US Elections Results. Understanding them is not that complicated.

The right wing policies of Obama and the Democrats turned many people off voting for them and many of these swung to the Republicans.

The elections are the first in 30 years when unemployment has been around the 10% plus mark. At the same time Obama and the Democrats have been bailing out Wall Street, the banks and the major corporations and the rich have been getting richer. These are the decisive factors in the anger that exists in US society and which is expressed in the swing against the Democrats in the elections. On top of this Obama has been continuing with the wars and occupations abroad and these are increasingly unpopular.

Jobs, falling incomes, war, and worry about what is going to happen, dominated the thinking of working class and middle class voters. The Republicans exploited this by emphasizing the budget deficit and screaming about so called death panels being included in the the health care bill of Obama. The health care bill and Obama's refusal in this to take on the dominant privately owned for profit insurance corporations (Remember the public option) especially worried older voters who tend to use the health system more and who turn out in greater numbers to vote.

The Obama regime and its so called smart advisers such as the recently resigned political idiot and capitalist mouthpiece Summers had the following wonderful strategy. When faced with the threatened economic collapse they bailed out capitalism and the super rich and told the working class to grin and bear it, sit down and shut up, there was no alternative. This did not work. People did not accept this. People are not stupid. The Republicans have reaped the reward for Obama's right wing response to the economic crisis.

The labor leaders also played their role in ushering in Republican control of the House. They put their members tens and tens of millions of dollars behind the capitalist Democrats, they turned out their members in droves for the Democrats. The result was working class and middle class voters who were against the Obama regime could see no where else to go but to the Republicans. The labor leaders have to be called to account. They have to explain the tens of millions of dollars they wasted, the energy of their members they wasted, and for what? To give the Republicans control of the house and to see Obama and company continue with their bootlicking of Wall St. and company.

The graph above, a survey by the AFL-CIO gives some idea of the contradictory nature of this situation.  Being from the AFL-CIO they naturally call it the GOP agenda to get their Democrats off the hook but it is the agenda of both capitalist parties.

There will now be increased conflict in Washington. This is in spite of Obama being completely incapable of seeing reality. No sooner was it clear that the Republicans were gaining than he called for more working together. The Republicans have no interest in working together with him. As McConnell one of their leaders says, their priority is to get him out of office in 2012. They will thwart him at every turn.

But it will not be plain sailing for the Republicans. They have a a Tea Bag element not only within their ranks but now also in Congress. Many of these people are not sympathetic to the argument that in Washington the deal is the way to go. Then there is the budget deficit. While most people, especially those who swung to the Republicans, want the deficit cut they do not want entitlement programs and social spending cut. Their position is contradictory and the Republicans will have to find a way to hide this contradiction.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll taken last summer asked people about a variety of ways to cut the deficit. More than 75% of those polled said it was unacceptable to cut federal spending on education, more than 60% said it would be unacceptable to raise the retirement age to 70% to reduce Social Security expenses or to gradually raise the eligibility age for Medicare. These attitudes do not show a swing to the right in society. The problem is that the Obama regime went further and further to the right, they lost a lot of their previous supporters by doing so, and many voters who wanted to register their anger at Wall Street and the forces which had brought the economy to its knees voted Republican.

The Tea Bag movement is looked on with distrust and even a little fear by the Republican Party establishment and the dominant capitalist forces. While it has had a lot of financial support from some big right wing capitalist institutions and individuals in the run up to the elections this will now tend to be reduced and the Tea Bagger movement will come more under the influence of the more middle class and to some extent crazed element within its ranks. To the extent that it continues to exist it will be in conflict with the leadership of the Republican Party and the more strategic capitalist forces.

One of the features of the election is how African American and Hispanic voters have tended to stay with the Democrats. African Americans with a higher political understanding in the main saw through the Republican game more clearly. Hispanic voters saw the Republican Party and its racist anti immigrant policies as a threat. Not that either of these voting blocks will have their issues solved by the Democrats but they also understood that they would not be solved by a protest vote for the Republicans. And for African Americans the fact that Obama is the first African American president is still a factor even though he has been disappointing to them also.

Results are still coming for in for Parties such as the Greens and the couple of Labor and socialist candidates. The union leaders abdicated their role in this election, they refused to build an independent working peoples party, transform the political landscape and strengthen working peoples struggles by giving them an alternative to build and work and vote for. But the left and anti capitalist forces also have to look at their role. They too have to be called to account. They were not able to get over their left sectarianism and ultra leftism and work together in united front movements which would in places have given an alternative to the capitalist parties. If they had been able to do so a start could have been made in building a working class alternative to the capitalist parties the Democrats and Republicans.

Sean.