One of the occasional great joys of political prognosticating is the chance to go back over what you wrote and see how right or wrong you were, though it’s obviously more fun if you were right.  And on October 24^th, I published a column where I argued that Republican candidates might find that being hard right on reproductive rights helps them win primaries, but can be devastating in the general election.

I’m happy to say that I was right.  Not every time–some of the most extreme anti-choice candidates did win–but many of the candidates who lost races that they were earlier predicted to win in a walk were candidates whose extreme views on abortion rights were well-publicized.  It wasn’t just Christine O’Donnell, either, though she was probably doomed from the moment it was exposed that her hostility to sexual freedom went beyond opposing rights that make women’s lives better right on to opposing masturbation, a popular activity among men, the ones who generally police and are not subject to the anti-sex police’s policing.  Anti-choice extremism wasn’t what you wanted on your side to beat the Democrats this election.

Sharron Angle, who was assumed over the summer to have an easy win against the unpopular Harry Reid in a state with nearly 15 percent unemployment, was beaten for a number of reasons involving her inability to stay quiet about extreme right wing views on everything from Medicare to gun control.  But her hostility to women who need abortions—even minors who are raped by family members—haunted her, particularly her quote about said victims trying to turn the “lemons” of rape into the supposed lemonade of bearing a child to give it away.

Similarly, Ken Buck of Colorado was so obnoxiously misogynist that he ended up losing the female vote by a substantial margin, enough to cost him the election.  His jokes about women not deserving power, his ugliness towards a rape victim whose case he refused to prosecute, and his eagerness to claim that he would oppose abortion in any circumstance helped build the case against him. To make it worse, he indicated support for Prop 62, a measure that went down in dramatic defeat in part because of fears that it could be used to ban birth control.  Carl Paladino, who wasn’t really expected to win the governorship of New York, nonetheless got a larger-than-expected beating because he displayed the same kind of misogyny, though with an even more vulgar bent.

But it wasn’t just Republicans who found that running to the right, especially on health care and women’s issues, actually doesn’t do well for you in a general election.  Democrats who run to the right often believe they’re going to win elections by virtue of appearing centrist, but the evidence that this works is scant.  On the contrary, the election returns demonstrate that Blue Dogs—the conservative Democrats who did things like attach abortion restrictions to the health care bill or refuse to vote for it entirely— took a beatdown, losing nearly half of their coalition.  Meanwhile, the progressive coalition in Congress only lost 4 members, 5 percent of their total membership. 

What are the lessons that politicians should take away from this?  Overall, I’d say it doesn’t do well to attack access to health care, either by attacking reproductive rights or attacking overall health care access.  I realize this is completely opposite of the Beltway wisdom that would have you believe Democrats lost because of health care reform, but the evidence is hard to deny.  Whenever a politician made a big stink about restricting access to abortion, birth control, or blocking a bill that would make health insurance available to the millions of uninsured, that politician saw his/her chances of winning the election go down. Some still won, but overall, it was a bad move.

The idea that the midterm election results indicate a hard right turn in American politics is just silly. The results are largely due to suppressed voter turnout, especially amongst younger voters, who still vote majority Democratic.  This was all incredibly predictable.  What wasn’t nearly as predictable was how badly some more conservative politicians, of both parties would do.  Compared to expectations going in, liberals and pro-choicers fared much better than expected, and conservatives and anti-choicers lost far more often than predicted.  With 2012 on the horizon, the message is clear—Democrats need to move to the left and Republicans should consider becoming more moderate, especially in certain swing states where people would like to elect Republicans but can’t handle the hard right types.