The Malaise

An interesting analysis by Tom Suozzi, the Nassau County Executive who appears to be losing his bid for re-election despite what seemed to be a guaranteed win:

Suozzi is the strongest of three Democrats in the New York suburbs -- Corzine and Spano are the others -- who had bad election nights, and an official whose gift was always his connection to ordinary voters. I asked him, from his unhappy place under the wave, to reflect on what he thought was going on. He described the local factors – property taxes, most of all – but also made an unusual, and for Democrats perhaps worrisome, point.

Suozzi said he detected a certain exhaustion in voters, and cited Arthur Schlessinger’s theory about "cycles" in American history that alternate between periods of public spirit and of private interest. His sense: Voters are withdrawing from the public sphere.

As a political junkie, I can attest to the feeling of general disinterest in politics as of late. Now, I'll vote in every election because its just what I do, but its hard to get all that excited about politics either local, state, or national. I think Democrats like myself hit a crescendo last year...from late 2007 to November of 2008 there was just an intense almost obsession with politics, first in the Democratic primary, and then in the general election. While I won't pretend to have put in the kind of level of work that other activists/supporters did, the simple act of following every word possible of the campaign was mentally draining.

Republicans, on the other hand, never hit that crescendo when John McCain lost because for a lot of them it wasn't about McCain, rather it was about beating Obama or supporting Sarah Palin. Well, Obama is still there to be beaten, and Sarah America is still egging them on...for the most part they can only go up from their low-point of 2008, whereas it'll be very hard for Democrats to go anywhere but down.

Its hard to see how Democrats are re-energized without a victory by Republicans. After all, the call of "maintain the status quo" is hardly as effective as the call for change. Hopefully, the Republicans will continue to trip over themselves by purging their dwindling ranks of moderates around the country, and thus making a GOP takeover a scarier (and thus more energizing) proposition.