The Senate election in Massachusetts may signal much more that dissatisfaction with the current administration; it may signal and end to partisan politics as we have known it.

Given the euphoria and high expectations at Obama’s election in the midst of the worst financial crisis in half a century, it was already difficult not to disappoint. Given the generalities that accompany a campaign and the utter lack of experience he was elected more as an act of faith and hope than for noted qualifications and solutions. Wedding pictures fade.

The first year is often a learning year for a president. Many errors in judgment can be corrected and lead to a successful term and re-election. But this first year has been a year of firsts. The tea party movement should not have been taken lightly. This was a bottom up political movement. Protesters were neither praising or condemning parties; they were condemning their actions.

Independents have been critical  to election outcomes in our last 50 years.  Independents offer an accountability that party loyalists do not.  Unfortunately they also have fewer clear principles that accompany party affiliation. They can be swayed by charisma; they elected Obama.  And on January 19, just more than year later, they rejected him.

The rise of the independents may be heralding a new age that renders both political parties irrelevant. The reaction to Ben Nelson’s capitulation on health care from his own state was a note on the change coming. Anti incumbent attitudes are nothing new. But when the opportunity came to turn them out we usually found that unpopular incumbents were always those in other states and districts; we tended to tolerate our own as long as they ‘brought home the bacon’.

Nebraska ended that. They soundingly thrashed Nelson in spite of the lucrative special deal he made for his constituents. This should have alarmed the administration more than Brown’s victory.

Brown’s victory was a vote against the style as well as the substance.   When George H. Bush broke his clear pledge (”Read my lips”) and raised taxes he lost the independents and many of his own party. The independents do not like blatant lies and promises broken.  Obama promised bipartisanship and tried to force through one of the biggest changes in a decade with no Republican support.  He promised transparency yet closed door meetings with no press were common. He promised a five day posting period to review all legislation yet thousand page bills were voted on with little to no time to read them.

He was going to shun special interests yet cut special deals with unions.  Did he think nobody would notice?

If a bill has merit, it doesn’t need bribes and closed doors to pass. The more they bribed and gave into special interests the more it was rejected.  All the speeches and interviews only made it worse.

The voters have a sense of fairness and truth.  They expected more of it and get less. That a party with bigger majorities in both houses than their opponents have had in a century could not get a major bill through signals that either that their bills stink or that they are politically incompetent.

Among the many comments on last Tuesday’s race was Charles Krauthammer’s noted in  the Washington Post.  Read it here.

An excerpt:

“The ‘08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.”

HKO comment- I agree with Krauthammer, but there is another dynamic. The growth of the independents shows a disaffection with party politics in general or more likely a common belief in reasonable government that is not represented yet by either party.  The problem with independents is that they rarely carefully define their principles and they are often attracted by appearances and thus quick to express disappointment or buyer’s remorse. I think this is expressed in Tuesday’s election in VA and NJ.

I sense that many independents that voted for Obama are having buyer’s remorse.

The danger of being independent is not having to define your position or governing philosophy beyond being ‘independent.’ For better or worse the parties do state a party platform and are in some limited sense held accountable to it.  As a candidate for that party you may reject part of the platform but you are associated with stated positions.  You may be a pro life Democrat or a pro choice Republican, but even that that says more about your political position than being ‘independent.’

The revolution within the Republican Party in the New York District 23 race where the Republican grass roots rejected the anointed party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, and supported Doug Hoffman shows the power of a grass roots movement.  But a grass roots movement has a similar problem of defining what it is that the party leadership has done to alienate them.

Do the independents or the populists support a more libertarian smaller government without the nationalization of major industries, 1990 page health care bills that no one has a chance to read, huge deficits, higher taxes, endless corruption, and endless government ‘programs’?   Or is it about the politics of religion and abortion?

Personally I believe it is the former. I believe that the leaders in DC are so insulated from the average voter and tax payer that they are clueless.  They surround themselves with the like minded and are only exposed to those views that support their own statist visions.  When they see a real populist uprising they assume they are wingnuts, dittoheads, manipulated from some sinister force, or otherwise not worthy of serious consideration.

The uprising may be a force without a voice, but to be effective it must define itself and stand for something.  Without standing for something we will fall for anything.

We have already done that.