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opinion

The Republican Party may have made monumental gains in the U.S. mid-term elections, but the results are a repudiation of both parties. Republicans have few actionable policies, and the Democrats are not ready to deal with the three predicaments - in jobs, public finances and campaign financing - that most threaten the U.S. economy and political system.

The repudiation is most evident, of course, in the Tea Party candidate victories, over both Republican opponents in primary elections and Democrats in the Tuesday vote. But the anti-party sentiment was more widespread. Independents or third-party candidates, mostly former Republicans, won or came a close second in gubernatorial races in Rhode Island, Maine and Colorado and Senate races in Florida and Alaska. Many winning Democrats ran explicitly against their own party's platform and record, especially on health care, the environment and the bank bailout, while those who defended those policies were more likely to be sent home. And there is a continuing market for trafficking in voter anger, evident in many of the losers' concession speeches, among the most ungracious in memory.

Many Republican House seat gains, moreover, can be explained by the economy, especially in the industrial areas of the Midwest and the Northeast, and the Appalachian mountain range, where the jobs situation is particularly acute.

But the Democrats' political failure is total. The message that special interests were helping to buy Republican allegiances - in light of a Supreme Court decision that allowed largely unlimited and secret third-party campaign spending - was unconvincing. A focus on technocratic solutions - "what works," as Barack Obama said in his Wednesday press conference - will never inspire those voters who understandably think that little in Washington works. And with continuing political defeats, the rest of Mr. Obama's mostly reasonable agenda will never be implemented. Republicans, enjoying this taste of blood, will be tempted to fight the last battle and ride anger all the way into 2012 elections and presidential primaries.

That, too, would be short-sighted. People are suffering, and the Republicans now taking office in large numbers share the responsibility to address those fears. They can no longer incite anti-government anger, or propose solutions - massive tax cuts as a way of fighting the deficit; a castration of government for its own sake - that clearly won't work.

A growing number of voters are dissatisfied with partisanship and would gladly support a "radical middle," a path that would be solution-oriented but politically astute - a path that would make hard trade-offs on taxes and spending, and a serious effort to diminish the role of outside spending in elections - to alleviate the country's deepest problems. But neither party is ready or able to offer it.

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