Your 2010 Midterm Election Primer

The general election campaign of 2010 is coming to a rolling boil. At stake is who will control the next Congress- Democrats as they have since 2006, or Republicans angling to seize it again with the tea party winds at their backs?

The consequences are pretty serious. A Republican takeover guarantees at least two years of utter Washington gridlock on domestic policy, and bitter battles over funding the legislative mandates achieved by Democrats in 2009 and 2010: health insurance reform, Wall Street reform, and other initiatives. Under these circumstances it is practically guaranteed that major legislation will languish, as neither party will have the numbers to push their agenda, and the President's veto pen will be waiting for any bills of import that Republicans might manage to push through.

For what it's worth, I've been confident of the outcome since last spring, as the energy and fervor are clearly on one side. Republicans will take back the House, Democrats will hang on to the Senate, and both chambers will thus have slim margins for the next two years. The perfect recipe for a wave of gridlock.

Here have been the big themes of the election year. The overall message to take away is this: America's grand experiment in democratic governance is far from concluded. In many ways, we are regressing.

Money Dominates Without Pretense. Politics was always dominated by money but until recently there were legal limits on corporate spending on campaigns. The landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision of January removed these limits, and immediately we are witnessing the birth of a new era in politics: where money is shamelessly thrown around with great secrecy, and very little control. FEC oversight is now a running beltway joke. Candidates from both parties may benefit in the first election season of this new era, but democracy is the ultimate loser. Rich corporations and individuals, whose interests are usually far from what's best for the public, are consolidating control of the government by attempting to elect politicians who would deregulate safety measures, environmental protections, financial controls, insurance rules, and other laws meant to protect common citizens. Unfortunately, most people don't understand this. That's because rich corporate titans, and I can't think of a better example than the Koch brothers, prefer to lurk in the shadows and let their money do the talking. Cold, hard cash is how the tea party movement was co-opted long ago by Republican money interests such as financiers and corporations, as I'd written before, while most of the mainstream media was obsessing over whether it was the tea partiers taking over the Republican party. In this case, the tail does not wag the dog.

Wither the post-racial era? Another worrying theme has been the dramatic return of bigotry to American politics. We have seen a wave of anger being channeled against blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics in general by mainstream politicians and candidates, some of whom may end up in Congress come January. I was wrong in 2008, when I thought the election of Barack Obama would help usher in a new post-racial era when Americans would not be judged by their skin color or religion. Instead, Republican candidates have tapped into a groundswell of mistrust and fear of the "other" that I believe has been brought on partly by Barack Obama's very occupation of the White House - a black man that many honestly believe is Muslim and foreign-born. He has frightened and emboldened the bigots emerging from the fringes, and white politicians have been eager to show their understanding of this crowd- for their votes. Don't take my word for it. Rachel Maddow has documented this phenomenon brilliantly. Republicans such as Newt Gingrich have eagerly stoked the fire (unfathomably, presidential wannabe Gingrich parroted madman Dinesh D'Souza's bizarre theory that Obama's agenda is based on his absentee Kenyan father's anti-colonialist views from the era of Mau Mau rebellion).

The first 24-hour political party news channel. See above, unprecedented control by corporations. One in particular, Fox News, represents the first time in American history that a political party has had its own 24-hour news channel. It's the world's best propaganda machine. Fox has emerged more emboldened than before. It used to at least have pretense of being "fair and balanced," but no longer. It has recently unabashedly declared itself an official Republican mouthpiece. By hiring active Republican operatives such as Sarah Palin and Karl Rove onto its payroll (who are themselves running PACs with huge financial influence on this election), while donating millions to Republican campaigns this election season, News Corporation has inserted itself as a participant in politics instead of a reporter of it. Fox co-founded and single-handedly nurtured the tea party movement with endless one-sided positive coverage. Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and friends keep the bigots riled up with their constant attacks on Muslims and other talking points handed down from the Republican party- the lines between the two entities have been blurred completely. It is an admirably run operation, a shining example of the successful fusion of politics and profit. And a monumental threat to democracy. I am fascinated to see how this story will play out.

Democrats Play to Not Lose It's curious how the Democratic party could be performing so badly politically. While it's quite damaging for unemployment to hover between 9-10%, perhaps irreparably so in a midterm election where the enthusiasm gap for liberals is a given, the long list of results coming out of the Democrat-controlled Washington in the last two years is astounding. Taxes were cut for 95% of Americans, the auto industry is on the road to recovery, numerous jobs were created, health insurance reform was passed, college loans are cheaper, new Wall Street and credit card regulations are on the books, we are finally pulling the US military out of Iraq, and not a single terrorist attack from abroad has been committed successfully. Quite the opposite, we are killing bad guys at a breakneck pace these days. And yet two weeks out, Democrats across the nation are running from their own party's record as if fleeing from a fire.

A great deal of thinking on this matter has revealed the root cause of the Dem woes. They haven't managed the messaging, and by extension, the Republicans have. Do most people know that their taxes were lowered? That Obama has kept us safer from attack than Bush did? That Wall Street bailouts and the stimulus are two different things, and the former was a George W. Bush legacy authored by the Republican Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson? No, they don't. Republicans have successfully conflated Obama with all that is wrong with the country. It worked. And it's a bitter political lesson to be learned for the Democrats, especially the ones getting booted out of power.

Dumb is the New Black Since when is it so cool to be a fool running for office? I believe that George W. Bush ushered in the era of the likable everyman, but I thought the ensuing crises would remind people of the future why not to let that happen again. The future is here, and they're back with a vengeance, led by Queen Bee Sarah Palin, who dismisses criticism in the media of her nonsensical statements and uneducated policy positions on the "liberal East Coast elites." I am now a firm believer that a well-informed politician is a good thing. Please tell that to the people who intend to vote for dolts like Sharon Angle, Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller, Carl Paladino, or dozens of others. I understand the backlash against the intellectual, professorial types embodied by our president, but this is really going too far.