The Angry Electorate

Chuck Todd has a piece at MSNBC which suggests that the electorate is in no mood for new government programs:

WASHINGTON - Just how angry is the electorate?

Perhaps angrier than any of us imagined. It's not just anger, however, that voters are expressing toward politicians.

It appears to be downright distrust with the government itself. Tuesday’s election results may not have seen any high profile upsets for political figures (I don’t consider the scandal-plagued Kentucky governor’s loss an upset) but rather, an avalanche of rejections for new government proposals.

Ask yourself, how is it that a conservative and religious electorate in Utah said no to state government leaders who wanted to start a private school voucher program, while more liberal, secular voters in New Jersey struck down a proposal to expand stem cell research?

Or how is it that a left-of-center, usually pro-government electorate in Oregon said no to a cigarette tax increase to pay for expanded health care?

All of this happened during Tuesday’s off-year elections.

In fact, across the board it appears when presented with a choice to give government the power to start or transform a program, voters said no.

There is something else you have to consider in the Utah and Oregon elections - both were heavily influenced by millions of dollars in out-of-state money. In Utah it was the national teachers organizations that poured money into defeating vouchers becahse they might have cost union jobs. In Oregon it was Big Tobacco that fought that one.

I agree with Todd that there's a general mood in the country against bigger government, and I'm all for that. That probably had more to do with the defeat of the New Jersey plan to borrow $450,000,000 to fund stem cell research. In a state already burdened with high taxes the notion of borrowing that much money (which has to be paid back with interest) for what many saw as a frivolous expense just wasn't going to fly. The voters may also have rejected being lectured to by Michael J. Fox.

What will all this anger mean in '08? Who knows? The voters probably won't be too happy with the Dem Congress given the little that they've done and they way they've wasted their time on needless investigations and hearings. Likewise, they still may wish to take it out on Republicans for the Iraq war.

Next year will be pretty interesting.