The Patriot Post® · Did GOP Win, or Did Democrats Simply Lose?

Victor Davis Hanson: “The Duke of Wellington said of his close-run victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo that the French ‘came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way.’ Something like that happened to the Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm elections, as they lost the Senate, a few more seats in the House and additional governorships. … Democrats understandably chose to ignore both what they had voted for in the past and what they were likely to support in the future. Instead, they ran on the same old progressive idea of community organizing to get out the base. Obama was the past master of this strategy: Energize American voters by contending that we have been separated by race, class and gender; claim that conservatives have been waging pitiless war against blacks, Latinos, gays, women and the poor; and then cobble back together the aroused and aggrieved interests to form a majority. … After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama’s faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record. … Republicans assumed that Obama was always the issue, ran against his policies, and rarely offered much of a comprehensive alternative agenda. It worked, but it left a question unanswered. At Waterloo, it was never quite clear whether Wellington’s redcoats had won the battle or Napoleon’s veterans had blown it. In the same manner, did the Republican agenda win on Tuesday, or did the predictable Democrats simply lose?”