Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 61 Comments
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes
It has now been about 36 hours since the most definitive victory for conservatism ever, yet according to my sources, Obama is still President, the Senate still has 60 Democrats, and the House gained a Democrat.
I guess you have to live in the beltway or work for a cable network to truly understand election results.
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[…] bit of sarcasm from John Cole… It has now been about 36 hours since the most definitive victory for conservatism ever, yet […]
[…] Cole struggles to understand the math of the Republicans and the media […]
cleek
i, for one, am enjoying the new “conservative” rule. starting today, i’m going to start carrying a gun and using it to enforce my position that i should be exempt from paying sales taxes because i feel the Democrat “Governor” of NC was selected by the DC power brokers and their union lackeys and not the people of NC, who would never vote for a Democrat. the 2008 “election” was a sham. and i will not pay the wages of tyranny! freedom is my profession! long live good, honest Americans! down with tyrants and usurpers!
Wolverines!
robertdsc-now with 27 championships
We picked up 2 Dems in the House; Owens in NY-23 and Garamendi in CA-10. Interestingly enough, both support the public option. Garamendi in particular is a heavy-duty progressive, so that’s a huge plus.
soonergrunt
Well, of course you don’t expect the rubes out in the hinterlands to understand, do you?
Nikki
@cleek:
That was perfect! I could feel the crazy boiling up as I read it.
soonergrunt
John,
You need to add the ‘good news for conservatives’ tag.
Please tell us that there will be either an edit or preview function coming soon.
robertdsc
We picked up 2 Dems in the House; Owens in NY-23 and Garamendi in CA-10. Interestingly enough, both support the public option. Garamendi in particular is a heavy-duty progressive, so that’s a huge plus.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Whatever respite we might have seen (ephemeral as it was) from the Washington Press Corpse’s usual scared-of-the-right blatherings, well, IT’S BACK!!!!!!!!
And it won’t go away unless Dems spank the crap outta the Repups in the mid terms. Than we’ll get 4 months of “oh, well, er, um”, then, something will happen and we’ll be right back here AGAIN.
Welcome to the corporate media of the USofA for the rest of our stinkin’ lives.
El Cid
Pshaw, everyone knows that in 2009 the key political seats for the direction of the entire nation are the NJ & VA governors, which were captured by Republicans and so this therefore means AMERICA HAS RISEN AGAINST THE OBAMA-PELOSI RADICAL AGENDA.
However, for various reasons this did not apply in 2001 when George W. Bush was in office and Democrats won both those seats, because, well, there was weather, or something, and so at that time it meant that AMERICA STILL STRONGLY SUPPORTED THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA WHICH WILL BE A PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY.
Now, had NY-23 been won by the Conservative candidate and had Democrats won both the NJ and VA governors’ races, the same thing would still be true: AMERICA HAS RISEN AGAINST THE OBAMA-PELOSI RADICAL AGENDA.
President Snowe should immediately empower a blue ribbon commission of sensible centrist commentators such as David Broder, David Brooks, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Hugh Hewitt to chart us a government of national reconciliation.
Brian J
Well, finally, a statement of truth from the Republicans on health care. In the middle of an article about the fact that the House Republican health care form bill would extend coverage to only 3 million people, we read:
Brian J
Ash Can
@robertdsc-now with 27 championships: Didn’t Garamendi replace Ellen Tauscher? She was a Dem, albeit a more conservative one than Garamendi. Hence John’s correct — a gain of one Dem in the House.
Fulcanelli
It’s TWO new Dems, amirite?. It’s a conspiracy. The Glorious Revolutionary Republic of New England purge of Congressional Republicans is creeping westward.
Now if we can only get rid of Lieberman.
The Grand Panjandrum
But the RINO lost, so there!
@robertdsc: Dems had a net gain of one. The NY-23 seat switched parties but the CA-10 seat didn’t change hands, although Tauscher was a more moderate Dem and Garamendi ran on a fairly progressive message. But that just means its great news for John McCain and the Republicans.
gnomedad
I am often slow on the uptake, but NPR interviewed a Republican pollster this morning who explained why Obama needs to be more bipartisan and I nearly glimpsed my brain from rolling my eyeballs. Go liberal media!
Fulcanelli
@Brian J:
Fixt it for ya.
Bring out yer dead…
…but I’m not dead yet!
Bob (Not B.o.B.)
The real good news is that politicos tend to believe their own crap. In the end the R’s wil actually see those two elections as a repudiation of the Obama agenda and run farther to the right.
Fine with me.
Leelee for Obama
My question here is this: Does anyone who voted for Christie think that lowering property taxes is going to improve anything in the way of public services? Or so they want private roads and electricity and water and all that stuff? Will paying a private utility for these things cost less? Methinks not-profit margins and all that. Jon Corzine was no thrill, but Christie will get impeached when the ramifications start ramifacating, as they will. Virginia was not given much of a choice in Creigh Deeds, from what I’ve read; too bad, but McDonnell will find himself unpopular with Indies soon enough, he’s not the centrist they think they voted for.
Nancy Pelosi made out well in this election cycle, and that’s gonna chap more than one butt, and that’s a fact.
The media are not to be listened to-they are just noise.
Maine is the most diappointing result, becaue it means we really will need a Constitutional Amendment to get the job done, and that may be impossible until more families admit that their GLBT members deserve the same rights as everyone else.
gnomedad
@Fulcanelli:
Heehee, an amusing metaphor for the RINO purge.
“Look, do us a favor …” WHAM!
El Cid
@Leelee for Obama: It’ll be like California. Locals will scream both for all their taxes to be lowered and for the state to spend a lot more on building and repairing highways and such.
Brian J
@Leelee for Obama:
I didn’t really pay much attention to the details of the Corzine-Christie race, but I’m going to try to keep up with what’s happening once Christie starts trying to implement his agenda. I’m curious, does New Jersey not have a balanced budget requirement? If it does, how does he plan to cut taxes without drastically reducing services?
In some sense, I’m going to view this as a hint to what might happen if a lot of Republicans get their way.
R-Jud
@El Cid:
My anecdotal evidence (consisting mostly of the ravings of/ mass e-mail screeds from a few dozen wingnut relatives in Monmouth County) suggests that this analysis is spot on.
Leelee for Obama
@Brian J: Yupper! Not sure about the balanced budget situation in NJ. Doesn’t matter anyhoo, no money, no services, pissed off citizens-QED.
kay
@Leelee for Obama:
I think Jon Corzine shouldn’t have promised to lower property taxes. It’s a cheap way to get a vote, and it doesn’t make any sense, and he knows better, or should.
Why would he make such a stupid promise? What was he basing that on? I can’t help but make a Goldman connection with that. It’s a predictive fantasy.
Anyone who says they are going to cut taxes should have to produce a list of services they’re cutting, or where they’re getting the money.
Brian J
@kay:
Do you think he would have won if had promised to mail every man, woman, and child in New Jersey a check based on his Goldman Sachs fortune? I sometimes wonder.
Michael
Spending on those hated “others” is the culprit, y’know.
Leelee for Obama
@Brian J: That would probably have turned out less expensive than the amount of money he spent on his two election cycles. Not for nothing, but politicians need to show their Pay-Go plans like kay said. that’s the only way the voters know what a tax cut will cost them in the long run.
kay
@Brian J:
He’s perpetuating this myth that things are free. I actually resent that, on a national political level. For God’s sake. His opponent is selling the same BS. Thanks, Jon.
We don’t have enough conservatives pretending they can offer elaborate services with no taxes? He had to join that bandwagon? Did he say the tax cuts were going to lead to larger revenue with no cuts in services because it would be a smaller slice of a bigger pie, too?
He deserved to lose just for that.
Chad N Freude
@gnomedad: The pollster is correct. Assuming, of course, that bipartisan means giving into Republicans on every issue.
You want proof? Well, we have this in this morning’s LA Times:
Short version: A blue dog from TN and a Republican pollster have achieved bipartisanship.
Leelee for Obama
And Broder is displaying that rictus grin of his in approval. Blarrgh!
Chad N Freude
@Leelee for Obama:
I thought we already had one.
BTW, I think the phrase “get the job done”, unless used ironically or used by a boss to a worker in reference to a particular task, is an offense against the English language. Not to be pedantic or anything.
Chad N Freude
And on deporting illegal aliens who steal jobs building roads and such from citizens.
Paul
@gnomedad: That was Mike Murphy on NPR in re: Obama’s need to be more bipartisan, and it was a statement so blindingly stupid — and therefore unchallenged by the interviewer, of course — that it caused me to sit up in bed and shake my head in wonder.
And Mike is normally one of the sane ones.
Leelee for Obama
@Chad N Freude: You’re right, of course, that the Equal Protection Clause is the correct citing-however, I think something that over-turns DOMA is what is needed. Something really specific, that can’t be called vague or open to interpretation. Sorry about the phrase you don’t like, but since law-making is like making sausage, in the vernacular, it seemed apropos.
Chad N Freude
@Leelee for Obama: What turned me off to the phrase was it’s incessant use by the Bush administration (and Bush in particular) in referring to the war in Iraq. As in, per the thread above this one, “we need another $130 to get the job done”.
Chad N Freude
@Chad N Freude: That should have been $130 BILLION. Where have all the Edit buttons gone, long time pa-a-ssing?
Seanly
@gnomedad:
As a Murphy, I apologize for the idiot polster named Murphy they had on NPR. He seriously listed every idiot talking point we’ve been laughing over – nation’s moving center-right; Obama-Pelosi are pinko failures, Christie and O’Donnell are the new face of conservatism. He did neglect to mention how the GOP fiasco at NY-23 was a victory for the GOP & conservatism.
To top it off, the next item was a fluff piece on Carly Fiorina’s run for CA Senator. Unfortunately, I had arrived at work and was not able to listen to them describe how the miserable failure of a CEO would be the bestest Senator (after McCain, Holy Joe and President Snowe).
Fulcanelli
Various conservative republicans have joked in the past how “bipartisanship is date rape”. Of course, they were in power then so it was ‘different’. Now that they’re out it’s the ‘right’ thing to do.
Yeahhhh, NO.
Bipartisanship with the current pack of twisted fucks calling themselves conservative republicans would amount to rendition and torture.
Wingnut anti-logic is the mindkiller. Just say no.
Waynski
@ Leelee for Obama — Just to clarify on NJ, every state and local government is required to balance their budgets. Only the Federal government can run a deficit, so my guess is Christie will screw up the state even worse than it is already in a hurry.
Elizabelle
Gail Collins had an excellent NYT column on this subject today.
Hark! The Voters Speak!
“In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was a obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going. …
We have a dramatic saga story line brewing here, and I do not want to mess it up by pointing out that Obama’s party won the only two elections that actually had anything to do with the president’s agenda. Those were the special Congressional races in California and upstate New York. But obviously they reflect only a very narrow voter sentiment, since one involved a district that was safe for the Democrats and the other a district that had not been represented by the party since 1872. …”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05collins.html
Elizabelle
I’m in moderation!
And quite the moderate person already.
sloan
Michael Barone weighs in with a post-election column that avoids any mention of the congressional races. He insists the state-level races have national implications and the national races, well, uh, NY-23? Never heard of it!
Final verdict:
This is excellent news for Red State.
Garrigus Carraig
@El Cid: Years ago, Fred Grandy (R-Iowa, Gopher on The Love Boat) said his constituents wanted “Cadillac answers at Studebaker prices.” Good times.
trollhattan
So I wasn’t the only one who had his pulse rate shoot up listening to Murhpy this a.m. He’s better spoken than his bwaain-munching cohorts but spews the same dreck: It’s Obama’s partisan bed, let him lie on it as the nation steams in anger.
Not a peep about the NY-23 fratricide. Admittedly, as go the NJ and that state whose name I can’t quite recall governorships, so goeth the Nation.
Here on the left coast I’m getting all extited about Carly who, I’m told, is going to be trouble for Boxer because she’s a GRRRRL! Printer ink dizcounts for EVERYONE.
Luthe
The problem with NJ (as gleaned from my reading of an NY Times Magazine article on the matter) is that homeowners are presented with one property tax bill that is the total of all taxes owed to their local municipalities, school districts, fire departments, etc, plus the state taxes. So they whine to the state for relief, falsely believing it is the state that is bleeding them dry. If they got separate bills, or bills with the taxes broken down line-by-line, it would become clear that it is the local governments that cost them more than the state. Which I hope would encourage consolidation by said governments, but then, I have Views of the wisdom of having local governments controlling things like school funding and planning decisions.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Paul Kane was in fine wanktastic form this morning. I’m betting at least one of the questions was from Doug.
Kane’s turned into a classic WaPo political reporter: head up his ass.
batgirl
@gnomedad: I heard it too, or I should say, I heard the parts I could when I wasn’t screaming out loud at the radio in my car. It was Mike Murphy saying that the Dems are not playing nice, that the lack of bipartiship is all Obama’s fault (It is Obama that is making the GOP the party of NO, don’t cha know?) Inskeep didn’t mention NY-23, didn’t talk to a Democratic strategist to get a “balanced” perspective and best of all did one of those “the races really don’t forecast anything but let’s pretend they do.” I was looking to see if the transcript is up yet so I could get the exact wording (It was beautiful) but I don’t see one yet.
batgirl
@Paul:
That interviewer was Steve Inskeep and he never challenges Republicans, only Democrats. Okay, maybe never, but pretty damn close.
Zuzu's Petals
@trollhattan:
Ditto on Mike Murphy. Don’t forget this is the genius who put Schwarzenegger in office.
Frank West
If you look at the comments on NPR below the story (last I checked) were over-whelmingly noting what is being discussed here. NPR keeps on trumpeting it’s objectivity… they may not be far from asking to borrow Fox’s “Fair & Balanced”mantra, while ignoring some important points. 20% (or so) of Americans identify themselves as Republican. And yet (according to some), they routinely seek commentary from more Republicans than Democrats/Independents on the various issues.
It goes a bit like this: “Obama says that global warming is a serious issue that demands our attention. Let’s hear what three Republicans think about that!”
Their smug ombudsman (Alicia Shepard) keeps insisting on their objective and balanced approach to reportage. It’s startin’ to make me sick!
gizmo
Tauscher was such a bad Democrat that I think we effectively picked up another Democrat in the House with Garamendi.
Leelee for Obama
@Zuzu’s Petals: In all fairness, and not to defend Murphy, surely a few other people voted for the Governator? That being said, I haven’t listened to NPR in a couple years, just due to what is being described here. National and public it may be, but objective? Hells no.
Truthseeker
I for one am delighted that Republicans won. I sincerely hope that they will move to end Social Security and Medicare and also to remove the evil teachings of evolution from our schools and reestablish the flat earth FACT.
Truthseeker
@Brian J:
Very good analysis. What those liberals dont understand is that we Republicans can carry two separate but conflicting ideas in our heads at the same time without the senseless need to be logically consistent.
Steaming Pile
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: The majority in the House will probably contract somewhat – I predict around five seats – in the 2010 midterms, and while the Senate gains three Democrats (net) and punts its milquetoast majority leader in a primary challenge, the blathering classes will still herald the event as a massive resurgence of conservatism.
Egypt Steve
We ain’t got 60 Democrats. Never did. Time to face up to that. Throw Traitor Joe over the side. Then, let’s blow up the filibuster with the nuclear option. Better off without it, and we can get some shit done.
Chuck Butcher
@Egypt Steve:
We do recall the {R} attempt to do away with it under GWB don’t we? We do remember why we thought having it was important? Are we now postulating a “permanent majority”?
batgirl
Morning Edition transcript is finally up with Steve Inskeep’s interview of Mike Murphy. This is Inskeep’s intro:
Asshole
PaulW
The media pundits are STILL getting it wrong. We voters haven’t risen up against either Obama or Palin. We’re rising up against Michael Bay doing another godawful Transformers movie.
Stan
“An often repeated tale of Reagan’s radio days recounts how he delivered “play-by-play broadcasts” of Chicago Cubs baseball games he had never seen. His flawless recitations were based solely on telegraph accounts of games in progress.”
— http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/40_reagan/reagan_early.html
The secret of success is to tell people the stories they already know and make them seem fresh and new. People don’t want the truth; they want something that feels authentic. The savvy reporter knows this instinctively. That’s why they call their reports “stories.”