we're all not sure just what the War on Terror is, we're now bound to be perpetually concerned about a constantly shifting enemy? What, now, will Democrats do about this clouded situation now that it has lost its political force for the administration?

Fourth, the Iraq War is nonetheless high on the list of concerns. All of a sudden, the day the election finally concluded, we're seeing hints of a general consensus in Washington that some kind of phased withdrawal will have to take place fairly soon. This crosses party lines. Even if plenty of Republicans have been expressing concern about the war, it appears that the differences between the parties was artificially maintained for purposes of the election. Plenty of Republicans have long known that Bush is incompetent and a good bit out of touch. It's a Bush family trait, after all.

Finally, on another note, both Moore at Truthdig and Peter, who runs CIRCLE at the University of Maryland, point out the growing youth vote in American politics. Most of them voted Democratic. This is a very positive sign.

An estimated ten million young Americans under the age of 30 voted in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an increase of at least two million compared to 2002...

“This is an extraordinary turnout for young voters,” said CIRCLE Director Peter Levine. “In a year of rising turnout, young people led the way—repeating the pattern that we saw in 2004. Youth were an especially high proportion of voters in Montana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri. Nationwide, in House races, 61% of young people voted for Democratic candidates--the highest proportion for any age group.”