Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411180086
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS ASSOCIATE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The GOP got more votes.
The problem with this explanation is not that it's a tautology. It isn't. (The tautology would be to say that the Republicans won more congressional districts than the Democrats.) The problem is that it may not be true. The Democratic share of the total U.S. House vote was down from previous congressional elections, but the nationwide split still was about 50-50.
Racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act makes two or three neighboring districts more Republican for every solidly Democratic district it creates.
That's more or less the case, which is why conservatives tend to be fond of this form of affirmative action. But as an explanation of the Nov. 8 results, the problem is that the gerrymandering was done between 1990 and '92, not '92 and '94.
The public was in an anti-incumbent mood, and there were more Democratic than Republican incumbents.
The problem here is that, while Republicans were both picking off Democratic incumbents and picking up open seats previously held by Democrats, the Democrats picked off no Republican incumbents and picked up only a handful of open seats previously held by Republicans. It was a debacle for Democrats, not for incumbents in general.
President Clinton is a Democrat, and President Clinton is a greaseball.
Well, sure. But have you checked out the Newtster?
Americans are anxious about crime, anxious about the decay of moral values, anxious about their economic future.
Assume the anxiety, and assume it isn't without reason. But why now? Crime is down, the economy is up, and the doctrine of original sin teaches us that moral decay is here to stay.
Clinton won election as a moderate New Democrat, then lurched to the left as president.
Some lurch: NAFTA, GATT, crime bill, bureaucratic shrinkage, deficit reduction. Granted, the (ill-advisedly) promised middle-class income-tax cut fell victim to deficit reduction; even so, the deficit was cut without an increase in the overall tax burden.
Upping taxes on the very affluent while cutting them for the working poor fulfilled a popular (at the time, anyway) campaign pledge. So did introduction of a health-care proposal that, incomprehensible as it may have been, sought to achieve universal coverage without going so far leftward as to establish a single-payer government-run system. On the side issue of gays in the military, Clinton moved to the right from his stated position as a candidate.
The above explanations, in short, either beg the question or are flat wrong. Something else is going on, and I'm pretty sure I know what. Consider:
Among what demographic group did the chief dropoff in support for Democrats occur? Middle-class white males.
What was the most important news event of this summer and fall? The baseball strike, of course, and consequent cancellation of the World Series.
From what demographic group does baseball mainly draw its fans? Middle-class white males.
No wonder one big part of the electorate, the one that most changed its votes from two and four years earlier, was so grumpy. By Nov. 8, middle-class white males had been undergoing months of involuntary, cold-turkey withdrawal from baseball addiction, and without a fix in sight.
There still isn't. I'm grumpy, too.
by CNB