Shenanigans are afoot in Alaska. After last week’s ruling that a list of write-in candidates could be provided to Alaska voters to help them figure out how not to vote for Joe Miller, the Miller-Palinites added over 150 new candidates to the race in the hopes of diluting any votes that would go to Murkowski:
As votes were counted in America’s tumultuous midterm last night, nowhere was there more scope for chaos in the complex counting process than in Alaska, where election supervisors were warning that declaring a winner in the US Senate race may not take a few hours, but perhaps days or even longer.
The problem is the Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski and her exotic name. After losing the Republican primary contest to the Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, she decided to keep running as a “write-in”: her name did not appear on ballots last night but voters were free to write it down anyway.
Officials said that the law gives them 15 days to certify a winner. The last polls suggested that Mr Miller, Ms Murkowski and the Democrat candidate, Scott McAdams, were in a dead heat.
But there is worse: after the courts in Alaska ruled last week that election workers could hand voters a list showing the names of write-in candidates as they enter the voting booths, Miller supporters rushed to register themselves as last-minute runners just to dilute whatever advantage the lists might give to Ms Murkowski. Suddenly there were well over 150 write-in candidates in the race.
Derp.
Spaghetti Lee
Exotic name, Jesus Christ. I find it hard to believe that’s really a thing. She’s part of an Alaskan political dynasty, and she could lose because people don’t know how to spell her name?
Cris
“Exotic name?” Haven’t the Poles been well and duly assimilated into white America?
Cris
I hate to admit this, but the “flooding the list of write-ins” shenanigan was kind of clever.
asiangrrlMN
TOM FUCKING EMMER?
Sorry. Cannot focus on the New Minnesota because I’m so damn angry about the OLD Minnesota.
Violet
The Alaskan elections board has ruled that voters don’t have to spell her name perfectly for the vote to count. So long as the “intent” is clear, the vote will count. So if a voter puts down “Lisa M.” it will count, but if they put “Lisa” it won’t. “Mukowsky” would count, but “Smith” wouldn’t. Or something along those lines.
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe it’s just from hanging out here all night, but I’ve gotten steadily more and more depressed. I know in my head that this is only one election, that the Democrats have been in direr straits before, and that there’s always the future, but goddamn if it doesn’t feel like that.
freelancer
“Our shenanigans are cheeky and fun. They’re shenanigans are cruel and tragic.”
“Which makes them not really shenanigans at all.”
“Evil shenanigans!”
I swear to God I’ll pistol whip the next guy that says ‘shenanigans’!
“Hey Farva what’s the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks? ”
“You mean Shenanigans?”
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Spaghetti Lee
@Cris:
No, really, fuck them. They can’t win fair and square, so they’re resorting to dirty tricks.
Suffern ACE
@Violet: I wonder if Miller found a Lisa Miller or a Lucy Murkowskoy to agree to be a write in candidate.
Cris
I’ve been wondering about that, and it’s good to hear. Voter intent is a perfectly sensible standard, especially when you’re talking about write-ins which are non-machinable. A person has to look at each one, so that person can exercise judgment.
PeakVT
So long as the “intent” is clear, the vote will count.
Stop. You’re bring back bad memories of November 2000.
Calouste
@Suffern ACE:
There is a Lisa M. Somethingoranother on the list.
I agree with the action though. The Supreme Court pretty much changed the rules to benefit Murkowski. Wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t a Murkowski.
Seebach
Apparently “write in” is winning in Alaska, according to MSNBC
sven
When should we worry about P Murray in Washington?
sven
@Calouste: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that “Lizard Man” will be pronounce mur-cow-ski during the recount…
Justin
Write-in 39%, Miller 34%.
It would take a lot of scrawly, unreadable ballots at this point for Murkowski not to beat Miller, I think.
The Dangerman
Oh, to be a Lawyer in Alaska; every single one of those writeins will be challenged, one way or another.
Can someone explain what the fuck is going on in Colorado? MSNBC is saying there was some reporting error but couldn’t illuminate what that error was.
Oh, and I hear it’s a recount for Florida Governor; good fucking times.
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: I guess you can take a little solace in knowing that Emmer is going to fuck those who voted for him just as hard if not harder than those who didn’t. And if Emmer does pull this out, I don’t see how I’ll be able to shop at Target any more, since they will have played a large role in funding Emmer. Which is of course very ironic given the Dayton history and all.
morzer
@Suffern ACE:
They did find a Lisa M Lackey
Violet
@PeakVT:
At this point I just hope that the Alaskan voters can spell something close to “Lisa Murkowski” AND remember to color in the oval next to the line. Because as bad as she is, she’s not Joe Miller and Murkowski winning, especially as a write-in, would be a blow to Sarah Palin. I’d much rather have McAdams win but it looks like that’s not going to happen, so next best would be Murkowski even though she’ll caucus with the GOP.
garage mahal
Completely fucking crushed my Senator, Feingold lost. For the life of me I can’t figure out why, to anyone that had any clue what is at stake in this state. Oh well.
wengler
Shouldn’t Murkowski make her own party after this? I mean she pulled a Lieberman, and even he had his name on the ballot.
Lisa Murkowski is the uber-Lieberman.
suzanne
Exotic name, BWAHAHAHAAAA.
I need a fucking drink.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: No, I won’t take any consolation in that because as much as I hate the stupidity in my state, I don’t want the people to get royally screwed. And, I stopped shopping at Target when the shit first hit the fan about what they were doing.
Goddamn it. I’m in shock. Everyone reassured me Dayton would win. I allowed my own wariness to be allayed somewhat.
The Grand Panjandrum
@The Dangerman: 30 thousand votes in Boulder County were added to the Buck column instead of of the Bennet column. Big fuck up in a close race. I don’t know if it has been corrected or not but that probably means Bennet will win in a squeaker.
Ross Hershberger
I just realized this means we’ve been in our house for a decade. We moved in on election day 2000. The weather sucked for the move, the movers didn’t show up, then everything went downhill from there, for a long time, culminating in Bush Jr.
However bad this gets, we held on to the house and it’s not as bad as 2000.
KC
It’s not fun to lose, and Dems lost fairly big tonight. That said, they still have the Senate and the Presidency. Obama’s really going to have to reassess how he has been doing things though. I know the Democratic circular firing squad is nearly always constant, but truly, the bailouts, the ugliness of HCR’s passage, and his general wanting-to-be-moderator attitude of the last couple years really had a negative impact I think. People I know who voted for him just either were not interested in voting or they voted Republican this time. Nobody seemed to know what he’d accomplished, or they thought he accomplished something bad (HCR). Maybe he needs to get a new communication team together or something?
The party in power was destined to lose with this much unemployment. But I can’t help but feeling the losses did not have to be so bad. Oh well.
curious
so what do the democrats do now? what worthwhile legislation could actually make it through the next congress? if i had my druthers, i’d say forget trying to revive the economy with half-measures and push election reform. use the specious claims of vote fraud to increase transparency, maybe even try for publicly financed campaigns. this is all fantastical, i know, but i figure we could all use a flight of fancy right about now.
Suck It Up!
Hey I didn’t know Rhode Island was voting on a name change.
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/voters-reject-rhode-island-name-change
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: I haven’t stepped in Target since the incident either. I did think I’d go back after the first of the year, but not if fucking Emmer wins. At that point Target is dead to me. No, it’s never worth innocents suffering, but the thing about Emmer is that he’s batshit crazy and is going to leave a scorched earth that will hurt his supporters as much as everyone else. I don’t think his supporters realize what they have done, and if the state house and senate are as bad as they sound, Minnesota is going to be well on its way to joining the South. I have my fingers crossed that there are enough blue voters left to be counted.
Violet
@curious:
The whole Citizens United decision is not popular. People of all political stripes seem to dislike it and want to know who is funding what. I think trying to do something to overturn it or make it irrelevant would be popular.
Here’s an idea: If corporations are people, then they should be limited to political donations of $2,500, or whatever is the limit that people can donate.
Hey look! Alvin Greene got 28% of the vote. Rock on, floor of the crazy.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: I will say that if Emmer wins and his supporters (and, frankly, Horner supporters because he’s pulling 12% of the vote) start bitching when our state collapses, I’m going to tell them to shut the fuck up. I don’t have THAT much compassion.
The only silver lining in my very dark cloud is that my rep (Betty McCollum) won. Oh, and that the Secretary of the State and the State Attorney General remain Democratic. So far.
Still. Tom Fucking Emmer. I weep for my state.
The Dangerman
OK, dumb (perhaps drunk and dumb) Californian here.
WTF did Target do?
FlipYrWhig
@KC: Maybe the economy needs to un-suck first.
The “communication” thing IMHO is vastly overrated. The stimulus helped the economy but not enough, and the Republicans proceeded to shit all over all further attempts to help the economy, knowing that complaining about procedural stuff only sounds wussy. I have a hard time believing that anyone knew very much about what Bush had accomplished besides tax cuts and declarations of war, maybe the Patriot Act. It’s just the mood of the public. Facts and accomplishments don’t really change the mood. They _should_, but I don’t think they do.
The one exception I would carve out is the health care bill. That’s getting phased in so slowly that it deprives Democrats of a sense of tangible victory. (And the constant bellyaching about what it wasn’t didn’t help either, but that was a super-tuned-in phenomenon on blogs and the liberal media, and I don’t think it had much of an effect on the broader public.) But without the slow phase-in it wouldn’t have gotten the beneficial CBO scores that helped it pass muster with reluctant “fiscal conservatives,” and any sudden changeover to a new system would have made people even crazier (especially the old ones), so that may have been the unfortunate price of getting the damn thing passed.
jwb
@curious: My guess is that the Dems counterpunch. I think they need to have two main goals at this point: preserving as much of what they accomplished this term as possible and developing a real plan to address the economic problems. And I think they should draft something to have ready just in case the bottom falls out of the economy next year when all the states start slashing their budgets. (That’s what’s going to make next summer so much fun.) They probably won’t be able to pass a rescue plan, but they need to show they have something ready so they can run on it in 2012.
The Grand Panjandrum
With a Boehner & Co running the House you can pretty much rest assured that DADT will stay on the books. Yes. Nothing like teaching those Democrats a lesson. I can see the bright side already.
I’m very happy that I will soon be moving across the river to VT. After tonight I am even happier. We lost both House seats back to the GOP and Judd Gregg’s seat will remain in GOP hands. They got rid of Carol Shea-Porter one of the stronger progressive voices is Congress. Sheesh. She lost to a guy who wouldn’t explain how he suddenly came up with an additional 350K to fund his campaign. Green Mountain State here I come.
Suck It Up!
@curious:
they should focus on cutting the deficit, spending, and jobs. No, seriously. Whatever the Repubs rode in on, the Dems should make them vote on the lies, er uh, promises that got them elected. OR make them vote on bills that would make the tea party turn against the GOP.
I have a feeling that there will be a power struggle in the GOP. Sarah Palin is already claiming that the establishment is out to git ‘er.
jwb
@The Dangerman: Gave money to fucking Emmer.
TVL
Seriously, how hard is it to spell Murkowski? It’s spelled just like it sounds. Spell checkers were designed for folks like me and I can swing it.
Ross Hershberger
In Target’s defense, I worked for Target Corp when they owned Marshall Field’s. They were a damn good employer and everyone there knew they were working for a stand up outfit. Major charity donation program, decent pay, fair rules, good management. It really made a difference.
After they were criticized for their ill advised advocacy in this election cycle they walked it back in a hurry and admitted the mistake. I still think highly of that company.
The Dangerman
@The Grand Panjandrum:
DADT will go down in the lame duck session.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: Then tried to defend it as an economic policy, not an anti-gay policy. Which is still stupid because Emmer essentially wants to double-down on the W. tactics.
@Ross Hershberger: They did not. They tried to huff and puff and only backed down when the story did not die out. In addition, five out of their six CEOs gave money to Republicans, including Michele Bachmann (per the Strib). They are the ones calling themselves a community store. They sure aren’t acting like it.
Suck It Up!
@The Dangerman:
they donated to Emmer’s campaign and he’s a vocal anti-gay candidate. Target was reaching out to the gay community while supporting the very people that try to keep them down.
jwb
@Suck It Up!: Palin may well be right—though I think she will ultimately be bought off rather than purged. She can still be helpful in putting the teatard genie back in the bottle. Whether she will—that’s another question. And if she doesn’t—that’s an interesting problem. I don’t know whether her overlords still have the power to cut her off. But I doubt she is smart enough to be able to make it a play for the teatards on her own.
Hamilton-Lovecraft
I gesticulate with my middle finger at Carolyn Lochhead, whose article tonight in the SF Chronicle leads off with voters “toppling Nancy Pelosi from power”, fails to mention she’s winning her district by a landslide, and blames her “sinking” on Obama’s “plummeting popularity” – plummeting all the way up to a 47% approval rating last month according to Rasmussen.
Push that narrative, whores.
Violet
@TVL:
Check out the t-shirt on the kid next to Murkowski. Clever way to help people remember how to spell her name. Well, almost, sorta.
DPirate
I tried to vote Mur mur umm
But they said I made a writein for Wojo
The Dangerman
I think a lot of stuff will get rammed through this lame duck session; DADT elimination, middle class tax cuts as a separate package, etc.
The holdup were the Blue Dogs and they were routed tonight.
FlipYrWhig
@curious:
No one is going to even attempt “worthwhile legislation.” It’ll be stuff like attempting to end birthright citizenship, cracking down on immigrants, and prohibiting sharia law. Purely symbolic culture-wars stuff, with a smattering of tax cuts. And when the Senate doesn’t pass ’em (except the tax cuts) the Fox News people will explode in rage. Then some governor from the South, like Haley Barbour or Rick Perry, will run for president on changing the tone in Washington because the Obama era has been just too divisive.
Suck It Up!
@TVL:
I have a very simple and common first and last name and people spell it (and mispronounce it) wrong all the time. I can see people having difficulty with Murkowski.
jwb
@Ross Hershberger: They barely walked it back and did nothing in terms of restitution. They now have a policy in place, it’s true, that should keep it from happening again. But let’s just say that I won’t be surprised when I learn that Target has continued to donate to political causes but just managed to hide the money better. I really don’t trust the CEO. If Emmer is not elected, I’ll end my boycott with the new year. If he wins, nope, no longer.
RalfW
And Minnesota is the new Ohio. Careening red tonight. I’m very, very, very despondent. The national picture was as I expected, but as I finally just go to bed because there’s no real news for about 4 more hours, it’s looking fucking awful here.
We may not get our assess handed to us, but it’s painfully close and could well be brutal in the morning.
FUCK.
I thought we’d be an island of sanity (with one major exception in the 6th). That our state house and senate would hold with minor losses. That Dayton would win by 4 or 5 points.
Eghad.
Lowkey
@Suck It Up!: Here here. The first two things on the docket for the 112th will be the entirety of the deficit-busting, zero-offset tax cuts for the rich, in close proximity to TARP 2, in whatever form letting Wall Street off the hook again takes.
The Tea Party Caucus’s votes on these issues will dynamite the GOP block, either way.
Ross Hershberger
@asiangrrlMN:
Well yes. That’s messed up. I’m disappointed. They seemed better than that but now they’re acting like another big business.
NR
Are you listening, Obama? This is what “bipartisanship” means to these people.
curious
@Violet: why isn’t there a dollar limit? could that be an end run around citizens united? (i really don’t know much about the decision apart from the lack of required disclosure.)
asiangrrlMN
Dayton back up to a 1.1% margin. Oh god. It better not be another Franken/Coleman debacle.
.9%. I’mma just gonna think, roughly 1% until it jumps either way. This is taking years off my life.
Suffern ACE
@Suck It Up!: Its more likely that they will be sending legislation to make him unpopular than the other way around. So it will be a “balanced budget” without any money for the Department of Education or Immigration Reform so outrageous that he couldn’t sign it, or things that appear popular in the minds of people, like “Tax Free Year”.
jwb
@Ross Hershberger: Yes, well, and the irony is that Target was created by Dayton-Hudson. Yes, that’s where Mark Dayton gets his name, and I imagine that the Dayton family still owns a good chunk of Target stock.
KC
Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see what Obama does. Will he dig in his heels like Bush after 2006 or take a different tack? What is he willing to do to defend HCR? And, will he work on getting base support for his actions? We’ll know the answers soon enough, I guess.
curious
@jwb: i don’t know. it seems like people have soured on any stimulus-like plans but at the same time punish the democrats for not personally mailing each voter a job offer and a signing bonus.
Triassic Sands
@Cris:
In this country, we’d be better off if chimps were doing the counting. An Amurkin with discretion is not a pretty thing to see.
The American people are fickle and stupid. There is no coherent message in these outcomes. The results are little more that a huge collective whine by a bunch of uninformed fools. If they hate Obama, it’s for the wrong reasons (e.g., he’s too liberal), if they hate legislation, they either don’t know who passed it (bank bailout) or don’t understand it (health care). Trying to find a coherent message in these returns is like trying to find a specific needle in a needle stack — wait, no it’s not. In that case, the needle would be there, it would just take time and patience to find it. In this case, the message makes no more sense than a toddler on hallucinogens.
As a group, the American people just want a free lunch.
curious
@Suck It Up!: first let’s see if they can manage to push through the middle-class tax cuts. i am still astonished at how royally that seemingly small feat has been screwed up.
joel hanes
Extreme-right blurter IA Rep. Steve King (R-ightmost wing) will become the ranking member on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International law.
The subcommittee has jurisdiction over immigration and naturalization, border security and admission of refugees.
He and Michelle Bachmannn have much in common.
His 5th district comprises roughly the west-south-western quarter of the state of Iowa (three counties wide at the Minnesota border and five counties wide at the Missouri border).
FlipYrWhig
@Suck It Up!:
I think this is a good idea — keep proposing good stuff, let the Republicans fuck it up or ignore it, and keep raising a stink about how the Republicans _say_ that they’re all for boosting the economy, but why won’t they do ___? I don’t know how well it will work, considering that even things like extending unemployment benefits were getting bottled up this time without doing too much damage to Republicans… but it’s a good thought.
asiangrrlMN
Crap. Anything less than a 1% margin triggers an automatic recount in MN. Well, that’s as it should be, I suppose.
NR
@Triassic Sands:
Yes. There are a lot of stupid people in this country. Which is why we can’t afford to alienate the smart ones with Republican-lite policies.
Ross Hershberger
@jwb:
Hudson’s of Dayton-Hudson was a Detroit company. The Marshall Field’s that I worked for was once the #2 Hudson’s store. We miss them. It’s a freaking Macy’s now after FedMay bought M-F from Target.
At the flagship Dayton’s store in Mpls was a woman who had worked there for 85 years when she retired. She started when she was 17 and retired at 102, IIRC.
jwb
@curious: I don’t think the Dems will be able to pass anything—and the fact that they know they won’t be able to may make it possible for them to put a good plan together to use as campaign bait. The point would be for them to be able to say two years hence, when unemployment is at 15% or higher, look, we have a plan, we want to implement it, but we can’t without a majority. Maybe that’s a dumb idea, I don’t know. But I am pretty sure that the economy is going to tank this summer, because the stimulus has run out and the states are going to be in a position of needing to make very, very severe cuts. In 2012, people are going to be concerned about our double-dip Depression and what politicians are going to do about it.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
Why don’t you think he fucking well knows that? And yet if you ask the voting public if they want to see “bipartisanship,” they say “yes,” overwhelmingly. We’ve been over this. Complaining about “bipartisanship” is like complaining about how presidents say “God bless America” at the end of speeches. It’s annoying to us but it’s what the rest of the people like to hear.
JGabriel
Spaghetti Lee:
We’re talking about a state where 37% of the mortgage contracts are in doubt because people signed them with an X.*
*Completely fabricated gratuitous statistical swipe at Alaska.
+6
.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Dude, the smart ones ain’t never gonna be no majority. You have to peel off some number of the dumb ones.
Calliope Jane
@joel hanes: Shit. I really, really hate that guy. I especially loved him complaining about the government spending money on flood recovery in LA when his state has had floods, what, every other year lately? I’m sure he’s the first to block the federal spending when it comes to his state.
On the other hand, way to keep alienating Latino voters, GOP, so thanks for that, at least.
curious
@FlipYrWhig: i could easily see this happening. we’ll probably hear much more about these useless fringe bills than we did about anything pelosi managed to pass and then watch wither on the vine, thanks to the republicans’ media savvy and the lure of punditing without having to read anything.
Ash Can
Well, it’s been a good two years. Now the federal government is going to be paralyzed for at least the next two years. Oh well.
I wonder how many Joe-in-the-street voters are going to start saying, “Hey, how come the government stopped doing stuff? I thought this brand new hot-shot Republican guy I voted for was going to fix everything!”
SectarianSofa
@Triassic Sands:
You have summed it up exactly. Thanks.
I can now go to sleep.
People, cheer up — America sucked before and it will suck again. We will survive. Get the coffee and the staple guns ready for the morning, and scotch tape yourselves back together. They have their ‘victory,’ but it is as mute, moot, and useless as the incoherent protests that gave it speed. We can collect our sanity together, in the tidal basin of this interweb, and smosh foolishly forward in our mud boots, still less foolishly than some.
asiangrrlMN
You know, I didn’t start to closely follow politics until the 2008 Silly Season. Someone tell me why I should bother when I pretty much will be voting straight Dem for the rest of my fucking life.
Steve
@FlipYrWhig: Really? An overwhelming majority of voters likes to hear “bipartisanship”? Is that why, both before and after the election results, Republicans boasted far and wide about how their only goal was to block Obama and cause him to fail, and the voters rewarded them?
Yes, when people are asked the poll question of whether they like bipartisanship they say they do. But at some point you have to start looking a little deeper.
Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
I disagree, but from a different standpoint.
I’m of the opinion that the main pushback both from the tea partiers and from the firebaggers is that the volume and nature of the legislation that was passed was overly complex for people to understand.
Most people don’t understand credit default swaps and how the investment banks work. They don’t understand why there aren’t just regional banks that are small enough to fail, and they don’t understand why they needed to be bailed out. They don’t understand ACA and how the mandate and various bits will work, and how it’ll affect programs like Medicare. There are too many moving parts, too much dependence on secondary effects to make things work and so on. People don’t understand the costs of just stopping foreclosures. They don’t understand the costs of the public option (yes, there are costs).
Now, a lot of these aren’t issues created by Obama, but they’re problems now, and rather than put out some 5 page bill (shorter than the Constitution) that would sell well and do nothing because it’d contain a million loopholes, Democrats put out a very comprehensive bill that shoves the system in a thousand different ways. It’s got a lot of moving parts because thanks to data mining, and electronics record tracking, and advanced actuarial models, the health care system has become a very complex system and it needs complex legislation. It’s a lot easier for people to say ‘no, I don’t trust you, and I’m not patient enough to listen to you explain all that to me’ or ‘no, I can’t make sense of all of that, just give me a public option or single payer and I’ll pretend all of those secondary effects don’t exist’.
I think Democrats out-wonked the country. Now, that’s fine by me, because I think we got some real benefits from all that legislation that we wouldn’t have gotten from ‘simpler’ legislation, but it meant that while the Democrats were talking about how Medicare would cover physicians talking about living wills with patients, Republicans were instead screaming ‘death panels’.
I think a lot of these other divisions fall along the same lines. Global climate change is complicated to understand. So is evolution. And talking about stimulus efforts that create incentives to shift assets from the financial economy to the labor economy, either through taxation or direct spending, is a lot harder to understand than ‘tax cuts!’.
Now, the good news for Dems is that I expect that zero legislation will pass for the next 2 years. That should give them plenty of time to talk about all the shit they already passed that people still don’t understand, and to steadily simplify their message on the way to 2012.
And California bucks the trend on the economy, btw. We might hold every Democratic House seat in CA, we held the Senate, we flipped the governor from R to D, and we passed a number of progressive initiatives. And we’ve got the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the country and some of the worst state budget problems. The economy here sucks. Imperial county has a 30% unemployment rate – and they voted Dem. 60/40. If you look in the midwest and mountain west, they have <5% unemployment and they flipped a lot of seats to GOP.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Yep. It’s pretty much a completely meaningless phrase. It was supposed to be, “See, we were nice and talked to the Republicans, and they refused to cooperate, so we’re going to move ahead with our plan.” Unfortunately, people on the left are so fucking worked up about every goddamn thing that they went ballistic at the mere hint that Democrats actually spoke to Republicans instead of snubbing them in the hallways and shouting them down on the floor of the House. So what should have been a soothing phrase to independent voters that made the Democrats look like the nice, reasonable party became a huge fucking point of contention.
Martin
@asiangrrlMN: Dayton should win. Most of the remaining ballots are in St. Louis county which he’s winning 62/28.
Mnemosyne
@Martin:
I would be very curious to see someone track the correlation between unemployment rates and who won the election. I would suspect that the areas with lower unemployment were more likely to go Republican, in that IGMFY way.
curious
@jwb: the republican advantage is that they will shamelessly and vociferously offer a counterplan that seems to make sense–spending freeze!–but only adds up in bizarro world and the aei break room. and people will lunge at the mirage of another free lunch.
Cain
Well guys, look at the bright side.. we’re going to be again one big happy family as we start bringing the snark for the next two years against these bozos. And you know they are going ot make fools of themselves.
cain
ruemara
@NR:
Again, Fuck Off.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: And yet the Republicans just won a massive electoral victory without promising bipartisanship, or taking anything “off the table.” So maybe bipartisanship isn’t as important to the American people as a lot of people think it is.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I really don’t think you understand the dynamic here: the Republicans are the assholes. The mean girls. They don’t have to say anything about bipartisanship because that’s not their role.
Look at Kentucky where the Democrat just lost to a curb-stomper because people thought that he was too mean when he ran a commercial mocking Paul for his “aqua Buddha” moment in college. That was beyond the pale of meanness, as compared to the guy who had his campaign volunteers roughing up MoveOn activists.
Democrats are held to a different standard than Republicans are. That’s why Alan Grayson lost — it’s okay for a Republican to be a sneering asshole and call his opponent an al-Qaeda sympathizer, but a Democrat will get punished for calling his opponent “Taliban Dan.” It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
And if that’s what it had turned out to be, nobody would have had a problem with it. But it wasn’t. On issue after issue, Obama capitulated to the Republicans, co-opting and endorsing their policies while getting nothing in return. Prime example: The stimulus. Obama was riding high in the polls, the honeymoon was still on, and right off the bat he proposed a plan that his own advisers admitted was too small, and weighted it with useless tax cuts to appease Republicans – who had no intention of voting for it anyway.
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: Should being the operative word. You are right that more blue counties have not reported in completely than right counties, but still. We’re weird.
@Martin: Yes. We do. Random pockets of intense redness. Plus, we have not had a Democratic governor since 1993. Sigh.
NR
@ruemara: No.
Martin
@asiangrrlMN: Well, yeah, you guys do have some history there…
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Then they realized that and changed their tactics on FinReg by making the proposed legislation more progressive than the one the Republicans rejected.
And what happened? Russ fucking Feingold voted with the Republicans to uphold cloture and prevent the legislation from coming to the floor because it wasn’t progressive enough for his delicate constitution. It was only by peeling off a couple of Republicans that cloture was overcome and the legislation was passed.
So, yes, Feingold actually caused legislation to be made less progressive by insisting it wasn’t progressive enough. Great job there, Russ. Glad you got your ass beat.
The Democrats learned and changed, but by that point your Betrayed! narrative was so far up your ass that you didn’t even recognize it.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Again: The people care about results. You only have to look at tonight’s election results to know that the voters do not give a shit that Obama and the Democrats tried to be bipartisan over the last two years. They do give a shit that the watered-down policies they enacted as a result of those attempts at bipartisanship were woefully inadequate at addressing the problems the country is facing.
Really, do you think one single voter yesterday said to himself “Well, I’ve been unemployed for the last 15 months, but I’m going to vote Democratic because they’ve been so gosh darned bipartisan this entire time! After all, that’s what I really care about!”
Pass good policy. Make people’s lives better. They won’t care how you did it.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
On average, the parts of the country with the highest unemployment rate voted for Democrats. The parts with the lowest unemployment rate voted for Republicans.
Check it out. Election map here (click on “US House”), unemployment rates here.
In retrospect, the auto bailout was a horrible political mistake on Obama’s part, because it got Michigan back on its feet just enough to decide it didn’t need any stinkin’ Democrats.
asiangrrlMN
@Mnemosyne: This actually was part of the problem. We were not thrown into a Great Depression so people could not see just how horrible it would have gotten had Obama not taken the actions he had so far. The Democrats were governing with policy in mind, not politics, which is why they are losing. Fucking sucks.
SiubhanDuinne
If they thought they might not be able to remember how to spell “Lisa Murkowski,” why not just write it on a fucking piece of paper and take it into the voting booth as a kind of arctic aide-memoire? Are Alaska voters stupid, or . . . . ? Oh, wait.
pattonbt
I am beginning to actually think it was bad the D’s didn’t lose the Senate as well. The Senate already was useless (for the most part) and will continue to be so. But as it is “controlled” so to speak by a D majority, the “blame” for the lameness of the next two years will still be on D’s. Because I guarantee that the R’s in the House will just do what they have been doing (nothing and pointing fingers and being all shouty) and the Senate will be gridlocked. See, all still D’s fault.
At least with an R House and R Senate Obama could have acted as a foil to the doubled-up crazy. But as it stands now, the D’s may be in the worst possible position for 2012 (although I will keep my bet that if the economy is OK, not great, just OK, by 2012, Obama wins in a cakewalk).
Suck It Up!
@Suffern ACE:
have to get pass the senate first.
Suck It Up!
@NR:
Uhm they will vote Democratic ’cause Dems are the only ones that have done things like pass unemployment extensions. Last night I got an email from the 99ers “union” saying to vote Democratic because they are the only ones who would take steps to help them.
So uhm, there ya go.
FlipYrWhig
@Steve:
Voters didn’t reward Republicans for boasting about blocking Obama. They voted for Republicans with the hope that Republicans and Democrats could get together to get something done. They weren’t listening to the braggadocio about being even bigger obstructionists. Yes, it’s stupid, totally stupid.
But that’s clearly what people say they want. Because, as I said in the other thread to NR, after which point he or she still came here to say the same thing yet again, “bipartisanship” in many people’s minds means getting past “politics” to find common ground and solve problems, and when problems aren’t being solved, a lack of “bipartisanship” is a tempting explanation.
In other words, I think that, yes, there are a lot of people who believe–as unfathomable as it is to Democrats, especially progressive/liberal/left ones–that the Democrats even with a majority couldn’t pass things because they _refused_ to find common ground with Republicans, refused to meet them in the middle. Because that’s the vision they have of how politics works: some people are Democrats, some are Republicans, and you meet somewhere in the middle. In _their_ minds, a lack of results proves intransigent, hyperpartisan _Democrats_, who, paradoxically, _deserve_ to be thwarted by Republicans, because they “ram things through” and “run roughshod” and all that.
cckids
@Suck It Up!:
To top that, I share a surname with Bill Clinton and people regularly ask me how to spell it. Did it even while he was Pres. People are dumb.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
As I said the last time, in the prevailing lingo, “bipartisan” _means_ “got results.” If the Democrats didn’t get results, it was probably because they weren’t open to Republican ideas, i.e., they weren’t “bipartisan” enough. How many times have you heard the complaint about Democrats “ramming things through” and “shoving things down our throats”? That’s what “bipartisan” connotes, a political situation where ramming and shoving don’t happen, where people from both sides come together… to get results.
And, also, once again, the reason why policies have been “watered down” has much less to do with Republicans — who have voted for virtually nothing — and MUCH MORE to do with CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS, who think the way Republicans think, only slightly less xenophobically. Conservative Democrats are the reason why mainstream-to-liberal Democratic ideas get reeled in and rolled back. Because without their support, nothing fucking well gets passed, at all. It’s not hard to understand. Really. It isn’t. Try it.
morzer
@SiubhanDuinne:
I imagine that, given how the great state of Alaska has lacerated its electoral law to help Murkowski, voters could probably write “daddy’s girl” or “thingummy you know who I mean” or “Lisa somebody” and it would count as a vote for her. Indeed, for all I know, an incoherent belch at the right time might well do the trick.
Triassic Sands
If you’re actually glad Feingold lost because of that single vote, then I feel sorry for you. I haven’t agreed with Feingold down the line, but he is a person who deserves to hold elective office. I can’t say that about many Democrats (and zero Republicans).
The Senate will be a poorer place without Feingold, whereas it would have been a much, much better place without Harry Reid — I’m assuming, with good reason I think, that Angle would have been wholly ineffective as a senator. She would have “one-termer” written all over her. Now, we have Reid, a spineless POS back at the helm, and Feingold, an intelligent, principled senator tossed out. A sad day.
Restrung
If this isn’t the Onion, it must be the Strib–
Horner ready to support winner
Scott P.
This would actually be funny if the people that Miller added to the write-in list had names like Bob Mientkiewiecz, Sara Maciejewski, Larry Michalski, Fred Merkin, etc.
Don_in_Cda
Um… what’s the cost for registering as a candidate in Alaska? If there is one, who paid? And what are their laws governing that? Anyone?
Sad that what is essentially a dirty trick, eroding the integrity of the process, is nowadays thought of as just part of the process…
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
As much as I detest Cokie Roberts, she (and George Will) made an interesting point on This Week. Americans say they want bipartisanship and progress in government but by their actions (who they vote for), they show that they don’t. Will said something about gridlock being a deliberate part of the political design. At some point even the GOP will realize that the rest of the world will not hold off on making investments in infrastructure and education while the uS cuts back on those very things. I think Fareed Zakaria’s CEO interviews should give everyone pause – the very things that were identified as being a priority for the US to maintain its advantage in the world (education, infrastructure investment) are the things that are likely to be gutted by the Republicans.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@NR: Oh please. Step off.
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@NR: The American people voted in a group that will likely make things worse for the economy and unemployment because they were hurt that Obama tried to act in a bipartisan fashion? I guess you’ll be supporting Alan Grayson for president in 2012. He sure convinced everyone that a Democratic candidate proclaiming an unwillingness to compromise is a big winner with the electorate and was reelected in a landslide.
FlipYrWhig
@Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people): To be fair, NR’s idea isn’t completely implausible, if you imagine people who wanted stronger better policy being miffed and not turning out (those are the ones irked by concern for bipartisanship). My thing is, I know no one thinks “bipartisanship” is a make-or-break single issue. Far from it. But the kinds of people who say they want to see bipartisanship mean by that that they want to see something getting done. So the two points are linked. Everyone in the general public obviously wants better, more effective policy; unfortunately, mainstream and conservative Democrats have contradictory views on what makes for good policy, and Republicans don’t give a rat’s ass about policy in the slightest anymore.
asiangrrlMN
@Restrung: Yeah. I read that this morning and actually said out loud, “Fuck you with a very rusty pitchfork, Horner, and shut your fucking mouth.” I am not in a good mood this morning.
John
@Violet:
You’d have voted for DeMint?
Todd Dugdale
@asiangrrlMN: Horner is now going to become completely irrelevant. He stands for nothing.
I think it’s hilarious that the MN Republicans are screaming about voter fraud. They had a small army of poll watchers this election, many of which were admonished for going too far. On top of that, Pawlenty vetoed the election system reforms that were crafted in response to the 2008 Senate recount.
Frankly, what doesn’t pass the “smell test” is that Emmer did better than even the most Republican pollsters predicted. It may be that investigations backfire on Emmer. And if Democrats engaged in massive voter fraud, it would seem that they did a piss-poor job of it: losing the State House and Senate and Eighth District. If there really was a vast conspiracy and network of fraudulent voters, then how did the Democrats lose so much?