After the Republican Party had, as expected, taken control the House of Representatives, soon-to-be Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner declared to a national audience that the American people had sent President Barack Obama a message. That message was, in Boehner's words: "Change course."
The underlying flaw of this claim made by the Republicans and echoed by some in the media is that casting this election as a rejection of Obama's agenda belies an assumption that Americans have a basic understanding of that agenda.
Public opinion polls indicate instead that what Americans have repudiated is a wildly misinformed understanding of the bills that passed under the Obama administration.
First, there's a lot of confusion about which bills the current administration actually passed. The bank bailout was signed into law by President George W. Bush a month before Obama was elected. Yet a July Pew Research Center survey found that just 34 percent of Americans correctly attribute the bailout program to the Bush administration, compared to 47 percent who believe it originated with Obama.
Americans are also confused about Obama's signature health care legislation. A study this April by Rasmussen Reports found that a full 60 percent of likely voters believe that the health care bill would increase the federal deficit, despite an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office which found that the bill would reduce the deficit by $143 billion by 2019.
Still, Republican leaders depict the midterm elections as a referendum on health care reform and cast their gains as a mandate to repeal Obama's signature legislation. In fact, Americans have not repudiated health care reform — they've rejected a bill that would grow the federal deficit and cut off health care funding for seniors. Republicans campaigned — and voters cast their ballots — against a bill that does not exist.
Voter ignorance is perhaps most evident in the level of misinformation about Obama's tax policy. Most Americans buy into the Republican claim that their taxes have risen under this administration: 52 percent of respondents think so, according to an October Bloomberg poll. In fact, the current Congress lowered taxes for the middle class by approximately $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples.
Republicans are primarily responsible for this widespread voter ignorance, as the fundamentals of their party platform include fallacious claims that Obama raised taxes, that the health care bill will add to the deficit and that the Democrats were responsible for "the bailouts."
But the greatest burden undoubtedly falls on the Democrats' shoulders for failing to educate the public about the policies they have enacted over the last two years. Even in a hostile political environment, the president should be visible to the public on a regular basis, explaining his policies to an uninformed and very frustrated electorate. But Obama did not enter the fray in any meaningful way until the final few weeks before the election, and by then the damage was done.
For too long, the Democrats failed to articulate a coherent agenda on health care reform and other major legislation, allowing the Republicans to dictate public opinion with the same dubious claims day after day. By that measure, the Democrats earned the "shellacking" they suffered last Tuesday.
