Restive Voters Tell Politicians to Get Serious

Politicians should be wary of reading too much into the results of Tuesday's off-year elections. Politics these days are far too volatile for quick conclusions. Ask Herman Cain.

Still, President Barack Obama's reelection campaign did a modest victory dance Wednesday morning to celebrate the decision by Ohio voters to repeal Ohio Senate Bill 5, which would have severely curtailed the bargaining rights of the state's public employee unions. The Obama campaign and organized labor had made an all-out push to marshal grassroots opposition to the bill.

Because of organizing efforts in Ohio and around the country, wrote Obama campaign field director Jeremy Bird in a memo to campaign supporters, "this past week has been a huge success."

Well, maybe. But how to explain that Ohio voters also decided Tuesday that they wanted no part of the individual mandate to purchase health care insurance that is part of Obama's health care reform law?

A more cautious analysis of the Ohio vote, as well as the results of elections in Mississippi, Maine and Arizona, would suggest only slight pushback against conservative efforts to go too far, too fast with the momentum they gained in 2010.

American politics swing on a pendulum. Parties that win one year tend to overreach, and the pendulum swings back the other way. For all the hysteria of the 24-hour news cycle, this remains a centrist nation.

Pendulums usually don't swing back in a single year. But these are extraordinarily difficult and divisive times. In that there is a cautionary note for both parties.

In Ohio, voters told Republican Gov.

John Kasich and his GOP legislative colleagues that SB 5 was a reach too far. The bill would have stripped public employees, including police officers and teachers, of any effective collective bargaining rights. In any dispute, management would have had the right to impose a settlement. Police officers and firefighters called the bill a threat to public safety — hyperbole, perhaps, but the message resonated with voters.

In Mississippi, voters turned back a "personhood" amendment to the state constitution. It declared that at the instant of conception, a zygote becomes a human being with all attendant rights. Many longtime abortion opponents, including the Catholic Church, thought it went too far. It threatened in vitro fertilization, some forms of birth control and exceptions to abortion in cases of rape or incest. Too much, Mississippi voters said. But a measure requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls? Not too much, they said.

In Maine, voters restored Election Day voter registration, which had been struck down by GOP legislators.

In Arizona, Russell Pearce, the Republican state Senate president who sponsored the state's 2010 crackdown on undocumented immigrants, was recalled. His replacement, charter school executive Jerry Lewis, also is a Republican but has said that immigration reform should be reasonable.

Elsewhere, results were mixed. In Virginia, Republicans captured control of the state Senate, giving them the governor's mansion and both houses of the legislature. But in Iowa, Democrats held on to the Senate. Democrats held on to the governorship in Kentucky, and Republicans held on in Mississippi. Big-city mayors of both parties held their seats.

Conclusion: The country is narrowly divided, angry and restive, in no mood for games and phony issues. Politicians, take heed.

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