Political science professor Vincent Moscardelli discusses the implications of yesterday’s elections at both the national and local level.
Moscardelli is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His research on American politics, Congress, election reform in the states, and political leadership has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Polity, State Politics and Policy Quarterly, American Politics Research, Congress and the Presidency, Publius, and PS: Political Science and Politics.
In 2003-04, he served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Richard J. Durbin, and participated in a staff-level exchange with the Canadian Parliament in the spring of 2004.
Moscardelli is currently completing a book on committee leadership in the U.S. Senate. He is also engaged in a multi-author study of the implementation and impact of Connecticut’s new “Clean Elections” system.
Q – In the past two years, moving major legislation through Congress seemed to be a tough battle, even with Democrats controlling both houses. Can people expect the next two years to be defined by gridlock and stalemate with the GOP controlling the House? Or do you think House Republicans will be open to compromising with the President and the Senate’s Democratic majority, and vice versa?
Moscardelli – I’d be surprised if we see much in the way of compromise from House Republicans or House Democrats. The Republicans in the House will almost certainly work to repeal much of President Obama’s signature legislative victory – health care reform. Some moderate Democrats might cooperate, but frankly, many of the Democrats who would have been likely to cooperate with Republicans next year were defeated by Republicans yesterday. The “Blue Dog” coalition of moderate House Democrats really shrunk yesterday. The Republican House will probably pass a lot of bills that will be non-starters in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
In the Senate, the final partisan breakdown is probably less important than the ideological profile. Any major initiative requires 60 votes, and for Democrats trying to push the President’s agenda through that chamber, that 60th senator is going to be a pretty conservative Republican. Faced with a Republican House and a Senate that, at least ideologically, looked a lot like the one we elected yesterday, President Clinton moved quickly to the middle – abandoning ambitious plans for health care reform and a repeal of the ban on gays in the military – and reached out to Republicans in efforts to “end welfare as we know it” and embrace “don’t ask, don’t tell.” In 1996, with a booming economy to buttress him, President Clinton won reelection handily, although congressional Democrats didn’t fare as well (they picked up just two seats in the House and actually lost two seats in the Senate that year). I think everyone is curious to see if President Obama will take a page out of the Clinton playbook or if he will double down on the more liberal agenda he’s pursued since he took office.
Q – In Congress, Republican majorities were decisively swept from power in 2006, Democrats kept their healthy majorities in 2008 – as well as electing President Obama – and now voters have returned the Republicans to power in the House by a very healthy margin and dramatically reduced the Democrats’ majority in the Senate. What are voters trying to say with this back-and-forth?
Moscardelli – Voters are trying – the best and only way they know how – to register their dissatisfaction with the overall state of affairs in the country. Six in 10 Americans believe the county is on the “wrong track,” which is actually down from this time two years ago, when more than eight in 10 thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. Two years ago, that anger and anxiety were directed toward President Bush and the members of his party. This year, President Obama and congressional Democrats are on the receiving end of all that anger. That Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress in 2010 meant that voters took out their frustrations exclusively on Democrats. So long as overwhelming majorities of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, the party in power is going to face this sort of “backlash” come election time. Barring an almost miraculous economic recovery, 2012 is going to be another really tough year for Democrats and another really exciting year for Republicans.
I should also point out just how rare this sort of volatility really is in the context of American electoral politics. Slate.com’s John Dickerson may have put it best when he stated that we’ve become a “nation of swingers.” We’ve seen changes in party control in at least one chamber of Congress in six of the last 16 elections. Contrast this with the stability that defined congressional elections from 1930 until 1994, a 64 year span during which Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for just four years – 1947-48 and 1953-54. After 40 consecutive years of Democratic control of the House, we’ve now seen party control of the chamber switch hands three times in the last nine elections. In all likelihood, this sort of volatility will continue, as a divided nation tries to sort out which party to hold accountable for the state of the economy.
Q – Connecticut voters chose Democrats in every other state-wide and congressional race this year, but have made the race for governor very close. Connecticut is a “blue state” that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1986, pending the outcome of the Nov. 2 contest. Do you think this is a coincidence or a conscious decision on the part of voters?
Moscardelli – I’m not sure it’s either. I certainly don’t think it’s a coincidence, as it’s become clear that Connecticut voters don’t really feel comfortable giving the “car keys” (to steal President Obama’s metaphor) to a single party. At the same time, as a political scientist, I remain unconvinced that individual voters sit in the ballot booth and say to themselves, “Hey, I’m voting for a state legislator who is a Democrat, so I guess I’d better ‘balance’ my ballot by choosing the Republican nominee for Governor.” Clearly, Connecticut voters have behaved as if they engage in this sort of balancing for the past 25 years. But I think this sort of reasoning takes place at a subconscious level for the vast majority of voters. Given the history of divided government in this state, one might argue that ironically, the Democrats’ dominance of the General Assembly has actually damaged the prospects of Democratic candidates for Governor in recent years.
Q – It seems fair to say that 2010 was a Republican year nationally, and the GOP picked up seats in the state General Assembly. What could be some political and policy implications of this?
Moscardelli – At the state level, a lot is going to depend on the outcome of the race for Governor. The fiscal situation in the state is dire, and I do not envy the winner. Furthermore, Democratic state legislators are going to have to make a lot of tough, uncomfortable votes over the course of the next year or two. I don’t think anyone sees a simple, painless solution to the problems this state faces from a fiscal standpoint. If Secretary of State Bysiewicz’s declaration of Malloy’s victory is upheld, then voters in 2012 are going to have just one party to “blame” if things in the state stay bad or get worse.
Q – How does yesterday’s election set the stage for 2012?
Moscardelli – For all the tea parties and rallies to restore sanity, in some ways this midterm election has really always been about 2012. The Republicans will almost certainly re-take the Senate because so many of the Senate seats that come up in 2012 are held by Democrats. And again, if the economy doesn’t start recovering – and by recovering, I mean getting unemployment down significantly – President Obama will be in for quite a fight. 2012 is the real prize, and Republicans are probably not going to compromise today on items that are central to their agenda with the very real possibility of unified control of the government bearing down on them. Since Democrats still control the White House and the Senate, Republicans are in a nice strategic position: they can pursue initiatives that appeal to their base and continue to rest easy, knowing that if the economy doesn’t recover, it will again be President Obama and the Democrats whom voters will hold accountable two years from now.
