Historical?

Very bad but not unusual.

With only four exceptions, EVERY single President since Lincoln has lost seats in the House in the midterm elections. The only ones to buck the trend were the Roosevelts (TR because he was the mostly popular President EVER his first term, FDR because of the Depression), Clinton (because of Republican miscues during the Impeachment) and Bush '43 (because of 9/11). [freerepublic]

The 65 seat loss in the House is pretty awful and puts Obama slightly better than Grant, Harrison, Cleveland (-116!), Harding, and FDR.  Still, there have been 8 other Presidents that have lost more than 45 seats (including Clinton) and since the House grew with the country's population until 1963 the percentage of seats lost (which I can't find in a nice, neat, chart done by someone else) of 435 is a smaller number today than it was under, say, Taft in 1910 with 57 of 386 seats.  But it's still horrible.

Somehow Dems managed to keep control of the Senate but their majority is now wafer thin.  The historical average loss of Senate seats has been four and eight isn't very far off that mean on a bell curve.  That being said the Dems have taken a trouncing.

Now here's an odd thing:  the swing has been "independents" that voted for Democrats last time but went Republican this time.  We have an enormous chunk of the population that will simply vote against the people in office because nobody seems to know what they're doing.  But one has to wonder about the person that would vote back in again the same bunch of thieves and fools that has run this country's government and economy into the ground.  Only 12% of Americans said we should let it play out, around 30% wanted it repealed but over 40% said it didn't go far enough and for reasons I cannot explain people from both ends of the spectrum voted against Democrats because of it.

Is this continuous yo yo effect of American voting because we're a nation of idiots, because we have no third (or more) party, or because of the wild imbalance created by the staggering influence of the vast right wing propaganda machine (Fox et. al.) and gazillions of dollars sprayed on the elections by corporations and the ultra wealthy?  What is the Tea Party movement and where does its money come from?  How can Sarah Palin be jetting back and forth across the country continuously?  4% of Americans are actually members of the "Tea Party" but 40% of Americans "agree with" the Tea Party.  How can this possibly square with the fact that only 12% of Americans approve of the Republican Party, fewer than the pathetic 21% that approves of the Democrats?¹  Something is very off-kilter in the system, especially considering there is no other party to step up and fill the gaping hole of Americans that despise all of our leadership.  People vote against the people in office but to do this they have to vote for people they hate more than the ones they've already got.   Is this the snake eating its own tail or is the snake being force fed by the true Powers That Be?

There is only one thing I am sure about:  this election has made me sick to my stomach. After this week's podcast I think I'm going to take a month off of following politics to work on art and music.