Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Nothing worth doing is easy.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

This fight is for everything.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2012 / Barber Wins

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70Comments

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    That’s one of the few sane congressional districts in AZ.

    Don’t forget that the vile spawn of Dan and Marilyn Quayle got elected to a different congressional district two years ago.

  3. 3.

    JCT

    Well, after spending most of my life in CA and NY it was certainly fun to have my vote really be meaningful for once.

    It was interesting — at the last minute a bunch of small signs that repeated Jesse the Asshole’s comments about Social Security and Medicaid popped up all over town. Although many of us voted early, I’ll bet they gave some folks pause on the way to the polls.

    Kelly was reduced to hanging banners on his existing signs that said “Cheaper Gas Prices” and “Use American Energy”. Kind of amusing.

  4. 4.

    lacp

    And here I was so sure that Walker’s win in Wisconsin had left DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY!!! Shut my mouth.

  6. 6.

    Waynski

    The district has been redrawn, so we may not hold it in the fall. Nevertheless, good news.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The WaPo comments are interesting. More than a few have pointed out that because the Democrat won, the media spin is the race isn’t that important a barometer of general election in November. Now, if the Rethug won, the media would be unable to stop talking about how important a sign this was, particularly Faux Nooze.

  8. 8.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    @amk:

    So I guess AZ is ‘in play’ now in Nov ?

    It should be, in a turnabout is fair play world, “in play” as much as NC is no longer in play because a single poll says that 20 percent of AA;s are going to vote for Romney. And that the Easter Bunny is really a communist stooge puppet rodent sucking our precious bodily fluids. And from that same poll, noting that Obama only leads by one now, in NC, so is obviously going to lose.

  9. 9.

    Rhoda

    He won in large part by hammering the vouchercare vote and promising to protect social security. Paul Ryan is a godsend to the democrats, that budget is dead simple to run against even with that citzens united cash advantage.

  10. 10.

    Steve

    I don’t see why AZ couldn’t be competitive. It probably would have been in play in 2008 if it wasn’t McCain’s home state.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Stuck in the Funhouse:

    The horse race narrative MUST be maintained, at all costs, as we go into November. So any “bad” news for Obama must be trumpeted across the land by the largest media megaphone available.

    The narrative is sacred. Our phony-baloney jobs on network and cable news depend on it!

  12. 12.

    amk

    Applications for new internet address endings that include .sex, .pizza and .news are now available.

    .pizza ? How much more american centric teh internet gods can get ?

  14. 14.

    Hill Dweller

    @Villago Delenda Est: Wanting a horse race is certainly part of it, but the media sat by while Republicans did stuff no one has ever seen before.

    I nearly fell out of my chair when Chris Hayes and Ezra Klein(who was guest hosting for Maddow) both agreed the media had normalized the Republicans nihilism.

  15. 15.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    OT

    Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) on Tuesday said members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are working closely to develop legislation aimed at reducing the incidence of security leaks, and said he has several questions about the contacts Obama administration officials have had with various media outlets, and whether those contacts led to the leaks.

    Stunning!! Stop the presses, Gracie. Somebody contacted the media for a classified leak. We can’t have the government talking to the press in the Constitution Room.

    Somebody find Judith Miller, stat!!

  20. 20.

    Jennifer

    Wingnuttia also didn’t fare so well in North Dakota initiative voting. The one the Norquist drones put on the ballot to get rid of ALL local taxes, in which they spent something like 130 times what the opposition spent, went down by over 3 – 1. The “let the churches decide your reproductive choices” amendment went down by over 2 to 1.

    Maybe when they throw so much money at something that people just get so goddamned sick and tired of seeing/hearing the ads it backfires. Or maybe it’s just that most voters are still nominally sentient enough to know a really shitty idea when they hear one, no matter how much money is spent trying to convince them that it’s really a good idea.

  23. 23.

    cmorenc

    @Waynski:

    The district has been redrawn, so we may not hold it in the fall. Nevertheless, good news.

    Actually, the redrawn district is slightly more +D in composition than formerly, making it incrementally more, not less favorable to holding it in the fall. To the extent there’s any downside, in a state with a Republican-majority legislature doing the redistricting, some districts will be deliberately redrawn with an increased Democratic-leaning composition in order to decrease the number of Democratic-leaning voters in one or several other districts. For hypothetical example, if a given state has three competitive districts of which the Ds more often than not win one, the Rs more often than not win a second, and there’s a third which tends to frequently shift back and forth every two to four years, the party in control will see it as a good bargain to shift lines to create one safe district for the other party and two safe districts for their own party.

  24. 24.

    Culture of Truth

    I was told yesterday this race was a national test of whether Dems or GOP were more popular. The Democrat won, therefore this is no longer applicable.

  25. 25.

    Schlemizel

    @Waynski:
    Actually his new district is bluer than the old one so he stands an excellent chance! The 2-time loser for the GOP is registered to run again but said this morning he is going to take some time to think about it. To quote Monty Python’s “Upper-middle class twit of the year”
    The boy doesn’t know when he is beaten – of course he doesn’t know when he is winning either, he has no external sensory perception at all!”

    I do think it is silly they had this election less than 5 months from the actual election, seems a waste of time & effort.

  26. 26.

    Mark B

    @cmorenc: Right, that’s how you minimize the number of democrats in the congressional delegation, by packing as many democrats as you can into fewer districts. It ends up making safe seats, but fewer of them. If you go too far with the game, you can end up creating swing seats in republican-leaning areas as demographics change, which is a real possibility in Arizona if Hispanics get out and vote.

    It’s a moral hazard created by making the parties who benefit from redistricting be the ones who are in control of it. In essence, redistricting becomes a game where the party in power screws the party that is not.

    And it’s perfectly legal, so long as it’s not done with the intent to disenfranchise racial or ethnic groups.

  27. 27.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    More pearl clutching from anonymous Dem operatives. uuuuuuh!!

    “The bad thing is, there is no new thinking in that circle,” said one longtime operative in Democratic presidential campaigns who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

    Eight other prominent Democratic strategists interviewed shared that view, describing Obama’s team as resistant to advice and assistance from those who are not part of its core. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity as well.

    I would bet the ranch all of them were former Clinton folks. Or, maybe Mark Penn called in 9 times, disguising his voice each time. Obama is running not only against Romney and the republicans, but also a gaggle of chickenshit internet ghosts with one kind of butthurt or another. And then there is the MSM, publishing this drek, like Gawker on acid. This is why I call it The Funhouse.

  30. 30.

    Culture of Truth

    Obama’s team as resistant to advice and assistance

    They didn’t hire you to fuck up his campaign. So sad.

  34. 34.

    jon

    I was proud to vote for Ron Barber, even if I only know him from the opposition that came from Citizens United and really poor push polling. I found out his proposals could cost Arizona over 40,000 jobs, and I told the push poller that I hoped most of those jobs lost were to those with shitty math skills. I was told he supported cutting over $500B from Medicare, and I said that was a good thing because old people deserved to die because they’re mostly conservatives. The poor guy couldn’t even pronounce “Giffords”, so I imagine he must have been some out-of-state stooge working a phone bank.

    I was also proud of my mother, whom I took to the polling place as she just got a knee replacement. She couldn’t get her ballot in the machine, but discovered that this was because she had been given two ballots. She handed the extra one back to the poll workers, so the grand total of election fraud incidences for the special election is Negative One.

  36. 36.

    Piratedan

    aye, we had a nice running conversation on this race on last night’s election thread…. happy Ron has won (he looks like the Burl Ives snowman character when Santa Claus Comes To Town) and its unknown if he’s gonna be a seat warmer for Gabby or if she’ll run again soon. Every indication shows that if she continues to recover, she may very well have McCain’s seat targeted. Have every hope that Carmona will take down whoever is on the R side because as much as we all deride Senator Maverick around here, he occaisionally has a good impulse (i.e. his work on campaign finance fairness which Citizens United made moot). That can’t be said for John Kyl who has all of the appeal of a Disney villian.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @Steve:

    From what some AZ commenters have said, there are a LOT of Mormons in Arizona who are chomping at the bit to vote for Romney. Some of the polling looks good for Obama, but the Mormon vote could overcome that.

  41. 41.

    jon

    @Schlemizel: I thought of running on that very platform: “I’m a Democrat and want to serve you for five months during which the Republican-controlled House will accomplish nothing of note. Really, I’m just going to go there so the Giffords staff can keep doing a good job helping the people of the district and because I like the Smithsonian and the idea of having my personal ads perused on Morning Joe. Vote for me and I promise to give a speech to an empty House on subjects ranging from straw bale construction, whether Mister Rogers should replace Washington on the one-dollar bill, and other important subjects. I’m me and I approve this message.” But since Barber was going to do most of that anyway and already knew the staff, I didn’t bother.

  44. 44.

    Cap'n Magic

    And naturally, the authors of “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” – Ornstein on the Right from AEI, and Thomas Mann on the Left from the Brookings Institute, say that a third party isn’t the answer. What’s the matter, guys, scared that you may lose your power and prestige?

    Gee, didja maybe think that YOU are the problem instead of looking eveywhere else? Yes, you toadies being paid a healthy salary AND health insurance to engage in mental masturbation for your masters while everyone else you don’t see is losing? Or are both of you (and your media Quislings) really some kind of stealth Social Darwinistic Objectivists masquerading as a Democrat and Republican?

  46. 46.

    kindness

    I was shocked (I know I shouldn’t have been) to see Barber’s challenger out there with ads running with him using an M-16 (could have been an M-15, I don’t know) saying this is how he was going to work with Congress.

    WTF is it with folks in the South West anyhow? Is it all the old nuke tests in the desert got into the water or something?

  47. 47.

    catclub

    @Hill Dweller: “normalized the Republicans nihilism.”

    Nihilism is too arcane. Hostage taking, destructive, sabotage.

    When the sabotage line takes hold I will be a believer.
    Nihilism is more like thespian.

  48. 48.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Egg Berry:

    I wish just once one of these people would have the courage to use their name.

    Lanny Davis don’t play that game.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @kindness:

    AR-15, the civilianized version of the M-16.

    This guy is an Iraq war vet, he ought to know the difference.

  50. 50.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    @kindness:

    Don’t think they ‘nuke tested’ in AZ, though they did next door in NM. And the radiation turned us all into Earth Mother worshiping potheads. Though I suspect some of that was due to frequent alien visit experiments.

    They did test nukes in NV, and that state is at least a swing one. Then there is Texas, with whatever special insanity they possess.

  51. 51.

    Culture of Truth

    The NYT is liveblogging Jamie Dimon’s testimony.

    The committee chairman, Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, has called for the sergeant-at-arms to escort the apparently undeterred heckler out of the chamber. The unidentified man continued his tirade by shouting that bankers were “predators on American taxpayer money.”

  53. 53.

    Culture of Truth

    NYT:

    As Mr. Dimon sits down, there are already cries from the crowd. Someone shouts, “Jamie Dimon is a crook” and adds that the executive should go to prison.

  55. 55.

    Culture of Truth

    “Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee, has warned that he will call for a closed-door session if Mr. Dimon fails to answers his questions.”

    Also, he threatened to give Mr. Dimon several sloppy wet kisses if the JP Morgan CEO commits perjury.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Culture of Truth:

    Dimon is not a predator.

    He is a parasite.

    He and his vile ilk need to be eradicated.

    Time to call in Van Helsing to deal with these vampires.

  61. 61.

    flukebucket

    I just keep hoping and believing that Obama will run his own campaign and make his own decisions and not listen to all of the bullshitters and grifters out there.

    As far as Arizona goes I am using that against my wingnut friends the way they have used Wisconsin against me. I ask them if they did not get the clear message that the voters sent out of Arizona? LOL!

  64. 64.

    Felanius Kootea

    So all the teevee pundits are wailing about how this AZ election means that Romney is toast and should pay attention to Ron Barber’s winning message and close his offshore accounts and change his message accordingly, right? Right?

  66. 66.

    feebog

    Arizona could be in play if the thousands of potential latino voters were registered and then actually got out to the polls and voted. I have a friend who is very involved in latino Democratic politics here in SoCal. Although there is work to do here, the real low hanging fruit lies just across the border in Arizona and Nevada.

  67. 67.

    DramaMama

    “in a state with a Republican-majority legislature doing the redistricting”

    AZ has an Independent Redistricting Commission, thank God. The Republican legislature did their best to dismantle it this year, but failed.

  68. 68.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Culture of Truth: The guys Obama have now led him to a 7 point victory back in 2008 and have kept his poll numbers steady. Why should he listen to the “consultants” whose advice lost 2000, 2004, and all of the 1980’s? And who lost a sure thing for Hillary?

  69. 69.

    J R in WV

    @Egg Berry:

    Second Coming Type is what we called it when I worked in a composing room long ago, when there were such things as journeyman printers. Also used for D-Day invasions and the like.

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