Thomas Ferguson’s take on the 2010 elections:
2008 had all the earmarks of a classic realigning election, as my old colleague Walter Dean Burnham describes them. In the wake of the financial collapse, it looked for all the world like voters were ready for, even demanding, major reforms. They had elected a Democratic President on a promise of “Change,” with both houses of Congress solidly Democratic. That’s why many people were thinking that Obama was going give us a modern New Deal. They really believed him when he promised change. Instead, Obama’s failure on the economy has discredited the whole idea of the activist state. The dimensions of this failure were spectacular: he didn’t move aggressively to combat unemployment, the economic stimulus was half as large as it needed to be, and he didn’t deal with the mortgage crisis. So unemployment stayed way up, and many people remain in danger of losing their homes or are underwater on their mortgages, with the whole housing sector stalling out. To make matters worse, the administration lavished aid on the financial sector. The spectacle of the government aiding bankers, who turned around and paid themselves record bonuses, has just been unbearable for millions of people.
What the election really shows is not that the parties can’t agree — Democrats and most of the GOP leadership finally agreed on the bank bailouts, for example — but that the American people will not accept the policies that leaders in both parties prefer. In 2006 and 2008, the population voted no-confidence in the Republicans on the war and the economy. They have just now presented the Democrats with another resounding a no-confidence vote.
What’s going on? Ferguson continues:
What makes the current situation intractable is the fundamental reason for these serial failures. It’s obvious: big money dominates both major parties. The Obama campaign’s dependence on money and personnel from the financial sector was clear to anyone who looked, even before he won the nomination, promoted Geithner, brought Summers back, and reappointed Bernanke. For years I’ve promised people that I’ll tell you who bought your candidate before you vote for him or her, by simply applying my “investment theory of political parties.” When I analyzed the early money in Obama’s campaign in March, 2008, it was impossible not to see that many of the people responsible for the financial crisis were major Obama supporters.
It’s true. I spoke with Ferguson in 2008 and he indeed said that Obama would do what the financial services industry wanted.
Follow the above link for more. It’s interesting reading Ferguson because his perspective is completely different from most political scientists. We talk about opinion, he talks about money. I suppose the truth must lie somewhere in between, but given the usual discourse, I think we need more Ferguson most of the time.