(CNN) -- Democrats, as President Obama said Wednesday, took a shellacking in Tuesday's contentious midterm elections. They lost control of the House to Republicans but managed to cling onto a reduced majority in the Senate. The election will reverberate throughout American politics, with the newcomers vowing to lower government spending, cut taxes and torpedo the president's health-care legislation. The Republican victory generated an outpouring of commentary. Here are some thoughts from CNN.com's opinion section. Message to Obama: Americans want jobs The midterm election was clearly a repudiation. The question is, a repudiation of what? Fifty years of data from one election after another has shown that people vote with their gut, and this year the gut of the American voter -- left, right and center -- was angry and anxious. It's not hard to understand why: One in 10 Americans of working age is out of a job and six in 10 are living from paycheck to paycheck.
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Drew Westen says the election was a repudiation -- of what? Americans just want jobs
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Jeffrey Miron explains why California rejected Prop 19, to make pot legal
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Ten of the craziest, most effective or most damaging attack ads, from Adam Hanft
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Remember 1994; the youth vote; Tea Party's message to Republicans and more
Many advocates promised major benefits to @placeholder's budget because of reduced expenditure on marijuana prohibition and increased revenue from marijuana taxation.