Posted on 12/28/2009 2:27:07 PM PST by wac3rd
The 2009 political year began on a high note of "change" and "hope" and ended in a thud of stalemate, despair and public fury over the economy, health care reform and the war in Afghanistan.
No wonder it may go down as the year of the angry voter. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
In California, residents endured months of bitter, partisan battles in Sacramento over the state's multibillion-dollar budget deficit and the painful cuts, furloughs and program closures that came with it.
But even as they put the year in the rearview mirror, Americans shared common ground across the political divide, with deepening worries about their jobs, their disintegrating savings accounts and their changing health care.
The common message for their state and local elected officials: Do something.
"Voters are angry; I think they're beyond anger," says Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. "They're desperately unhappy and desperately pessimistic, and they have given up hope. This is beyond malaise."
Going into 2010, a year of critical statewide and midterm congressional elections highlighted by races for governor and a U.S. Senate seat in California, the political mood is darker than in recent memory, veteran political observers say.
"It's been the most significant erosion of trust that I've seen in my lifetime - in the press, financial markets and religious institutions," Democratic strategist and former White House spokesman Chris Lehane said.
State a harbinger "California is foreshadowing where the country is heading," Lehane added. "People have concluded that these institutions are not serving them. And that's perilous for democracy. It doesn't work if people don't trust in their government to make decisions."
Californians' political mood is "driven by the economy and the failure of state government fiscally, voters believe because of gross mismanagement," GOP consultant Rob Stutzman said.
"They're not willing to send dollars to Sacramento and Washington when they're hurting - and they don't believe government is running efficiently," he said. "The impression of the voters is that government is full of waste - and they're not taking it."
The sour mood has swept politics at every level. Nationally, Obama's poll numbers, in the stratospheric 70 percent range at the start of his term in January, dropped recently below the 50 percent approval mark.
"There's no question that historically, the first midterm of a new president, by any analysis, is a tough election for the party in power," says Lehane. "The Democrats walked into a situation where the economy was headed to another Great Depression."
But Obama's efforts to pass a stimulus package and advance major initiatives on jobs, health care reform and climate change policy - while confronting the huge costs of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq - were met with Republican resistance and often-effective grassroots opposition to higher taxes and spending and the growing deficit.
Obama outpolls governor Californians still hold a buoyant view of Obama's performance, with nearly two-thirds of state residents saying they approve of his performance, according to a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.
But they are far more impatient with their own state's political leaders, giving the Democratic Party-controlled Legislature a 17 percent approval rating, according to the poll.
Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn't done much better. His job performance rating has sunk to a new low of 27 percent approval, the poll showed.
"Arnold managed to do almost the impossible, which is to turn off almost everyone," said GOP consultant Arnold Steinberg. "He never made the sale to the liberals, and the conservatives aren't gathered around him. There's no constituency there."
California's harrowing budget problems - which have a ripple effect on services, parks, transportation and jobs - have only magnified the problem, analysts say.
"Everyone in Sacramento, regardless of party, should get an F in their 2009 performance review," said Sacramento political analyst Patrick Dorinson. "We shoved this (budget) through with gimmicks - and before the ink is dry, it's out of balance again."
From Washington to Sacramento, voters see "the inability to get government work done as very discouraging," Sragow said. "And they don't hold either party in high regard. There's a diminishing sense of loyalty."
The dark, angry mood could continue, even deepen, if the job outlook remains grim.
Americans "get the disconnect, the feeling that we're in uncharted territory and things aren't going to be the same," Sragow said. "(They're saying) the government can't do its basic business, so how can they address the problems?"
As they finish 2009 and look to a new year, Americans will be "looking to elected officials to figure it out," he said. "They want someone to say, 'This is the America we want to have, and this is what we need to do to get there.' "
Scenes from the year of the angry voter Town halls: From crowds of furious constituents to congressional representatives cowering in fear, the summertime scenes of national town hall meetings on health care reform turned into a sign of America's partisan divide. Republicans said it was authentic grassroots anger while liberals likened the events to pitchfork-carrying mobs.
Tea Parties: Angry rallies about government deficits, spending and taxes abounded. But both parties may have something to fear from the rise of a renegade force: Tea Party activists are now more popular than Democrats or Republicans, a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found.
Same-sex marriage: From Maine to California, there were protests to press the issue. Supporters of marriage equality hoped for a rebound in California after the 2008 passage of Proposition 8, while religious and conservative groups celebrated voters' rebuff of same-sex marriage in Maine and the New York Legislature's rejection of it.
Anti-war protests: President Obama took heat from the left - MoveOn.org and Code Pink included - as anti-war groups backed by some of Congress' most progressive members lambasted his decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan.
Climate change trouble: Even as he addressed world leaders in Copenhagen, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama's approval ratings on the issue had dropped to 45 percent, and talk radio and public rallies highlighted growing public doubt - and political divides - over the key environmental issue.
E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/28/MNNP1B4OKL.DTL#ixzz0b1cEbKNA
I'm definitely neither, but then if I was the type of person that put my hope in some political messiah I can see how I would be.
Anyone who says do “something” obviously has no clue what to do, and should not be putting his thumb on the electoral scale by voting for people who equally have no clue.
bubbles pop sooner or later. That includes big government bubbles.
the replies to this article are beyond moronic
the replies to this article are beyond moronic
I agree with the above posters. Carla is clueless at best.
As long as the angry left votes against the dems for not being liberal enough, and the angry voters on the right vote against them because, well... they're democrats (and thus lying, cheating, cowardly scum-sucking liberals).
Should this really be surprising, as President Obama magnified the bailouts and is campaigning for cap-and-trade?
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