With that in mind, was it not obvious that the Democrats would be routed this election year? The loss of the governorship in Virginia was not supposed to happen, according to liberals a year ago. The Prophet Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, spoke of Virginia as part of a "permanent Democratic majority." In New Jersey, Gov. Jon Corzine -- with his vast fortune and elite Democratic connections and a huge Democratic margin in the voting rolls -- was seen as an easy win. But then the economy did what one would expect a weak economy to do when faced with unprecedented peacetime spending and onerous new taxation. It sputtered. Next came another obvious development: The electorate put the economy at the top of its list of concerns.
Solidly Democratic New Jersey and "purple" Virginia voted for Republicans. In New Jersey, 89 percent of the citizenry was worried primarily about the economy. In Virginia, the figure was 85 percent. Reportedly, the president did not stay up to watch the returns. I can understand why. He has not a clue as to how to solve his underlying economic problems other than resort to motivational speaking and community organizing. That will not get the economy growing again -- and his dark murmurings about Wall Street will only hurt his fundraising. Something like 60 percent of Wall Street's political donations regularly go to the Democrats.
The enormous debt that the Democrats have burdened this economy with will not disappear over the next several years. Of late, it is nice to hear that the president is worried about that debt, but he has not a clue as to how to reduce it. His only answer is to tax the rich. Yet as The Wall Street Journal pointed out this week, "If Congress had confiscated 100 percent of the taxable income of people earning over $500,000 in the boom year of 2006, it would have only raised $1.3 trillion." And in the years that followed, these rich people would claim less income, and the federal debt would resume its growth. The answer to our financial problem is to cut federal spending and to cut federal taxes. That is how we got the economy going in the 1980s, and it grew for a generation. The answer is growth, but when the president hears that word, he thinks of government growth. That, too, is obvious.