The always insightful Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal offers some scintillating analysis regarding the elections on Tuesday and how President Obama has simply run out of time to enact his liberal agenda:
On Jan. 20, Barack Obama began a race against time. The White House knew its liberal agenda would prove unpopular in many parts of the country represented by Democrats. So long as the president looked strong, those Blue Dogs and freshmen and swing-state senators would stick. Show them any sign of weakness, however, and rattled Dems would begin to care more about their own re-elections than they did their president.Tuesday, the White House hit that tipping point.
To understand why, join some of those "nervous Democrats" who at this very moment are digging into, say, Virginia's returns. Last year, Dems captured three GOP House seats in the Old Dominion as the state voted for its first Democratic president since 1964. This week, those very same districts provided Democrats their first proof that the Obama agenda is a liability.
There's freshman Rep. Tom Perriello, who, buoyed by the big Obama turnout, won Virginia's fifth congressional district by a scant 727 votes. Today, Mr. Perriello's farming and manufacturing area sports the state's highest unemployment rate. The Democrat suffered a furious backlash over his vote for a cap-and-trade bill that will further crush local manufacturing and was then walloped at a series of health-care town halls.
Kim points out that there are 49 of these Democrats who represent districts that went for John McCain in 2008. Each of them is making their own calculations about how far down the road they can go with the president before the backlash causes them big trouble.
Judging by the vote on Tuesday, they may have hit the end of that road.
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