Status Quo Ante Bellum?

For those who aren’t aware of the phrase, it loosely means “things as they were before the war”.

And if you look at US election results, that’s basically what’s happened. Obama is still President, the Repubs still have the House, and the Dems still have the Senate.

But there are deeper undercurrents.

Referenda have increasingly shown a greater tolerance for things like medical marijuana, same-sex marriage, and in some cases, refusing to endorse the rollback of Obamacare at the state level (states can have opt-outs on the federal ACA under certain circumstances), so it is clear that US voters are, at least for certain things, willing to endorse greater personal freedom of action for which the government need not intervene.

And the composition of the Senate in particular is of importance. If the overall Democratic composition is more liberal than the outgoing Senate, then perhaps we may see a weakening of the tendency of Blue Dogs to vote with the Republicans, and perhaps see the US’s tax system be reformed along 1990s or 1970s lines, which would in turn de-legitimize Canadian politicians who constantly call for more tax cuts as the solution to their largely imaginary fears of lost Canadian productivity or economic well-being.

And perhaps President Obama, in his second term, will finally get tough with Republicans and refuse to constantly try to “bipartisan” his way through political life with a party that refuses to work in good faith with a President who happens to be a person of color.

Time will tell, and it is probably best to be cautious, given the heady pronouncements in 2006 and 2008 of possible Democratic control over the House and Congress for the next generation, which obviously did not pan out.

And now with the election out of the way, it’s probably time to get back to Edge of Apocalypse; expect a writeup this week on Mitt Romney Joshua Jordan. (seriously, spot the parallels. )