Florida swung hard to the right, last year. Rick Scott, whose health insurance care giant once paid a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding the federal government, was elected governor. Marco Rubio crushed Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek. It was a bad election year in Florida.
Alan Grayson lost his Congressional seat. A seat he had two years earlier been the first Democrat to win since 1980. Let me repeat that: Alan Grayson in 2008 became the first Democrat to win that Congressional seat since 1980. It's not exactly a Democratic district. It's not even a swing district. Elsewhere in Florida, centrist Democratic Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas lost. Long time incumbent and Blue Dog Democratic Congressman Allen Boyd lost. Democratic Congressman Ron Klein lost to the extremist Allen West. It was a bad election year in Florida.
2010 was a bad election year for Democrats in general. Democrats lost 68 House seats and 7 Senate seats. The conservative Blue Dogs got pummeled. The liberal Progressive Caucus didn't. To focus on Alan Grayson's defeat and attempt to extrapolate that to a grand statement about Democratic strategy or ideology or whatever is silly.
The 2010 election was about the economy. As elections usually are. As next year's election will be. Voters know Bush is to blame, but they expect the incumbent party to get the job done. Last year, they concluded that Democrats hadn't gotten the job done. The way things are going, they very well might again next year. Which is why austerity fever is so unhealthy. It's about jobs. And nothing on the horizon suggests that there will be a significant improvement in the jobs market. This isn't complicated.