So the Democrat won the race in Pennsylvania 12, defeating the surefire strategy of attacking a grandmotherly figure who looks like damned near every other yinzer grandma in Pittsburgh.
Good thinking, Republicans. You might want to try to run on an issue in the fall, rather than just trashing Pelosi. Those who haven’t heard of her don’t care, and those who have heard of her are either wondering how throwing eggs at her will get them a job or why you are picking on the Italian grandmother who smiles nervously when she is on camera.
I swear, the GOP believes their own teabag/Limbaugh nonsense. Was the Burns campaign theme Barack the Magic Negro? Idiots.
*** Update ***
From the comments, as good a description of the myopic Republican feedback loop as you will see:
The Republicans have a problem of miking the supporter’s section and thinking there is a full house. If you watch MLS, especially during mid-week games, you’ll notice sparse crowds except for the supporter’s section behind one of the goals. If a field mic is aimed at the section it sounds like a full house of singing fans even though you can clearly see empty seats along either sideline.
Republicans do the same thing. The hardcore Republicans hate Nancy Pelosi with a passion (because she’s a woman and a Democrat) and they just assume from the din of their hater’s section that everyone else in the stadium hates Pelosi. But they’re just miking their own noise.
What do you expect from the party that excludes 75% of the country in their definition of “real American?”
Hunter Gathers
The GOP is now 0 for 8 in special elections since November of 2008. Where’s my Republican Resurgence at?
dmsilev
What, you mean sacrificing a box of Lipton regular to the election gods doesn’t work?
dms
MattF
Maybe I’m just a stoopid Democrat, but I’ve never understood the trash-Pelosi thing from an electoral point of view. I do understand that Republicans fear Pelosi, and they should. But “If you hate this person, you’re one of us” is not a good campaign slogan, IMO.
Jay C
@Hunter Gathers:
Just wait til the lineup of (mostly empty) talking heads which disgracefully passes for a national media chew over that fact for a while – the answer, no doubt will be something like:
“The Republican Resurgence hasn’t failed! It just hasn’t been properly tried yet!”
Bulworth
For an area that is supposed to be “economically populist”, the passing of a universal health care bill (and a stimulus bill made up one-third of tax cuts) hasn’t helped Obama’s approval ratings much. I wonder what kind of “economic populism” the area favors? I wonder what the unemployment rate is in that district?
tomjones
San Fransisco! Boogedy boogedy!
slippy
@Hunter Gathers: Not that I dispute you, but I would love to see the actual figures. I thought we lost one with what’shisname who replaced Kennedy.
I mean, I still doubt it’s a resurgence since . . . they’ve got nothing to sell except “Pelosi and THAT ONE.”
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
The Republicans have a problem of miking the supporter’s section and thinking there is a full house. If you watch MLS, especially during mid-week games, you’ll notice sparse crowds except for the supporter’s section behind one of the goals. If a field mic is aimed at the section it sounds like a full house of singing fans even though you can clearly see empty seats along either sideline.
Republicans do the same thing. The hardcore Republicans hate Nancy Pelosi with a passion (because she’s a woman and a Democrat) and they just assume from the din of their hater’s section that everyone else in the stadium hates Pelosi. But they’re just miking their own noise.
Halteclere
@MattF:
I was about to say the same thing. She is nothing like Tom Delay, who used dubious tactics like redrawing district maps in the middle of a decade instead of the standard decade end, or sent the Texas State Police searching for state representatives who refused to show up so a quorum could be reached.
debbie
<blockquote:Not that I dispute you, but I would love to see the actual figures.
So would I. It would shut up those teaparty/Conservative friends and family members that annoy me so much.
Hunter Gathers
@slippy:
I should have specified. My bad. 0 for 8 in House special elections. Including the teabagger clusterfuck in NY-23. That makes 2 seats that should have been easy pickups for the GOPers, according to our MSM overlords.
Ann B. Nonymous
Of course they do. It’s like iced tea in a too-cold refrigerator. The normal people get frozen out, while the tea concentrates in a bitter mass at the bottom.
toujoursdan
Well, they did win statewide offices in MA, NJ and VA, though there seems to be a huge case of buyer’s remorse. The approval ratings for Gov. Christie in NJ have nosedived since he took office.
ABC News: Poll: Governor Christie’s popularity falling
Comrade Javamanphil
Predicated political press response to PA12: PA what now? How about that Rand Paul! Those tea partiers sure are angry at incumbents.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
The Rethugs are using the 1994 election playbook and trying to substitute Pelosi for Hillary.
cleek
“the Obama/Pelosi agenda” has become one of those phrases which causes my brain to immediately stop paying attention to the person who uttered it.
cleek
@Comrade Javamanphil:
the official wingnut spin seems to be : the district is 2:1 Dem by registration, the Dem barely won, and he did it by running to the right of the Rep. so… TeaBagger victory!
it’s always sunny in the Pittsburgh area – for TeaBaggers.
jwb
@toujoursdan: To be fair, now is not the time anyone who cared about opinion polls would want to be Governor. The choices are such, that your approval rating is certain to go down.
John W.
This is what the GOP gets for running a Simpson character.
Randy P
Linguistic side note:
I was aware that there was a Pittsburgh pronoun “yinz”. I didn’t know it had an adjective form.
There’s a Philly pronoun “yez” which people aren’t even aware of till I point it out. And no it is not equivalent to “youse”. It’s singular. It’s common among waitresses in my area (Delaware county, west of Philly): “Do yez want some more coffee? Are yez ready to order?”
I frequently learn stuff here. But what else can you expect from a blog community which uses “epistemic closure” and “exegesis” in casual conversation?
On-topic: I’m happy this morning. Sestak won. I know plenty of people have reservations about him, and close to half the Democrats preferred Specter. But I’m happy, and I think it means good things for the PA Democratic party.
And any time somebody not anointed by the machine wins, that’s a good thing. I hate the entire concept that the machers can promise somebody they won’t face a primary challenge. That shouldn’t be in their power to promise.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
@cleek:
Sorry to quibble, but the real heart of the 12th Congressional district is Johnstown, not Pittsburgh.
flukebucket
My boss man came in the other day holding up his “Fire Pelosi” bumper sticker and beaming with pride.
I told him I sure hoped he would paste it over the embarrassing McCain / Palin bumper sticker he still has.
PanAmerican
Politico didn’t even mention the pollster by name. There’s been some pissing in the pool by certain polling outfits. Fuckin’ likely voter screens, how do they work?
Nine points in an open seat? Maybe they need to try harder.
40 seats isn’t going to happen.
D.N. Nation
@Hunter Gathers:
That election has been completely tossed down the memory hole. It’s cute, really.
artem1s
in part I think that you are mistaking fund raising tactics for election strategies. They push many of their wild ass, foaming at the mouth memes merely because they know there are ‘one issue voters’ that will throw big bucks at them every time they toss out certain keywords. For a couple of decades they bled the ‘right to life’ and ‘welfare hating’ crowd dry. Now they are really scraping the bottom of the barrel but I’m betting they will ride the ‘anti-government’ rant as long as it pays (or until they are all voted out of office). And nothing makes a old rich white CEO open up his wallet faster than someone he never wants to see at his country club.
Ron Paul is a perfect example of how it’s done. He has been an inside Texas oil politician since 1979 and still gets away with painting himself as an outsider. His followers were bitching about political ‘monarchies’ during the whole Hillary campaign but his son just took the Republican primary. The GOP leadership lurvs itself the big piggie money bank. They are extremely short sighted about this. They have nominated dead-out-of-the-gate presidential candidates numerous times simply because they know that candidate will bring in huge amounts of money to the party.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see key stakeholders simply pick up their carpetbags and move on once they finally pound the last nail in the party of Lincoln. Loyalty means nothing to people like Rove and I’m beginning to believe that elections don’t mean anything either. They are principally interested in tapping into the next BIG OUTRAGE so they can keep money flowing into their pockets.
Their a lot like Goldman Sachs in that way.
fucen tarmal
pa 12 isn’t really pittsburgh, its a mess, but only touches into allegheny county.
however, i wish there were lots of yinzer granny’s here that looked like pelosi, those would be some serious gilfs.
Mike in NC
Purity, baby, purity!
Whenever I see some wingnut pen a Letter to the Editor, it usually includes the obligatory slam against Democrats in Congress, like “the Reid/Pelosi/Frank agenda”, since they can’t resist a bit of misogyny and anti-gay hysteria. Probably something picked up from Limbaugh or Beck.
ThatPirateGuy
So what happens to the country when we keep control of the house and senate?
Will all of us have to grab a mop to clean-up the mess left by exploding wingnut heads?
geg6
@Randy P:
Oh my, yes. Yinzers are born and bred Pittsburghers, usually of a European ethnic background (though there are definitely African American Yinzers), who almost always let their Pittsburghese dialect and accent freak flag fly. It can be Italians, Irish, almost any Eastern European ethnicity you can imagine. You can throw some Greeks and Lebanese in there, too. It’s a designation that all Pittsburghers (including the entire region) embrace as a uniting identity in an area that is usually separated by its neighborhoods and small towns which, in turn, are often identified by ethnicity.
There is much pride in the area today as both parties’ gubernatorial candidates are Yinzers.
dmsilev
@ThatPirateGuy:
No, we buy popcorn futures because we all know that a substantial fraction of the GOP will insist that they would have won if their candidates had just been True Conservatives and that the route out of the wilderness is to nominate Sarah Palin for President in 2012.
dms
slippy
@Hunter Gathers: Thank you verymuch. Not that repeating this to any winger will make them stop clapping harder, but it is of course to my advantage to be informed. I need less alcohol during election season when I know these things.
MikeJ
@dmsilev: ACORN fraud, also too.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ThatPirateGuy: If someone told me that to make the country better I needed to buy a mop to clean up after exploding wingnut heads, I would volunteer to buy extra for those who couldn’t afford them.
dmsilev
On the subject of insane Republican strategies, Amity Shlaes had a column today which accomplished the near-impossible feat of making Jonah Goldberg look insightful by comparison. The subject was how the new Robin Hood film was a tea-party allegory. Two brief excerpts:
Oh, the inanity!
dms
Honus
@toujoursdan: The Virginia thing has been overplayed. For something like 50 years, Virginia has elected governors of the opposite party form the white house. There were three consecutive democratic governors during Reagan/Bush I, and two during Bush II. I didn’t hear any talk of that being some kind of referendum on Bush or Reagan.
And the last election, Deeds, the democrat, ran against Obama, stating he would opt out of any public option. He basically blue-dogged and alienated the base, in a state that handily went for Obama, the first democrat to carry Virginia since LBJ’s 1964 pre-Civil Rights Act landslide. To me (a 40 year resident) that was much more of a bellwhether than McDonnell’s win.
Then there’s the fact that democrats have won the 8 House special elections, and that two democratic incumbent senators were successfully challenged from the left, in swing states- Arkansas and Pa.
What is the evidence of this bug republican resurgence? I know what the polls say, but I’m beginning to believe the meme about land line polls being skewed by their very nature.
A
The guy running here in Virginia for the Glenn Nye seat is using the same Pelosi is evil ads here.
Bob L
@Honus: Haven’t you been listening to the MSM? Spector and Lincoln are Obama’s people! They are the ones that helped propelled Obama to the presidency by watering down or voting against everyone of his initiatives! This clearly shows Obama lost his touch. /snark
Jules
My favorite quote of the night came from Maddow who was interviewing the RNC spokesman.
She said that the RNC has now lost 7, count them, 7 special elections in a row.
He just sat there for a min and then began spewing about Scott Brown.
Hilarious.
I’m sure this is good for John McCain in some way.
slippy
@ThatPirateGuy:
Did Daffy Duck’s head ever actually explode? I mean, his beak was blown clean off his face many many times, but he never seemed to get that he was going to LOSE.
Comrade Dread
Republicans, I think, assume that everyone in America is as passionate about politics as their core partisans. So I think they fall into the trap of using buzzwords they hear in their media in place of actual arguments.
So they scream “Pelosi! Reid! Obama!”
Of course, the general public doesn’t know what these buzzwords mean, so the general response is something like: “Who? Who? And he’s not doing that bad of a job…”
The GOP doesn’t bother to explain the buzzwords because that would take time and the GOP doesn’t particularly want people spending a lot of time looking at governing records and becoming well informed about the issues, because then they’d probably get more responses like mine:
“Well, I’m not really crazy about the Democrats, but then again, they haven’t really ever driven the entire country into the f***ing ground that I can remember, so maybe I’ll try voting for them for a few elections and see if they’re any better.”
Ash Can
@dmsilev: LOL! I wonder how long it’s going to take her to sober up from that bender.
Kirk Spencer
@Hunter Gathers:
You know that the GOP is going to claim Hawaii invalidates all that when their candidate wins on the 22d.
Oh, he’s most certainly going to win. Even though roughly 60% of the total election will be for Democrats, they’ll split between the two Democratic candidates.
And the GOP will crow about it, claiming it as a turnaround and proof that they’re destined to take the House and Senate in November.
jwb
@Comrade Dread: I don’t know. I’m beginning to think that the goopers and might be having some sort of polling problem, because they seem to be fundamentally misreading the voters in these districts. I’m wondering if their sample is skewed too far right or if they are misinterpreting their data. I suppose it’s possible that they know very well where they stand, and they are just putting their best face on it, but really everyone (even TPM) seemed completely blindsided by last night’s result in PA-12, and the NY Times doesn’t want to deal with it so badly that they buried the result deep inside the article on the Senate race.
Elvis Elvisberg
Of course they believe their own BS. That’s how we got, and continue to get, Sarah Palin.
Republicans genuinely believed that the 08 Dem primary was 100% about Democrats saying to themselves, “ohmigod, the chick or the black dude? Chick or black dude?”
So they figured if they picked a chick, they would peel off Democrats who had voted for Clinton in the primaries.
And now, even though Palin is distrusted by 65% or whatever of the population, the GOP nomination is hers if she wants to make the effort (which I doubt, but whatever). Because all they hear are their own cheering voices. All those not-real Americans (not to mention facts) don’t affect their views at all.
LD50
@slippy:
Actually the coolest thing was when his beak got blasted around to the back (or top) of his head. Funny as hell, but it scared the shit out of me when I was a little kid.
Chris Andersen
I suspect the Republicans have made a severe tactical error based on a faulty premise. They saw the polls that said that Americans are pissed. And they saw the demonstrations of angry teabaggers in the news. So they made the (not so) logical conclusion that one was a reflection of the other. The truth is they are two separate phenomena.
Jim in Chicago
As one who loves to stand with the Chicago Fire “Section 8” Barnburners, especially on road trips, I really enjoyed the MLS analogy. I remember a game in Kansas City some years ago when the 60 or so of us were louder than all the rest of the sparsely populated Arrowhead Stadium. Fire won 3-0 too. ;)
Jim in Chicago
@LD50:
I believe that happened to Daffy on account of “pronoun trouble” (one of my favorite Looney Tunes lines). ;D
skippy
i@jwb:
repubbblicans misinterpreting something? gee, d’ya think?
Barbara
Multigeneration family born and bred in Pittsburgh and NEVER heard the word “yinzer” (of course saying “yins” was a beating offense in my house, so who knows).
And Pelosi looks like every other grandmother? Hey, I hope I look like Pelosi when I’m a grandma — but my own grandma? Not so much.
Pa-12 is mostly in the “Pennsyltucky” area of the state and this is simply great news. Even I sometimes fail to understand the political impulses of my home state, but I think the point here is, the personal attacks seem to appeal most to people in states where there is more of a monolithically Republican view of thing, in essence, it’s a southern strategy and however much the middle of Pennsylvania might seem to outsiders like Alabama, I lived in the former and spent a lot of time in the latter, and they really aren’t the same.
Ash Can
@Jim in Chicago: LOL! Your story reminds me of the weekend I met my husband. We were along on a trip of about 120 Blackhawks fans to Toronto to see the Hawks play the Maple Leafs at the old Gardens. We filled up a decent-sized section way the hell up in the cheap seats, and made enough racket to make the (far more sedate) Maple Leaf fans wonder WTF was going on. We made so much racket during the US anthem that the Hawk players lined up on the ice were looking up at our section with looks on their faces like, “Oh God, these guys are everywhere!”
robertdsc
I haz a happy reading that.
Tonal Crow
So where is this story in the MSM?
1. Not on the front page at nytimes.com; Specter and Rand Paul cited instead;
2. Not on the front page at CNN.com; #4 story on the “midterm elections” page below, among other things, Rand Paul;
3. Not on the front page at latimes.com; Sestak, Paul, and Lincoln cited instead.
4. Not on the front page at mcclatchey.com; Sestak cited instead.
5. Not on the front page at c-span.org; only primary elections cited.
What you do want to bet that all of these sites would have front-paged a GOP win?
“Liberal media” indeed.
JZ
@Barbara:
Born and bred and you never heard yinzer? What part of the city did you live in? Over in Greenfield, pretty much everyone called each other a yinzer. I even have one of those circle bumper stickers with YNZ in it. Old timers are the only ones I know who say “yunz” (the Burg version of y’all), but among younger folk yinzer has become very popular. There’s even a literary journal called The New Yinzer.
Oh, and John, Pelosi looks like a yinzer grandma? Ha ha ha.
jwb
@Tonal Crow: Well, to be fair, the MSM had a narrative all ready to run with had the goopers won the race. I think they even had a narrative for a narrow Democratic win. But close to a blow out? They would have to completely rethink their narrative. Can’t have that, and besides the new narrative could not make the corporate overlords happy, so it has to be buried.
Barbara
JZ:
“Among younger people” is the give away. The term “yinzer” wasn’t brought to Pittsburgh by its immigrant population, but was derived from “yins” or “yunz” both of which were used heavily by natives who were not college educated (just stating the facts that were in place at the time I grew up — my parents and aunts and uncles didn’t tolerate the use of any “yins” expresson, ever — it was a good way to provoke them).
To answer your question about where I grew up: What part of Pittsburgh is my family not from (15 or so aunts, uncles grandparents, great aunts and uncles and 30 or more cousines)? Everywhere from Bethel Park and Mount Lebo to Portvue, McKeesport, Turtle Creek, Wall, Forest Hills, Penn Hills, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, Bellevue, Morningside, Allegheny City (it’s what they used to call the Northside), Butler, Oakmont-Verona, Harmarville and even O’Hare Township. I know where Greenfield is: it’s basically a hill somewhere in between Squirrel Hill and Oakland.
“Yins,” like “red up” is derived from German words or expressions, and they became embedded in the regional dialect. “Yinzer” is obviously a badge of assimilation, but it is not “historical” or “traditional,” that’s all.
redoubt
@Hunter Gathers: Record like that? He/she would be cleaning out their locker, down in AA ball, having just been handed their release.
(end baseball metaphor)
humbert dinglepencker
Wow. Yinz are making me homesick. (wipes tear from eye)
Bender
Congratulations, Donks, on electing a Dem who ran against Obamacare and against Cap’n’Tax (and ran for Murtha-style porkporkpork, which a freshman will never be able to deliver), who won by 8% in a 2-to-1 Dem district on the day of a contentious Donk Senate primary that drove Dem turnout way up.
Good luck holding that seat in November!
And the link points out Pelosi is hardly the beloved “grandmotherly figure” (gag — I’d call “spoof” on you for that if you didn’t run the blog) there that your DFH bongwater-guzzling leads you to fantasize that she is: “Just 23 percent viewed her favorably, compared to 63 percent who viewed her unfavorably.” PALOMINO!
Carol
@Bender:
Pelosi just doesn’t look or act scary. She’s that stylish, well-dressed grandma who’s active in civic affairs when she isn’t looking after her grandkids or playing with her cats in the office. She looks and sounds friendly and pleasant and organized.
kay
@Bender:
Well, they did what he told them to do, Bender. Apparently, Nancy Pelosi’s values are their values.
Now that that’s settled, we can move on. Do you have any other questions you’d like to ask voters?
anniecat
Nancy Pelosi absolutely does NOT look like
my grandmother did at 70. Or 60. Or 50!
robuzo
“The hardcore Republicans. . .just miking their own noise.”
I think this is great. Shouldn’t we be thinking of ways of encouraging them to continue to do so?
A republican
The republican
What are you thinking have you finally lost it completely? I’m one of those taxpayers. NOT willing to pay anybodies health insurance so they can go forth and be creative and follow their passion. Let everyone work and pay their fair share. “My passion” is to retire after working over 30 years, paying taxes and social security. But with the present administration, so far it doesn’t look good for me and millions of Americans out there just like me. So don’t be out there talking for me Nancy!