More than anything, tonight was a referendum on the spread of Sharia law.
Discuss.
Minus the collapsed lung and permanent voice warble, I feel like I’ve been shot in the face.
by DougJ| 218 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
More than anything, tonight was a referendum on the spread of Sharia law.
Discuss.
Minus the collapsed lung and permanent voice warble, I feel like I’ve been shot in the face.
Comments are closed.
Eljai
I’m so tired of America. I want to move to Brazil.
The Dangerman
You can be sure of 49 similar resolutions being placed on the ballot in 2012.
Paula
Well, speak for yourself.
Amanda in the South Bay
Ack, we’re up to 450 comments in the mega thread not too far from here, now two more election threads!
Anyhoo, I’m waiting on Murray, the AK race, and of course Prop 19. Thank Aqua Buddha its only 9 here in CA.
Michael D.
I was hoping the Democrats would only win 41 Senate seats so THEY could finally be in charge. :-(
Kryptik
The next few months are going to feel like a constant gang stomping, mark my words. At least a good third of the standing Dems left in Congress are going to go full bore wingnut simply to avoid that dreaded ‘L’ label. With the rest stuck wondering ‘gee, maybe we did go too far left’, and folks like us screaming as the country ends up taking another hard right cant.
Spaghetti Lee
Not nearly as bad as it could have been.
Mr Furious
Well, obviously, the big takeaway from tonight’s results is that we all owe Dick Cheney an apology.
freelancer
I was wrong, you were right. Please, as a gesture of forgiveness, please stomp me in the face.
Spaghetti Lee
A significant number of the good guys remain in office. Rush Holt won, Ron Kind and Raul Grijlava are winning right now. Bobby Bright is probably gonna lose, but fuck him.
beltane
Perhaps Fake America should separate from RealAmerica and allow them to luxuriate in a warm bath of melted crisco (bendy straw included).
James E. Powell
What is so mind-numbingly awful is that, so far as we are talking about people who bother to vote, what we are seeing is what real Americans want.
Cris
I take the ballot measures this year to mean that Real America wants to be really really sure that I’m not going to take their guns away.
Mike in NC
So you know Dick Cheney personally? What an honor, sir!
freelancer
Fuck, Admiral, nice curtain call, but did you have to use an SAT word like sepulchre? What an elitist.
Delia
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. And between the two of them, that can add up to a pretty shitty government.
Martin
Proposition Title Yes Votes % No Votes %
No 19 Legalize Marijuana in CA, Regulate and Tax
900,410 43.6% 1,160,836 56.4%
Yes 20 Redistricting of Congressional Districts
1,269,039 64.9% 688,457 35.1%
No 21 State Park Funding. Vehicle License Surcharge.
807,561 39.6% 1,229,044 60.4%
Yes 22 Prohibit State From Taking Some Local Funds
1,272,877 64.7% 697,493 35.3%
No 23 Suspend Air Pollution Control Law (AB 32)
828,186 41.0% 1,188,865 59.0%
No 24 Repeal Allowance of Lower Business Tax Liability
782,898 39.8% 1,183,873 60.2%
Yes 25 Simple Majority Vote to Pass Budget
1,087,611 54.4% 913,378 45.6%
Yes 26 2/3 Vote for Some State/Local Fees
1,080,788 55.2% 880,180 44.8%
No 27 Eliminate State Redistricting Commission
757,718 39.2% 1,172,280 60.8%
So, 19, 21, 23 24, 27 all going down. The rest passing. Sad to see 24 going down so hard – corporate tax increases aren’t going to hurt Intel, Google, Apple, HP – they’re all fucking swimming in cash. But generally pretty decent. Lots of people will be disappointed about 19, though.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Michael D.: FTW. What have they won, 80-90% of the bag of shit that was the Senate they held with a near-supermajority?
I commented on an earlier thread about someone looking desperately for consolation prizes that there was, at least, still a “firewall” in the Senate.
Someone explain to me how well that firewall worked over the last two years and why I should believe that a somewhat thinner firewall will make the Democrats look anything but more feckless over the next two years?
Kryptik
@James E. Powell:
Or at the very least what they can be convinced to want.
Either way, it reflects badly on everyone.
@Cris:
That and we just HAAAATE taxes. Just hate hate hate them. So fucking what if the government can’t do shit because there’s no more money left. We can’t have things like forcing $200,000 incomes to pay a…gasp…5% state income tax. Or even dare think about passing any new taxes without an almost impossible number of votes.
Less gubment, the better, right? Oh, unless they’re saving us from the EEEEEEEEEEEVIL FUCKING MOOOOSLIMSSS!!!!
Feh…
You Don't Say
Still too early to say but it looks like Reid won. I am slightly less depressed.
What’s up with Alaska race?
LarsThorwald
My advice is to cut off the TV and computer for the next week. Sober up, focus on work, read a novel. Take a break. Ain’t nothing doing between now and two weeks from now anyway. Not politically.
Rest.
Recharge.
This is going to pass. This isn’t the last election ever. It’s just the last election we had.
db
@Michael D.: Thanks for making me laugh….. for a second. I then thought about that possibility and realized that even at 41, they would not figure out how to shut the Senate down.
Even though I knew these projections were going to happen, it’s still hard to see them actually happening. I wish I could figure out a way to go galt and still live… but shit, I still got to work and pay my bills.
phoebes-in-santa fe
We lost seats tonight that we probably shouldn’t have won in the first place in the Democratic “waves” of 2006 and 2008.
Seats like Alan Grayson’s in Florida. Political water seeks its own level and those seats returned to their Red roots. It’s how the “game” is played.
BUT, how much was done by those Democrats who were elected and worked the past two years! Dems in Congress passed so many good things for this country. The progressive wing of our party can cry and piss and moan and say, “oh, Obama and the Democratic leaders ‘wimped’ out and didn’t pass as ‘progressive’ legislation as they could have done”.
Well, you know what, they did a great deal of good for the people who voted them into office as well as those who didn’t but who will benefit from the reforms made in the past session. Wasn’t “progressive” enough for you? Well, then you’re as naive as the Tea Baggers who have little to no idea about how politics works on a hands on, practical basis.
All that being said, Obama and the Congressional Dems did a piss-poor job of “managing the message”. In fact, they never had control of the message. They should have been out there, everyday, Tim Kaine, Obama, and everyone else, touting their accomplishments. They didn’t do it. They lost any help at the ballot box by those who didn’t know about all that was accomplished.
Okay, so we mourn our losses tonight and we get back to work tomorrow.
Comrade Luke
At this point I expect Murray – Rossi to go to a recount.
Both of Rossi’s last two races for governor went to a recount, and both sides have been gearing up for it the last few days.
We might not know tonight.
Martin
CA Gov race called for Brown.
morzer
Mr Cheney is graciously prepared to receive your apology now.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Martin:
Well, at least we can take comfort in the fact that 25 is probably more important to the long term overall (not just fiscal) health of CA.
Eh, I’m not sure if that was clear, but passing 25 is really awesome and a BFD.
Ash Can
OK, I’m surprised about Dan Seals.
freelancer
@Martin:
Can you clean that up, it’s kinda sorta unreadable to me.
+8
mr. whipple
Yup. They are horrible beyond belief when it comes to this.
But I’ve been hearing anti-Dem ads on the radio continuously since April. I don’t know if there’s any way to fight that level of propoganda.
BGinCHI
IL Gov race going right down to the wire.
Jesus.
Hold on Quinn.
97% in, 10K lead. Oh, and fuck Mark Kirk.
With no Green Party candidate, Alexi wins. Yeah, I know, sour grapes.
Anya
I will not read the opinion pages or watch any t.v. heads for at least two months. I do not want to hear Boehner’s voice. I am really depressed that we lost Ohio gov, IL and PA senate. It sucks but I guess, it could have been worse.
neff
@LarsThorwald: This isn’t the last election ever.
With Feingold gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the last.
Paula
@James E. Powell:
Well, no offense, but they aren’t well-educated about connecting strands of thought and action. And to the extent that I read these progressive politics weblogs, the same goes for a lot of liberals — maybe uneducated about different things, but there are huge gaps.
To the extent that THERE IS NO FUCKING PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT IN THE COUNTRY — this is about what one should reasonably expect. That is, until a bunch of people who are used to having health care until the age of 26 and who think pot legalization is a given grow up.
Dave
Shit…we survived six years of full-metal GOP politics under Bush and a GOP congress. We can survive the next two with a divided Congress and a Democratic President.
And this may be a Trojan horse result for the GOP. With a divided Congress, that is where the focus and fireworks will be. The GOP will have to take responsibility for things now and the Teatard philosophies will be on full, very public display for the entire US population to see.
BGinCHI
@Ash Can: Me too.
I thought he’d hold out and survive. North Shore whitey hard to please. Bastards.
Violet
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
Tim Kaine sucks. I agree the Dems have sucked at messaging. But Kaine has been awful. I want to throw something every time I see him on TV.
Martin
@Comrade Luke: Nah, it looks like a lock for Murray. The underreporting red counties are small. King is still underreporting and is going strong for Murray. Unless there’s a big pile of Rossi votes in King, it’ll get called up around 75%-80% reporting.
BombIranForChrist
Looks like Obama won’t be able to do the things he promised now. Oh wait …
Martin
Called for Reid!
Martin
Now, how about a new Senate Majority leader?
New Yorker
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
what she said.
BGinCHI
Reid to hold off Angle!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fuck yeah.
No love for Reid so much as suck it, Angle, you idiot. Go back to the hate.
Elizabelle
Harry Reid pulls it out.
Thank FSM. Sharron Angle is certifiable.
suzanne
My husband just asked me an interesting question: Was healthcare reform worth this bloodbath?
The answer was a quick and unqualified yes.
That makes it go down slightly easier.
Mike in NC
How did that huge victory in ’94 work out for you, President Gingrich?
What goes around comes around.
freelancer
@neff:
Jebus, bring on the hyperbole. What’s next? The House Sergeant at Arms is gonna be putting all Dem voters into camps? On orders from Speaker Boehner? I’m shitfaced, but get ahold of yourself. Seriously.
You Don't Say
MSNBC calling it for Reid.
ronin122
Mixed news in IL. Lots of lost house seats. Kirk won for senate. On a positive note, looks like Quinn will likely stay in office in a squeaker (too close to tell precisely but judging from the numbers most of the remaining votes to count will cancel each other)
mr. whipple
@suzanne: Yup.
Cris
Time for Dr. Utopia to whip out the veto stick.
Spaghetti Lee
Regarding the Bad Nelson/Droopy Axis, I gotta wonder if their egos would rebel against being the low men on the totem pole if they switched, and if that would be enough to keep them Democrats. Either way, it’ll be g’bye and good riddance to both in 2012.
neff
@freelancer: Nah it’ll take a few years longer, the war with Iran will help, along with teabaggers’ zeal to take away voting rights from as many people as they can (read freep sometime)
You Don't Say
Good. A gazillion dollars didn’t get Meg Whitman shit.
Spaghetti Lee
I noticed that a fellow named Noneofthese Candidates got 2.19% in the Nevada race. Pretty good for a third party guy, maybe he has a future in this biz.
Paula
@suzanne:
I predict a herd of stupid responding to you on the contrary, dear.
merrinc
Fuck Real America. And to the idiots across the border in SC, enjoy reaping what you’ve sown, bitches. Fucking bunch of inbred cretins chose that lying son of a bitch Nick Mulvaney over John Spratt, a good legislator who cared about his constituents and worked hard to bring jobs to your shithole of a state.
The Mulvaney ads I saw over the weekend were so full of ridiculous, bold faced lies that I wanted to scrub the filth off my soul after watching them. And people believed them! Sweet bleeding geezus, there is just no end to the stoopid.
Martin
Oh, and San Jose County, home of EBay and HP, went for Brown and Boxer 2:1 over Whitman and Fiorina.
The people who would know led the charge to keep our failed business leaders out of government.
Texas Dem
CNN calls Nevada for Reid. He may be a terrible disappointment as majority leader, but he ran one hell of a campaign. Kos says that Hispanic turnout was 16 percent; highest ever recorded in the state.
New Yorker
@Martin:
This was the one competitive race I was most concerned about. Angle is a complete and utter lunatic and belongs nowhere near any lever of power. I don’t care much for the spineless Reid, but I’m glad he won.
BGinCHI
@ronin122: IL Dem party needs to be better across the board.
The machine runs shitty candidates and that matters in a year like this.
The Scott Cohen thing is a bullet dodged. HOW do they let that happen?
Mike in NC
And yet only yesterday the media were talking about “Senator-Elect Angle”. WTF?
Comrade Luke
@Martin: That would be nice.
I want to be able to go to bed with a Lieberman/Nelson-proof majority.
Mister Papercut
@You Don’t Say:
Plus, everyone knows you almost always pay a way inflated price when you use the “Buy It Now” option.
@Texas Dem:
You would think that Angle’s campaign would have accounted for those wily Hispanics, who clearly would have used their Asian math wizardry side to know how many of them they would have to smuggle across the border to illegally vote for Reid.
MP +3
BGinCHI
@merrinc: Plus the BBQ is SC tastes like somebody’s ass.
(still hate you for being good at basketball though, and stealing our (IN) players)
Ross Hershberger
As noted above, a lot of these seats were dicey to begin with. pick ups in 2000 when people were righteously pissed at Bush II. Amazingly for a newcomer to national politics, Obama had coat tails that dragged a lot of people with him.
The press, always looking for a sweeping narrative, called this a tipping point to a Dem majority when actually it was a squeaker under special circumstances.
Bush is largely forgotten and now the Dems are to blame for the slowness of the magic pony deliveries so they get hit at the polls this year.
Dave
Wonder how GOP leadership feels about the Tea Party costing the GOP two critical Senate seats…could be an interesting intra-party battle in the days ahead…
Angry Black Lady
What is going on with Alaska?
+2
Demz Taters
@Mike in NC: Now we’ll never know her views on foreign policy.
Ross Hershberger
@Comrade Luke:
Because you think you’ve covered every way they can fuck us?
I don’t.
Sanka
Check that ActBlue page, boys. Quick! Send more money!
Spaghetti Lee
I feel strangely serene. Sure, all that red on the map is kind of a downer, but it’s kind of like, “OK, it’s over, it wasn’t a massacre, now we can move on to the next stage.”
FlipYrWhig
@Spaghetti Lee: I guess he’s Greek? Pronounced “Non-yoff-TAY-zay Can-de-DAH-tays”?
Brian J
I’d be crying if my nose weren’t basically closed up.
I can’t help but think that if this is what America wants, well, I guess that’s that. People usually get what they deserve in these races.
I’d like to think that despite being slaughtered in Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and to some extent New York, the Democrats will come back to a large degree in 2012 and in the years after. Some of the districts we lost were traditionally Republican, but far more were essentially swing areas. We can will them back, and we will win them back, even if it takes more than one or two cycles.
It’s just…it’s just that the gains in upstate New York were basically wiped out in a night. It’s simply incredible to think of how this happened in so many places.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Martin:
Nit: That’s Santa Clara County.
And Whitman lives in Atherton, which is right over the border in San Mateo County.
Mike in NC
@merrinc:
I know what you mean, but I think his name is Mick Mulvaney. I honestly don't like to spend time in SC. We went to Columbia last year to adopt a kitten and it really creeped me out.
On the other hand, I’m enjoying the shit out of dirtbag Ilario Pantano getting his ass kicked in my own district.
Hunter Gathers
@BGinCHI:
The state press (Trib, Sun-Times) sat on his steroid/hooker past in order to embarrass the state Dems, and the party didn’t think he would win anyway. Look for both of those papers to endorse Snomobile Snookie in 2012.
morzer
@suzanne:
Absolutely. This is the key to a real, modern healthcare system. We won’t see it in place in ten years, and possibly not in our lifetimes, but it will happen because of what the Dems and Obama did these last two years. Can’t build a house in five minutes – you have to lay the foundations first.
Texas Dem
By the way, now that Reid has won, can we assume that all the talk about reopening Yucca Mountain will end?
You Don't Say
@Spaghetti Lee: Me too, but one thing is left: Joe Miller’s fate. I so want him to lose.
Violet
@Angry Black Lady:
Polls haven’t closed in Alaska yet. Eight more minutes, I think.
Anya
@Angry Black Lady: If Alaska rejects certified lunatic Joe Miller, then Alaska has saner voters than the rest of Real America.
Spaghetti Lee
@Dave:
I gotta figure that stuff gets shrugged off In The Name of the Party. Repubs are nothing if not good at following orders. And then of course you’ll get the braying jackasses saying O’Donnell and Angle weren’t conservative enough.
cmorenc
Message here to younger voters who showed up in 08 but didn’t bother this year…
You let your future be decided by a bunch of cranky, selfish, afraid geezers.
NOT SHOWING UP TO VOTE is guaranteed to further empower the exact sort of crappy people you are protesting or make it not worth your while to bother voting!
BGinCHI
Did AK secede or what? Jesus….no coverage so far. Did I miss something?
Also, I assume the Rent is Too Damn High Party guy will be in the Obama Admin starting in Jan.
Just make him the Secretary of Tell John Boehner to Shut the Fuck Up.
Lolis
I am okay with the House. Thought we would win in IL and PA but am dealing with it. At least we have 52 possibly 53 Senators. That is enough to do okay with Nelson and Lieberman on our team.
All in all, I think tea bag mania will destroy the GOP presidential chances in 2012, so David Axelrod is probably not too upset right now.
Comrade Luke
@Ross Hershberger:
I doubt it, but if it’s that close they’ll be preening for the cameras starting in 3…2…1…
LarsThorwald
Will Angle now please give a fucking interview? Just for shits and giggles?
Cris
Interesting that Markos is bidding good riddance to the Blue Dogs. Not because I think he ever liked them, but because the “more” part of the “more and better Democrats” philosophy has always been a critical part of Kos’ strategy. Historically, he has been happy to have shitty Democrats in office as long as it spells a majority. I won’t say he’s changed his mind, but I guess relishing their collapse is his way of making lemonade.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
Pretty much where I’m at, too. I’m going to be fascinated on how the Republicans get from only saying “no” to governing. And, unless they just want to shut down government, they will have to govern (read: compromise).
Biggest news of the night? Tea Party All-Stars getting beat more often than not; too bad about Paul, but if Miller goes down, Palin looks like even more of an idiot (if that is possible).
morzer
@Angry Black Lady:
The Bridge to Nowhere still goes nowhere, the trees are slowly growing a little taller, and Sarah Palin is still groping for her ass with both hands.
No idea about the weather though.
jwb
@James E. Powell: No, Americans don’t know what the fuck they want; or rather they know they want a pony but don’t want to pay for it. That’s really the problem. Tonight, they basically said the past two years have sucked, we don’t like it, we don’t have the time or energy to figure out what the fuck is going on, so we’re just going to vote for a change because it’s unlikely to be worse and if it is we can change it again in two years. This result has been in the cards since last summer when the economy didn’t turn around, and it was only the fact that the Goopers decided to double down on crazy that gave the Dems any hope in the election. In fact, for what it’s worth, I think the Dems did considerably better than they would have had the Goopers acted as a responsible opposition.
You Don't Say
@LarsThorwald: Leave well enough alone.
Bob Loblaw
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m strangely interested to find out what you consider a massacre. Because I’d be hard pressed to describe it as anything else.
Anytime you see the Democratic party get the ever living shit kicked out of it in the midwest like it did tonight, it’s a massacre. An entirely predictable massacre that matches preexisting historical trends to a tee, but a massacre nonetheless. Fortunately, there’s always tomorrow.
DougJ
@Anya:
You know, I don’t really mind Boehner. I generally mind the elected Republicans that much, it’s the pundits that get me, especially the so-called centrist ones. I may need to get a pie filter for the Times columnists this week.
freelancer
@neff:
I don’t need to read the freepers to know that they are the moon-landing hoaxers of the political environment. Yes, they’re batshit. Yes, they’d prefer fascism. They will never win. They will never even place. There are too many of us out there. So please, calm down with the hyperventilating about the supposedly inevitable World War W(ingnut).
@Angry Black Lady:
Good to see you. Time to catch up with the pack.
+8
PS, since you got the keys, be on the lookout to add another thread if this one breaks 200 or so.
Spaghetti Lee
Can anyone here explain how Alaska write-in law works? Is it true that McAdams could finish second but still win because Miller would finish third in write-in, and Murk would finish third in the actual?
Paula
@Ross Hershberger:
Look, if I believe the polling, a lot of that pickup was from fucking “independents” who wouldn’t find a coherent political worldview if it shit on them. They voted in Obama in 2008 because, yes, they were tired of years of R’s controlling gov’t, but not much beyond that. And now they vote R because they apparently have goldfish memories.
Of course, lots of people in the progressive blogosphere thought that it was some kind decisive win for progressive values.
It wasn’t. Shed yourself of that illusion and this loss is not that much of a loss. This party switchover is a reliable historical trend, and this year, it wasn’t as terrible as it could be for the party of the President.
jwb
@Cris: Hey, in Texas guns are all we’re going to be able to have once the budget comes in. Ain’t gonna be no money for nothin’, so you better have a gun to protect what’s yours and bring the food in to feed the family.
Spaghetti Lee
Also, Lexington, Kentucky elected a gay mayor today, and it looks like they’re keeping Ben Chandler, too. See, Kentucky doesn’t totally suck.
BGinCHI
@Hunter Gathers: God I hate the papers. I wouldn’t wrap babyshit in them.
Now watching Howard Fineman concern toll on MSNBC.
Blow me, Howie.
Ryan
So what’s the consensus on old high school friends who post Sharia law warnings to Facebook? Do you delete them or just hide them?
Texas Dem
No way anyone switches parties in this environment. Just look at what happened to Murkowski, Bennett, and Castle. Lieberman and Nelson would get primaried in a nanosecond, and they know it. The only one who might be considering a switch is Snowe, who will almost certainly get primaried if she remains in the GOP.
Comrade Kevin
@Violet: They closed an hour ago.
Mike in NC
Yeah, they’d never elect an insane religious nut and grifter as governor.
sven
@Martin: Does Prop 25 really allow a budget with simply majority and no hidden tricks? Still need supermaj for tax increases I assume?!?
You Don't Say
Anyone know about Prop B in Missouri?
suzanne
@morzer: The thing that just chaps my ass, though, is WHAT THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO LOSE? Brewer beat Goddard here in Arizona. I mean, she went to fucking community college, and he went to Harvard and then got a law degree. She completely lost it in the debate and flagrantly lied. Seriously. WHAT ARE THESE MOTHERFUCKERS THAT I SHARE A STATE WITH BASING THEIR DECISIONS ON? It’s obviously not FACTS, or QUALIFICATIONS, or INTELLIGENCE.
God.
C Nelson Reilly
Soonergrunt will back me up on this – here in Oklahoma we had to vote on Sharia law and for English as the official language. Plus Tom Coburn had 70 percent approval ratings going into the election.
Took my 79 year old Republican mother to vote. She has Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia. She forgot her glasses and had to get a magnifying glass from a poll worker to read the ballot. Fucked up the first ballot by voting yes and no for some judge so had to claim a spoiled ballot and do the whole thing over. At least she helped the citizens of my ignorant state turn back the Islamic hordes (and the Mexicans). The whole ordeal seemed like it took place in slow motion. Completely offset my earlier straight Democratic ticket vote.
sven
@morzer: Bridge to Nowhere went nowhere. The funds for the Bridge to Nowhere still went to the state of Alaska.
cyn
Not a massacre?
Nate Silver now predicting 62-72 seat gain in the House for the Rs. It think it’s safe to call that a massacre.
Spaghetti Lee
@Bob Loblaw:
I’m reluctant to call it a massacre because of those historical trend. The blue parts mostly stayed blue. We didn’t lose Rush Holt or Barney Frank or Bruce Braley like some people said we would. What we did lose are the parts of the country that are historically red that we picked up at a historic high water mark. I bet if you looked at the current makeup of the house and the hypothetical makeup of the house that would follow the CPVI, they’re pretty similar.
Call it a massacre if you want, but I think that word should be saved for losing far worse than expected.
BGinCHI
If anyone responds to Bob Loblaw I’m going for your throat.
Davis X. Machina
Every year, upstate gets older, poorer, and less numerous. It’s slipping culturally from part of the Northeast — think of the Symphony Cities, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse — into part of Appalachia. The old, angry and feeling left behind drove this election, and there are a lot of them in all those old, half-empty towns with names from Greece and Rome….
New Yorker
@cmorenc:
I’m 30, do I count as a younger voter anymore? I went out and voted….and proceeded to vote for Jimmy McMillan for governor. Hell, I figured Paladino was toast anyway.
It is nice to see crazy Jimmy significantly out-polling racist demagogue Charles Barron.
Moses2317
The silver lining here is that this electoral defeat can be laid at the feet of the Blue Dogs and the other Third Wayers who keep trying to move our party to the “center,” which always means moving further and further to the right.
These Blue Dogs and Third Wayers, when faced with an economic crisis and stark raving mad tea partiers, decided that the best approach was to do too little and to try to appease the lunatics by “moving to the center.” So, rather than having a bold economic and housing mortgage plan that would achieve a full economic recovery, the Democrats ended up going with measures that laudably avoided a full out depression, but failed to adequately jump start the economy or get people out from underwater. It is disappointing that President Obama went along with this approach on the economy and mortgage crisis, but my hope is that he will learn the correct lesson out of this election.
As a result of the inadequate approach to economic issues, our party has taken a beating at the polls. The biggest brunt of that beating has been focused on the Blue Dogs. 28 out of 56 House Blue Dogs have lost so far, with 11 seats still to be decided. In addition, the biggest Blue Dog in the Senate, Blanche Lincoln, got demolished.
The silver lining, therefore, is that with significantly fewer Blue Dogs and an electoral drubbing that is the result of their “move to the center” strategy, hopefully we’ll now have a Democratic caucus and President more open to being bold. Of course, that will occur only if we all work to make sure this is the lesson taken out of this election, rather than some crap about voters rejecting progressive values that the media will claim.
It is late and I am tired, but I plan to write more on this at my blog tomorrow night.
Winning Progressive
Spaghetti Lee
@You Don’t Say:
http://www.ktts.com/news/106583394.html
Neck and neck, apparently.
Mike in NC
Saint Ronald Reagan knew that you could promise the voters a free lunch and they’d never complain about it. That dumb bastard is dead but we’re still paying the consequences.
BGinCHI
@Spaghetti Lee: Just under the wire, but you’re warned.
Bob is Droopy Dog, but without the personality.
jwb
@Ryan: anyone posted that I’d unfriend them in a second.
Davis X. Machina
@suzanne: Was there an “R” after their name? Go team!
To understand American politics you need to sell your copy of The Federalist Papers to some AP U.S. government student and get a big foam “We’re #1” finger in your team colors with the money.
morzer
@Texas Dem:
Betting on the intelligence of Ben Nelson or the rationality of Joe Lieberman is perhaps not the optimal strategy.
In strictly political terms: Lieberman knows he’s dead meat in 2012, since you could run a syphilitic rat against him and still guarantee a win in CT. Ben Nelson tried the Cornhusker Kickback – and managed to bungle that little piece of genteel blackmail so badly that even his constituents regard him with all the warmth generally reserved for bubonic plague. They probably feel they have nothing to lose by cuddling up to the warm, hot-handed, moonshine-and-madness breathing embrace of Crazy Clowns Inc.
Cain
so prop 19 in California is going down? Gee, I thought our young people would pull it out for us.
cain
Violet
@The Dangerman:
GAH! How many times do I have to say it? The Republicans WILL NOT HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. They pass some crazy bills in the House with their majority, send it to the Senate where it doesn’t pass or does and Obama vetoes it. Then they claim the Dems “aren’t bipartisan enough” or “aren’t working for the good of America” or “refuse to solve the budget problems” or whatever. They don’t have to do ANYTHING and they just blame a lack of governing on the Dems. Why ANYONE persists in thinking the Republicans “have to govern” or “have to compromise” is beyond me. THEY DON’T.
Don’t forget, the Republicans have said their number one priority is to make Obama a one term President. Doing nothing and blaming it on the Dems fits perfectly into that goal.
The big thing now is for the Dems to figure out how to make sure it’s clear the Republicans are obstructionist, do-nothing liars who only want to hurt the country.
Don SinFalta
The US ship of state keeps sailing on the same trajectory it’s been on since 1980, heading steadily toward the abyss off the right edge of the flat earth, driven by the prevailing winds. Still nobody on the bridge trying to steer the ship away from disaster, the crew spending all their time in denial about the destination, and the plutocrats’ drunken party in the captain’s captain continues unabated. Wind picked up a bit tonight, ship moving a little faster. Yawn. BFD.
BGinCHI
@Davis X. Machina: I moved here from the Finger Lakes.
You are exactly right: it’s beautiful and there are great people, but there is so much rust and poverty around there it’s unbelievable.
Rural America is getting royally fucked by our system and that ain’t gonna be fixed soon unless we start fucking making things in this goddamn country.
morzer
@sven:
Yes, I had realized that. I was being, you might have noticed, a touch ironical.
MJ
@Ryan:
You report them to the
secret servicefacebook police.Just Some Fuckhead
@Ryan: You ridicule them in their comments.
wag
@Ryan:
Unfriend them, and let the world know that you’ve done it and why
danimal
@DougJ: Yeah, me too. The GOP pols are corrupt, and take advantage of the misinformed populace, but that’s the way the game is played.
The pundits, however, are responsible for misinforming the populace, and that’s nearly unforgivable to me.
Cain
@Moses2317:
Yes, but what does it mean? Is it because they weren’t conservative enough or was it because they should have kept the Democratic party platform?
cain
Spaghetti Lee
@BGinCHI:
Sorry, I’m too new here to grasp the daes dae’mar of this blog.
suzanne
@Davis X. Machina: I know you’re right, and yet… I suppose I’ve never been completely convinced that so many people truly are so fucking tribal and irrational. Even when I’ve been confronted by proof, I just can’t truly comprehend what it would be like to have such a primal, simplistic mind.
Mike in NC
@Davis X. Machina:
A local comic noted that the entire elderly population of upstate NY seemed to be relocating to Myrtle Beach. That was why all of the road work was tying up traffic: digging graves to lay them out end to end.
Comrade Luke
@The Dangerman:
Allow myself to repeat…myself…
I don’t know why anyone would think that the GOP is even in decline at this point.
You might as well bookmark this so you have something to go back to the next two years:
The Republicans in the House will pass batshit insane bills that will get canned in the Senate or (with any luck, from their perspective) vetoed by the President.
They will then run on the fact that those bills were canned, saying “See? The Democrats don’t act in good faith! Kick them out!” And they’ll win.
I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Obama not veto a bill or bills, because Democrats would rather pass the bill than veto it and have Republicans use it against them in ‘12.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat. GOP sweep in ‘12.
FlipYrWhig
@Cris:
Markos is completely inconsistent on that point. Sometimes the point is to lead a progressive wave, and other times the point is to elect “more and better Democrats.” I think the inconsistency stems from Howard Dean’s identification with both “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” and “the Fifty State Strategy.” Those are incompatible positions. You can elect bold progressives, but not everywhere, so what do you do to get a majority? Well, if it was easy, it would’ve been done by now. The Obama answer was to bring into the fold people who don’t always participate, including first-time voters and African Americans. And _everyone said_ that it would be hard to sustain, because those groups tend not to stay engaged. And Obama wouldn’t be on the ballot. Whaddya know, it _was_ hard to sustain!
This is also IMHO why all the gnashing of teeth about “the base” was so futile. The base votes because that’s what makes them the base. The people they needed to keep energized were the special Obama-specific mobilized masses. How did that effort pan out? I’ll keep an eye out in the post-mortems.
Spaghetti Lee
In Upstate NY’s…”defense”, I guess, it’s always been a Republican area, it just used to be a different kind of Republican. A charitable interpretation is that the people who used to vote for James Walsh and Jacob Javits haven’t yet grasped the difference.
Brian J
@New Yorker:
Say what you will about him, but he ran that race brilliantly. He looks likely to win reelection by a solid margin in a state where there’s 15 percent unemployment because he helped secure himself a deranged, possibly racist opponent and worked for months on end to perfect his ground game.
freelancer
Sweet Jesus, for anyone that missed it, listen to Eugene Robinson crack the fuck up as Chris Matthews interviews Michelle Bachmann. (and I fucking hate Matthews.)
Violet
@Comrade Kevin:
No, they only just closed, according to what I just read.
sven
@cyn: No it isn’t.
It’s just a scratch.
Karen
Chuck Todd just said that it wasn’t against incumbants, just anti Democrat.
I hope “real America” gets what they voted for.
When they realize Rand Paul’s vow to get rid of government entitlements means that “real America’s” safety net is gone. Medicare is gone. Social Security is gone. When the jobs don’t suddenly appear like magic and they’re still unemployed, I sure hope they’re not expecting unemployment funds.
Then again, when they say they want an end to government entitlements what it really means is, they want an end to everyone else’s entitlement.
And “everyone else” means the entitlement that ends is always YOURS.
Davis X. Machina
@BGinCHI: I drove from Harrisburg to Rochester two years ago, it was enough to make you cry. And last year, doing college visits, through all those proud old towns — Watervliet, Troy, Schenectady, Utica — Industrial Revolution towns.
morzer
@suzanne:
To be a successful Resentment Inc candidate you must first demonstrate that you are no better than your neighbors and, if possibly, slightly more stupid, greedy, compromised or unscrupulous. This produces a warm sensation of shared values in your base, with the assurance that they are actually slightly better than you, and could have done what you did, if they had wanted to. If, on the other hand, you are more intelligent, better educated, more cultured – well, voters certainly don’t want to be made to feel like failures, and so will condemn you for getting above yourself in a manner quite unfitting to a democratic society.
Essentially, the right word for this political form is kakistocracy.
Spaghetti Lee
@Comrade Luke:
You know, the parties in power were reversed from this situation pretty much exactly from 1982-1984. Didn’t seem to bother Reagan. I think two fundamental rules of politics are that most people only care about the economy, and most people only know who the president is. If the economy improves, Obama wins, if it doesn’t, he doesn’t.
Elizabelle
@merrinc:
Thank you for mentioning John Spratt. Excellent guy and class act. He did not deserve to lose, but knew it would go this way.
Larkspur
And yet the same idiot electorate voted Obama into office. Lookit, this is neither a tsunami nor a tidal wave. The waters, they are troubled for sure, but this is not a country that is chockfull of stalwart Tea Partiers. Nobody “surrounds” anyone else. Our idiocy is not yet carved in stone.
We have a corrupt press corps, a bunch of Republicans who have either sold their souls, or who have been terrified into pretending that they have, and a passel of Democrats who refuse to discipline themselves into anything even remotely resembling Colbert-level Formidable Opponenthood.
Oh shut up, I know what I mean. Leave me alone.
I’m going to take some of Suzanne’s advice, although I may go around asking people if they voted, and when they say no, no, none of it matters, all politicians are the same, new boss same as the old boss, blah blah blah, I will scream at them like a howler monkey for one minute, one minute only. Why? I got my freedom of screech rights, yeah.
Karen
@Davis X. Machina:
I went to Brockport so I recognize a lot of those towns…
Moses2317
@Cain: It is because not only did the the Blue Dogs fail to run on the Democratic Party record, but they (and, of course, unwavering Republican obstructionism) caused that record to be inadequate on the main issue the American public cared about – the economy (which includes economic growth, jobs, and the mortgage crisis). If our economic plan had been bold enough to achieve a fuller economic recovery and show the American people we were serious about fighting for the middle and working classes (which would have required more stimulus and an aggressive effort to protect average homeowners from the mortgage crisis), much of the ginned up tea party “anger” about health care reform, etc. would not have had a receptive audience, and all Democrats would have had a much stronger basis on which to run this time around.
Winning Progressive
FlipYrWhig
@suzanne:
I was feeling that way too for a while tonight. But then I talked to my wife about Alvin Greene. We wondered, if we lived in South Carolina, would we vote for Greene? And we realized, yes, we would, not because he’s qualified or even, like, un-creepy, but because Jim DeMint is just that awful. Flip that around and you’ve got a solid explanation for how Republicans and conservatives are voting. They think everything we believe in is just that awful, and they want to stop it with any tool at hand. And that’s 40% of the people who vote.
sven
@morzer: Sorry, I think my sense of irony was expunged by the last Weihenstephaner. It’s funny, they say judgment is the first to go. (hic)
Bob Loblaw
@Spaghetti Lee:
That’s fair enough, good answer.
@Violet:
Optimistic answer: Total war with the media + hoping the Republicans act with their usual malicious incompetence as quickly as possible
Pessimistic answer: Stifles laughter.
Brian J
@Bob Loblaw:
Lawrence O’Donnell has been on MSNBC saying that these economic numbers–those that indicate how people view their situation–are far worse than in 1994, so it could have been much, much worse for the Democrats. I could see that.
Spaghetti Lee
@cyn:
Even the low end of that, the Repubs need 14 more seats. And a whole shitload of ones that haven’t been declared yet are in the blue parts of California.
cyn
Spaghetti, I think you are right. To me, the real importance of tonight is that it puts the R’s in a *very* good position to take back the Senate in 2012, good economy or no. The playing field in 2012 is definitely tilted in the R’s favor. Hell, the reason this election is so painful for the D’s is that the field was tilted in their *favor*.
Elizabelle
I think this is winning the battle and losing the war for the GOP.
Reminds us all how hard it is to make genuine change.
Suzanne is right: healthcare reform, what Obama could get, is worth it.
I think Obama can be faulted for not insisting on using our public airwaves to address the American public on what would be necessary to recover from the Great Recession. Huge messaging and explanation failure.
Suspect Obama took the American public for smarter than they are.
BGinCHI
@Davis X. Machina: Dude, I commuted from Ithaca to Cortland every day via backroads, and it was firewood to the rafters (and no, I didn’t go to Cornell, so everyone relax). There are just a lot of people barely hanging on.
I also drove back to Buffalo every weekend for two years and that was brutal. Also did the Buffalo down across the state and then through N PA. It’s like rural Midwest or Appal.
People don’t understand the singularity of rural America. It’s separate from any version of urban or suburb: it doesn’t respect region.
bemused
@freelancer:
Ha,ha. Tweety said he never uses the word tingle……
BGinCHI
AK results: write-in ahead, then Miller Dbag, then McAdams.
Still lots of votes out there.
Spaghetti Lee
You know, for all the pessimists who think that there is no outer limit to the amount of lies Republicans can tell and get away with: If there was, we wouldn’t be talking about the damage done to a god-damn 75-seat majority in the first place. The Dems took the house at a time when the economy was booming, meaning the Republicans lost solely on other issues. I’m not enough of a student of that stuff to say what the difference was, but for Christ’s sake, enough with this doom-laden inevitability.
Xenos
What happened to the cannabis referendum in CA? Did a few million people suddenly realize they might need jobs as prison guards?
sven
So who at the Green Party can we call to thank for Colorado and Illinois?
FlipYrWhig
@Moses2317: Dude, it doesn’t matter how well you spell out the benefits of being a strong progressive… Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats _don’t believe any of that stuff_. They’re basically Republicans. They don’t want more stimulus, they don’t want to hit the banks harder, because that’s all “government solutions” and “big spending” and “class warfare.” There are _plenty_ of Democrats, both voters and politicians, who completely disagree with every article of what you just advocated. (I’m not one of them, but they exist, and they vote.) Following your prescription will never win their support. It would be better for the country, but that doesn’t mean it’s ever going to happen.
morzer
Well, one thing sums up tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1loyjm4SOa0
I tend to see the Blue Dogs in the role of Brian’s mother, in more ways than one…
Anya
@Mike in NC: Maybe they’ve learned from their mistakes. Also, crazy grifter knew her Alaska politics more than she knows national politics.
Mike in NC
@Karen:
I can read in the local paper every day rants from wingnuts who think unemployment benefits are far too generous, and who want people to take miserable $5 an hour jobs cleaning toilets.
Naturally these comments are coming from pensioners and retirees who are quite comfortable.
You can bet your asses the first people the GOP House target for punishment are the “greedy unemployed”.
Spaghetti Lee
@cyn:
Explain, please. Both of them. I don’t understand how the Dems were favored tonight on any level.
Yeah, there’s a lot of Democrats running in 2012, but it’s mostly in blue states. New England, upper Midwest, West Coast. The South has barely any Class 1 seats. In 2014, that’s when a bunch of red state Dems are running.
Spaghetti Lee
@sven:
Well, in both cases, there were a couple of rightard third partiers running as well. Can’t blame those two on the greens.
merrinc
@Mike in NC:
You’re right, it is Mick. Doesn’t make him less of a lying scumsucker, though.
I can’t stand going to SC, either. My husband occasionally comes up with some reason to go there and I usually come up with my own reasons for not accompanying him. Have you ever noticed how hard is to even find a public restroom in SC? Damn state is useless.
BGinCHI
Can someone make a case for the Green Party? I like them as an idea, but shouldn’t they push the Dem in the primary and if he/she doesn’t have the Green ideas in their platform, then run?
I’m not against a 3rd party, but when you enable the GOP, you allow the zombies to eat human flesh.
That’s just wrong. Oh, and it DOESN’T lead to anything getting fucking greener!!
Spaghetti Lee
@Mike in NC:
I can read in the local paper every day rants
Ah, there’s your problem.
Mike in NC
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s exactly why I’m dying for him to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Nobody else even comes close. He makes Gingrich look like a reasonable statesman.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle:
They’ve hit these points constantly. They’ve stumped and been on the road for months. They’ve used happy talk and been mocked for it. Jimmy Carter tried to explain that things would be hard but we’d get through them, and everyone recoiled in horror.
It’s only a “huge messaging and explanation failure” if you imagine that there was a way for the messaging and explanation to succeed. There wasn’t. Republicans were deliberately fucking things up, and pointing that out would be complaining; the economy was worse than it should have been because of Republican up-fuckery, making it ring hollow to point to any successes. There’s no way for “message and explanation” to break through. Because they did it, and here we are talking about how they didn’t.
James E. Powell
@Paula:
I would like to believe that, but I haven’t seen any evidence of political growth in the American electorate. Several generations have certainly become accustomed to receiving social security, yet it appears that that same constituency votes for the party that would like to get rid of social security.
Similarly, women vote for the party that has, at every opportunity since the late 70s, fought any advance of or protection of women’s rights.
Tonight I listened to Chris Matthews rhapsodizing about the white guys from Scranton to Oshkosh who voted Republicans because they don’t have their industrial jobs anymore. Who do they think moved their jobs to China? Liberal Democrats? And let’s not forget, this was not something that happened quickly. I am from Cleveland, Ohio. That city has been shrinking, in every sense of the word, since I was in high school in the 70s. The many Republicans elected to the White House, senate and governor’s office have done not one god damned thing for those workers. Quite the contrary, they have dumped on them at every opportunity.
But the Republicans still get their votes.
This is something more than mere ignorance. It’s something I cannot describe, but it’s willful and persistent.
Mnemosyne
@Texas Dem:
Not gonna happen, and I’ll tell you why: Arlen Specter. If Specter had won the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania and the election, the last couple of “moderate” Republicans might have considered switching.
Unfortunately, now the lesson is that they’ll get fucked by the Republican and the Democratic primary voters, so what’s the point of switching? Better to try and coax the Republicans who voted for you before to stick with you than to try and win over Democrats who won’t be won over. If you’re going to lose no matter what, you may as well keep your pride and be voted out by your own party.
(Not saying anything against Sestak here — he won the primary fair and square and had a good shot at winning the general election. I’m just talking about Specter’s loss affected the likelihood of party switching.)
Bob Loblaw
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s just shameful. Just a complete repudiation of anything even resembling integrity of the process. Voting doesn’t mean anything if it descends into outright farce, like it did in South Carolina this year, and it shouldn’t be supported. It’s loving the letter of the law and telling the spirit to go piss up a rope.
Sometimes you are in fact allowed to recuse yourself from voting in good conscience. It’s not a suicide pact. When you start thinking otherwise, that’s how you end up with the modern Republican Party.
Moses2317
@FlipYrWhig: Of course there are many people even in the Democratic Party opposed to the progressive position that I just laid out. But my point is that the silver lining here is that we have an opening to make our case that our approach is right and the timid folks are wrong because we have a very clear example of the electoral failure that following the overly cautious path on the economy has caused for our party. So, this is our chance to push back against the folks who are always urging the Democrats to take a more timid approach. Let’s seize that opportunity.
Winning Progressive
sven
@BGinCHI: There was no difference between Bush and Gore…
suzanne
@Elizabelle:
When one’s mind operates in logical, rational fashion, one most likely concludes that others’ do the same, as well.
Sigh.
Comrade Luke
Well, Colorado is now leaning R…
Davis X. Machina
@BGinCHI: I see it every day, too. I teach in Maine, far from the nearest outlet or lobster shack — and I have to go to bed. I took a post-vote nap, but morning, and home room, come early.
BGinCHI
Governor of Idaho winner is:
Butch Otter.
I would expect someone here to link to some butch otter photos. They do have short hair, yuhknow.
Mike in NC
@merrinc:
Charleston is rather tolerable, but as Mister Cole observed tonight, it’s like being in Atlanta: whichever way you go you eventually end up in Georgia.
Spaghetti Lee
@James E. Powell:
For the record, the entire Cleveland area stayed pretty blue tonight. Boccieri lost, but Sutton, Ryan, and Kaptur all won.
Elizabelle
@FlipYrWhig:
Evening Flip.
Our networks show us Dancing with the Stars and other ephemeral crap.
I think Obama needed to make a series of speeches in primetime to explain the complexities of what he and his administration were doing and facing.
Internet is not enough. Fox and the screamers filled the void. People were listening to Obama and looking to him for guidance, and relieved to have Bush-Cheney gone.
You cannot get your message through if you are expecting our asshat corporate media to report fully, fairly or accurately.
The rest of America is not us internet addicts.
MJ
I’m kind of shocked by these exit poll results that claim that minority voting was down today.
While volunteering as an Election Protection Attorney today, I kept hearing consistent feedback from poll monitors about the super high African-American turnout in black neighborhoods in NYC, East St, Louis, Philly, Atlanta and Cleveland today. Black radio was reporting higher than usual numbers. And even my 76 yr old Mama called me after she voted in Brooklyn and excitedly proclaimed that our neighborhood polling place was “chock full of Negroes” like us!
I know that all of the above is anecdotal evidence, but I’m wondering what you all think really happened.
BGinCHI
@sven: Gore would have invaded Canada and we would have much better hockey but our smarties would be different.
merrinc
@Elizabelle:
You’re quite welcome. I knew it was going to be bad but losing John Spratt, Alan Grayson, Russ Feingold and John Hall really hurts.
I used to foolishly believe that we had three separate but equal branches of government and thought the US Supreme Court would protect us from the idiocy and excesses of the executive and legislative branches. But then they handed the 2000 election to Bush and he gave them more ideologues who made it possible for us to have the worst government money can buy.
Maybe I’ll be optimistic again tomorrow or next week but tonight, I am all out of hope.
Cris
Yes. In a majoritarian system like ours (as opposed to a country with proportional representation), minor parties should actually be treated as factions. The US Greens are a faction of the Democratic party, just as the Libertarians and Teabaggers are Republican factions.
Thinking of it this way still allows the “party” to exist, just with a different paradigm. Instead of running quixotic candidates in a futile effort to get 5% (so you can run more quixotic campaigns in the future, presumably), you use your party mechanisms to try to influence the larger party’s platform. And you run “Green” candidates in the Dem primary.
It’s funny that we accept the “Blue Dogs” as a legitimate faction. They organize amongst themselves, they have some sense of identity and solidarity. But the Greens are so wrapped up in their parliamentary fantasy, so determined to declare their independence from the two-party system, that they fail to see the ways they can be relevant.
merrinc
@You Don’t Say:
From Facebook:
Best Friends Animal Society
Victory! Prop B passed by about 40,000 votes. Thank you to the 51% of Missourians who realize the tragedy of the puppy mill industry!!
BGinCHI
@Cris: I agree. That’s exactly the kind of misunderstanding that’s costing us. It strengthens the GOP.
It’s stupid contrarianism.
You Don't Say
@merrinc: Thanks! I just drove across country and Missouri was full of billboards to vote no and none supporting it. Glad to see that didn’t mean anything.
Xenos
@James E. Powell:
Death wish. Freud called it the ‘death instinct’, and it seems to have more validity at a cultural and social level than at the psychological level.
Calliope Jane
@suzanne: I thought she didn’t even finish college.
I know some republicans here who do not like Obama at all but thought she was a complete idiot and weren’t going to vote for her. I thought Goddard had a chance after that (yet I know some democrats that loved her for SB 1070. Gah! Hey, first generation eastern europeans–these people hate you, too! you’re not in their little club I promise you!). Stupid racists.
(someone still needs to explain to me why her completely losing it in the debate didn’t kill her chances, though. It makes absolutely no sense. Or were they thinking: Yay! Someone as stupid as me! We’ll show all those smart people!! Grrr)
Paula
@James E. Powell:
I’m not being particularly optimistic here. It’s just history. Once upon a time it was okay for unions to segregate its members and a beloved Democratic president was completely in the pale for imprisoning his own citizens. Is the Democratic party the “good” party if they have a history like this?
You’re feeling sad because it seems like “good” guys lost to something “bad”. It’s never that simple. Racism and ignorance are always going to exist, but if a democratic society survives it will be because it’s moving towards an expansion of freedoms. Not because human beings are essentially good, but because various people are always going to try getting freedoms that they didn’t have in the past. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. Pick your side, work like hell, try again.
It seems like all this sadness is coming from the same well of ahistoricality that a lot of people in the blogosphere function in. Progressivism didn’t win today, it didn’t even win in 2008. But it won in the past sometimes, and it will win again in the future.
cyn
cyn,
On 2010, agreed that it wasn’t a huge advantage going in for Ds in the Senate this year, but 2 years ago many D’s thought that the 2010 field favored them … not a huge tilt, but in their favor nevertheless.
2012 on the other hand, it’s just simple math. 10 R seats up for grabs, 21 D. Yes, good pickup opportunities for the D’s in NV and MA, but I’ve no doubt that the R’s view MT & NE the same way. Take a “normal” year, and the D’s have to fight very, very hard to keep the 19 seats. I mean, sure, FL, MI, MO, OH, PA, WI all went for Obama in 2008, but that doesn’t mean you can chalk them in for D senate in 2012.
Agreed that 2014 is going to be even tougher.
On the bright side, 2016 presents a bunch of good pickup opportunities for the D’s :-)
Joel
This beats 2004 by a country mile.
FlipYrWhig
@Calliope Jane:
I’ve been telling everyone in earshot that the screwiest thing about politics lately is that things that should be career-killers are just bouncing right off. David Vitter? Rick Scott? Mark Kirk’s many lies? Can you imagine anyone losing because he called someone “macaca” these days?
Karen
@FlipYrWhig:
IOKIYAR for the lies.
gene108
@Anya: Well, some Democrats did win…
I have no idea why so many people are in love with the Republicans…those guys are just fucking mean and don’t give a fuck about doing anything other than accumulating more power…
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
I don’t know if the Democrats did a bad job of managing anything. They were just totally out played by the Republican’s discipline in sticking together and voting no.
Two things stick out: (1) Republicans have long catered to their base and make sure those guys are happy and come out to vote and (2) the Democratic base is very disjointed and disorganized.
The Republicans ginned up support by addressing social issues, in the early part of this decade. They did not succeed in maintaining this enthusiasm, in 2006 and 2008, as social issues got drowned out by reality – the economy, war in Iraq, and Republican corruption.
With the economy struggling, they turned to hysterics over the economy to drive up enthusiasm, which seems to have worked to replace the loss of enthusiasm about social issues.
The Democratic base does not have the ability to organize around a coherent theme in most cases. The liberal wing isn’t happy and hasn’t been happy, since forever. They supported Ted Kennedy against Jimmy Carter, they supported Ralph Nader over Al Gore, and now don’t give a damn because the President and Democrats didn’t (1) start from negotiating for a single-payer health plan and (2) didn’t risk not passing health care reform by standing up for the public option.
The otherwise non-firebagger part of the Democratic base doesn’t seem to have the ability to reconcile with these guys and work together on a common goal.
The Republicans don’t seem to have that problem. They are all united behind the belief in lower taxes are always good, less government (whatever that means) is always good and abortion is always bad.
There are no themes uniting the Democrats, which makes messaging harder, even when you are doing a good job in messaging. One part of your coalition always says you aren’t doing it right, which just undercuts whatever message you are trying to put out.
When HCR passed, instead of hailing it as a BFD, those on the left called it a failure because it didn’t have a public option, it didn’t destroy for profit insurance, it wasn’t single payer, etc. It’s hard to tout your accomplishments, when the guys on your team are agreeing with your opponents that you’ve failed.
I don’t see how the Democrats can effectively message, when their base is so split. In 2006 and 2008, the uniformed opposition to the horror that was Bush & Co., got the Democrats to work together and more or less stay on message. When Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is off the table, people grumbled, but didn’t openly revolt, like they did when HCR became law, which allowed the Democrats to stay on message and focus on Republican scandals like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham and Bush & Co.’s failures in Iraq.
gene108
@Mnemosyne: I think the bigger problem with the Obama Administration’s messaging on the economy is a total misreading of how bad the problems were at the beginning. They didn’t think unemployment would jump to 10% and that businesses were going to cut jobs, like they did. They weren’t prepared for the problems the economy was about to throw at them, which is why Obama went immediately to to health care reform after the stimulus was passed.
My mom, a person who can’t stand the modern Republicans, was wondering why the Democrats kept pushing health care in the spring and summer of 2009, when the economy was still reeling and not focusing more on the economy. Basically, WTF was wrong with Democrats, didn’t they see the economy was on fire and fixing health care wasn’t solving the problem of people getting laid off.
If ever there was a miscalculation by Obama, which hurt the Democrats, it is the misreading of the potential of private businesses to gut their workforce like they did.
SectarianSofa
So does this mean we don’t get the Sharia Law? I was totally hoping we could get some Sharia going. Fuck it. I’m making some Turkish coffee. Someone turn out the lights on this motherfucker.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
It’s tricky, though, because healthcare costs were (and still are) an enormous drag on the economy. I can understand the logic of trying to fix it sooner rather than later since otherwise any recovery we had was going to be eaten up by healthcare costs.
It’s true, though, that it was a long-term fix for the economy and not the short-term fix that people were clamoring for.
Mayur
@FlipYrWhig:
By that logic, we’re done here. Time to move to another country.
In all seriousness: If that’s the realistic view of the situation, why stay with the sinking ship? Anyone have an idea?
Calliope Jane
@FlipYrWhig: Damn. No, no I can’t.
Well, that’s depressing. And it only works for republicans, and fuck I really hate these people, wearing their hate as a badge of honor.
Karen
@gene108: @gene108:
I think you hit upon the reason. The Republicans are the “mean girls” of the politcal world. They vote for the Republican mean girls in the hopes that it will make them cool and powerful. It’s fucking high school all over again.
Zuzu's Petals
God, just shoot me now.
gene108
@Mnemosyne: I tried pointing that out to her, but when unemployment kept jumping up and she found the job market to be worse than it was in 1980 or anything she’s seen in 30+ years. I bet a lot of less informed voters were thinking the same thing about why the Democrats weren’t worrying about unemployment.
If you want to look at where the Obama messaging came undone, it was not having a clear cut plan or agenda. Reagan always had “government is the problem.”
He had some policies, which he wanted to pass, but the ends were all that mattered. There wasn’t any sort of philosophical underpinning for people to get behind.
Couple that with a lack of direct focus on trying to do more in 2009, to stop the job losses, and I don’t think you have anything for voters to emotionally get behind.
ruemara
@Mayur:
Too broke to move. SATSQ.
gene108
@Karen: I agree. There’s a certain bully’s mentality that many die-hard Republican supporters seem to have…which I guess means a certain percentage of Americans wants America to be a bully…would help explain a lot of things America does, especially with regards to foreign policy…
Cain
@Mnemosyne:
The problem though was that it doesn’t take effect in a number of years so it’s not really helping towards whatever recovery is going now. So it looked like they were wasting time with healthcare. Now, I believe healthcare is important. In polls on in phone town hall meetings (awesome stuff) healthcare was second to the economy and jobs. So in Oregon, I knew it was an important thing to have.
I can’t say much for the others. But as soon as some republicans lose all their money on healthcare costs maybe that will break the bubble. I don’t know.. People in america are easily flimflamed.
cain
Rebecca
@James E. Powell:
To be fair, Oshkosh usually skews semi-Republican when it comes to these things. Tom Petri’s been in office for ten-fifteen years, minimum.
(That being said, WISCONSIN I AM DISAPPOINT. What the hell is that Republican douche who was in all the TV commercials when I was visiting my mom over the summer doing in Russ Feingold’s senate seat? I have never been so glad to be living in CA.)
urbanmeemaw
@Spaghetti Lee:
Sorry, but no, RandLand totally sucks. America just took a giant Brawndo break.
Harry Whittington
That’s not funny!
Thef79
To me, the biggest underdiscussed number is the old-young vote. In 2008 the under 30 vote was 18% of the electorate and the over 65 was 16%. In 2010 it was 10% young folks and 24% old folks. Despite the babbling hordes on tv, it seems like this is the real story: the GOP scared the oldtimers into voting en masse, while dems did not do the same with the youth vote.
morzer
@Thef79:
It’s actually a pretty normal pattern for the midterms.
jinxtigr
@Violet: “The big thing now is for the Dems to figure out how to make sure it’s clear the Republicans are obstructionist, do-nothing liars who only want to hurt the country”
Ooooh, that’s tough.
It only looks hard when you want to do it overnight for PR purposes. When these people’s stated plan is to do exactly that, it’s a lot less hard. Bear in mind that the primary victims of this are the teabaggers themselves, who are not exactly young, rich or healthy.
It’s true that there’s huge irony in them depending so heavily on the very social network their leaders want to torch, but that’s not just an abstract concept. To a large extent they’ll get their lack of government help, to a large extent they will be too stubborn and proud and angry to turn to community resources (expect their churches to take on some of that) and so a lot of these people are going to die like third world peasants of easily preventable things.
As they wanted, except they wanted black people and Mexicans to die that way.
The reason we’re pushing this progressive agenda so hard is that it makes SENSE- our current system’s absolutely falling apart due to corporate looting, outright capture of the legislative thing, and a longterm ‘sustainable’ agenda set by Wall Street and tantamount to salting the earth.
Quite a lot of wealthy and powerful interests have found out that technically they can squeeze every last bit of money out of the remains of this country, and are doing exactly that, and they’re nearing the endgame. Expect many areas in teabaggerland to resemble New Orleans but without the justification of a flood- just wreckage, then big lumps of kudzu, sometimes with a corpse inside.
Why don’t you ask a hundred thousand dead Iraqi civilians if we deserve this. Face it- if you lump the whole country together as everybody seems to do, then we do deserve what this will bring us.
I’ve got friends in wingnutistan. They don’t deserve this. I hope they get out alive, but I’m sure I’m going to lose some of them, and that sucks.
But if we can keep ‘America’ from slaughtering ANOTHER major middle eastern country beginning with ‘I’, well, I for one will count that a serious fucking victory. We can’t save ourselves, not completely, but I really think we can stave off another genocide committed in our names.