Election Day 2010: take 2: The Senate

Part 2 of a bit by bit breakdown of this year's election results.

"The Senate"

The Senate, as we are used to thinking, is the senior chamber of Congress.  Each Senator must appeal to an entire state during their election process, a concept which would seemingly breed more moderate candidates and elections.  In addition the 6 year term would arguably make each Senator more independent, both of their party and the electorate they represent, as they face their wrath far less frequently.

That being said, that is not what happened this year, not at all.



First the primaries happened.  The tea party movement is credited with supporting hyper-conservative Republican Senate candidates who won their primaries in at least Florida, Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado.  The hyper-conservative nature of these candidates spurred independent/write-in races in Florida and Alaska, respectively.

In addition, the anti-incumbent sentiment was strong.  Regardless of rhyme or reason, a lot of voters simply wanted to see those in office be in office no more.  Disregard the fact that once you are voted out, you usually become a lobbyist in DC, thus still having an impact on the process (possibly moreso).  Disregard that some of them might have been doing a good job.   Voters wanted to draw blood.

This is all in a year when most of the seats up for election are Republican seats, which is odd considering the 59-41 advantage the Democrats (plus 2 Democratic caucusing independents) had over the Republicans.  This fact helped so greatly the Democrats to hold onto their majority by a hair.

But not so fast.

The Senate in the last decade really (I mean, yeah, I guess the last two years haven't been awesome, but this shit's been going on for a while) has been a very broken system.  If you want anything passed someone in the other party might disagree with, expect a filibuster, unless of course you have a 60-40 majority (or coalition of some sort), which the Democrats only had for about a year, after Arlen Specter switched parties, but before Massachusetts lost Ted Kennedy, and due to party stupidity, a sure-fire Democratic seat.  And then there's the floor amendments -- as deadly to the Senate as earmarks are to the House.

Think about it this way -- floor amendments are pretty much singlehandedly responsible for the courts having to act to try to repeal "don't ask, don't tell", something that should have handedly passed through the Senate, as popular opinion is HEAVILY against it.

So now the Senate sits at 47-53.  Filibusters WILL happen, and frequently.

Florida's tea partier, Marco Rubio, won, with a solid 50% as well, so it can't be put upon the democrat Meeks poaching votes from the independent running Crist.  But he was the only tea partier I listed that won in the Senate.

Sharron Angle proved to be too radical to form a coalition of voters to un-elect unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  Alaska's Lisa Murkowski appears (note, appears) to have mounted a successful write-in campaign against Joe Miller.  Chris Coons won a seat that likely would have been a certain win for Mike Castle, against social conservative (I originally assumed the tea party was just about economic freedoms, not social conservatism from someone who has run for a Senate seat 3 straight cycles) Christine O'Donnell.  Incumbent  Michael Bennet also appeared to have staved off a close race against tea partier Ken Buck in Colorado.

Given the tea parties high profile defeats in the Senate, perhaps it is too radical for a seat that represents the entire state.  This doesn't take away from the fact that incumbents overall fared poorly, though not as poorly as in the house, and Democrats did especially awful.

So what does this mean?  It means the next two years are going to be very long in the Senate.