Cover of TIME.
Let's look at some responses to the mid-term elections…
Joshua Brown, Corporate America Goes to the Polls:
Jon Stewart is saying the true winner of this election season is money. We broke records across campaigns with huge spending tabs and they say 30% of the money that was used this time around has an unaccounted for source!
I do think the most fascinating thing to come out of last night was the confirmation of how much anger there was. This is very atypical of an economic recovery period, which only bolsters the thesis that most people are seeing enough improvement to believe we have a 2-3% GDP track and sub-6 percent unemployment. Obama basically spent this campaign in hiding, by request of his party’s candidates, and was even referred to several times by fellow Dems as a lame duck – which must have been news to the White House because there’s still fully half a term left! ~ Josh Brown
Larry Doyle In Bed with Wall Street: Book Talk at Library of Congress:
America awakes this morning to a Republican wave breaking over Washington and coursing across our nation. While some may view yesterday’s election results as simply a stamp of approval of “right vs left”, I think the nation as a whole said something far more meaningful than that. I believe a significant percentage of voters tried to send a message to Washington and their state capitols of “right vs wrong.” ~ Larry Doyle.
Mish Shedlock, Worst Election Performance by Sitting President's Party Since Truman; Republicans Take Senate, Increase Lead in House and Governorships:
The key question is "what does it all mean?" The short answer is this vote is an anti-Obama vote as much as anything else.
[…]
If Republicans nominate another Neanderthal determined to wage more wars while taking away freedom of choice, expect to see Hillary in the White House in 2016. ~ Mish
Zero Hedge, The Economy Is So "Strong" It Just Cost Obama The Senate:
Based on the ridiculous, seasonally-adjusted data released day after day by the various US "Departments of Truth", also known as the BLS, the Census, the Dept of Commerce, UMichigan, ADP, the Conference Board and so on, the US economy is so strong and consumer confidence is so resurgent, America is on the verge of a second golden age. Sadly, for Obama, and last night's epic rout for Democrats, it was all a lie – a lie perpetuated by a manipulated S&P500 which now hits daily record highs on unprecedented central bank liquidity injections which have now terminally disconnected the "markets" from the economy, and the welfare of the vast majority of the common "folk" – and said "folk" saw right through it. ~ ZeroHedge
Bloomberg's take (via ZeroHedge):
More than five years after the recession ended, ordinary Americans still feel pinched. Wages and incomes haven’t recovered even as corporate profits hit records, stocks have almost tripled and the nation’s output of goods and services grew more than $1 trillion from its pre-recession peak.
Obama’s Democratic allies took the hit, with Republicans gaining a majority in the Senate for the first time during his presidency and adding seats in the House, which they have controlled for four years. Yet Republicans could hardly claim a mandate from yesterday’s results, and they’ll be judged on their ability to govern.
ZeroHedge on the ironies of Bloomberg (quoted above):
Irony #1: Bloomberg, which has been one of the many outlets spinning the "great recovery" is confused…
Maybe, just maybe, the economy never really strengthened, and it was all even more of the same propaganda that has ordinary Americans finally seeing through the lies. Bloomberg at least admits that much: "Most Americans haven’t shared in the gains. Adjusted for inflation, the July median household income of $54,045 was $2,600 lower than in December 2007.
[…]
The irony does not stop there, because the biggest beneficiary of the Obama administration and the split Congress so far has been the 1%, by way of the S&P 500 rising relentlessly in the fact of bad or good news…
Well, the economy may not get better but at least the rich will get a little richer as the charade continues.
Zero Hedge, The Election (In 1 'Uncomfortably Divided' Nation Chart)
Isn't it ironic that the demographic in America that has seen the largest job growth during the 'recovery' turned out in droves to vote (against the incumbents) while the generation that remain mired in student debt, living at home with their mom-and-dad in record amounts, and having lost hope of the American Dream were apparently uninterested in 'change'. Perhaps, just perhaps, the elder generation still believes there is a difference between the two parties… or perhaps they are the ones who are most pissed as the promises of sipping margaritas on a golden beach in retirement is crushed into the reality of working to your grave at Home Depot.
Which is ironic given that the Over-60s (and only over-60s) have been hired in droves… ~ Zero Hedge
h/t @NBCNews
Andy Borowitz, In Final Indignity, Fence Jumpers Abandon White House
In what many in Washington are calling a final indignity, a group of White House fence jumpers announced on Wednesday that it no longer has any interest in trespassing on President Obama’s living quarters.
The news came from a spokesman for the fence jumpers, Taggart Wentzel, the author of a four-hundred-page anti-government manifesto who has been arrested for jumping the White House fence three times since Obama moved in.
“We have no plans to jump the White House fence in the future,” said Wentzel. “We’re moving on.”
