Everyone seems to want to make yesterday's elections seem like a precursor, an omen and a bad one for Democrats -- at least everyone who gets paid to make a ratings-generating ruckus. I'm not sure what it proves other than that third party candidates have little credibility, have no coat tails to ride on and don't benefit from party loyalty even when the party's big guns are saluting him.
"I believe America is turning the page to a new dawn"said Hoffman. It's easy to say his metaphors are mixed and I think almost as easy to believe the chances of the Freakazoid Right for a comeback are too.
The message seems pretty clear to me. The Beck-Limbaugh-teabagger-fundamentalist school of paranoid crazy is what's killing conservatism in this country. Hoffman embraced that tendency and lost what nearly everybody thought was a sure win. McDonnell in Virginia downplayed the fundie "social issues" and ran as a moderate, and won.
ReplyDeleteNow watch the right wing tie itself in knots trying to extract exactly the opposite lesson.
Good post title.
Captain, I am glad you posted on this (I started one last night but fell asleep ... zzzz).
ReplyDeleteMy take on this one: The tea baggers came out in force to advance their own agenda, but the good citizens of the 23rd District (like democommie) decided to ignore the carpetbaggers and vote their own interests.
Hoffman's mixed metaphor caught my attention:
""I believe America is turning the page to a new dawn."
Those mixed metaphors are a dime a dozen. Maybe this one is more fitting for the occasion:
"He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something."
I am no political pundit but what I see with Bloomberg barely squeeking out a win, the narrow loss of Corzine and the Hoffman phenom is that Americans are rising up and against the moneyed elites and the powers that be.
ReplyDeleteBarack Obams still polls as a popular president by 54% of the population which in light of the money, hype, and mud that has been thrown at him since his election that is a pretty awesome record!
Now, when you ask people about particular policies and or positions the polls drop but alot of that has to do with the fact that Americans are commenting against the bailout, the current healthcare reform...
Basically Americans want the President to CHANGE Washington and they want to see their government do things for THEM rather than just for special interests...
Hoffman was seen as a pawn of special interests...and lets be truthful, Armey, Beck, Palin, and that whole bunch is a well funded special interest...
I was already assailed at lunch today with people sure that this was a personal defeat for Obama and a wholesale rejection of reform.
ReplyDeleteI'm still wary of reading too much into it, but maybe TAO is right and maybe there is some fatigue with the extremist right.
Glad someone picked up on the title ;-)
My all-time favorite mixed political metaphor? Well, my vote goes to one about the Middle East peace process: "The road map to peace is dead in the water." I have been chuckling about that one ever since I heard it; just can't get it out of my head.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, it seems to this simple dinosaur that yesterday's results suggest a few things:
First, that people are very upset and anxious about the economy, and probably don't trust anything or anybody on the subject. Can't say that I blame them: this is not business as usual, yet there seems to be a disjunction between the way the federal gov. is treating the dreadful economic situation and the way ordinary citizens feel about it deep down. How come certain entities are still getting away with charging absurd interest rates on credit card balances? It's difficult not to be cynical about such things. The problem should have been dealt with right away.
Second, while President Obama is personally popular -- everyone with a functioning brain knows he's intelligent and capable, not some privileged jackass who stumbled backwards into the position -- people are still in a wait-and-see mode with regard to the big accomplishments they have been hoping for. We have become "the 'show me' nation." Such an attitude easily turns into brittle, empty stylization (a substitute for genuine reflection), but for the present it's understandable.
It's understandable because, if I read the situation rightly, a lot of people have been turned off by the administration's initial emphasis on maintaining "bipartisanship" with a pack of suit-bearing thugs who care not a whit about the welfare of their fellow citizens. Correctly or otherwise, it's easy to read this emphasis as stemming from timidity or even compromised ethics.
When the Demos learn that people admire other people who stand up for what they believe in rather than constantly apologizing for it or showing an unseemly willingness to compromise, they will be able to maintain some respect.
If reasonably strong health care reform passes, I think Obama will be on a fine roll after that -- it would be a genuine accomplishment that benefits the country, and would hush up a lot of his critics for a time.
Capt....remember the Wizard of Oz?
ReplyDeleteThat is what the reactionary right is....all that massive wall of sound that you hear is coming from mice!
Just look at NY 23 like a sane human being. Traditionally Republican, last house member was republican and he quit to join the Obama Administration..then during the run off the reactionary right (Beck, Palin, Armey, Rush, et al.,) and go off and pump a bunch of money and make a bunch of noise for Hoffman...so now the first democrat takes the seat since the days of Grant...
If Corzine had not been associated with Wall Street he probably would have won (remember, this is their first election since the meltdown).
Bloomberg spent $170 per NYC voter to win his reelection and he was running against a literal nobody...and he barely won!
Virginia did what Virginia normally does in an off year election...
Absolutely no earth shattering news happened last night and absolutely none of the results should be a surprise...
The only fascinating fact is that even after all the money being pumped into these various flybynight attack groups and the 24/7 attacks on Obama by cable news he still is holding on to a 54% popularity rating in recent polls...
Oh, and the last gay rights march in Washington drew more marchers than the way over hyped tea bag event a few weeks earlier...
If the gays can march tens of thousands of more people on Washington and get absolutely nothing changed then why do you believe that these paid hacks of the tea baggers represent anything serious?
Good Lord, they are paying senior citizens on medicare to rant about socialized medicine!
Tao,
ReplyDeleteMice? Hmmmmm .... but mice are WAY more intelligent than the reactionary right. Cuter, too. Come to think of it, the slugs in my garden are more intelligent than the reactionary right.
Seriously, though, I would agree that the results have been overblown. As I mentioned earlier, if good health care reform passes (and the Democrats take further measures to alleviate economic distress), they should do just fine in 2010. If they do neither of those things, it's pretty hard to see how they won't be taken to task on election day.
Let me add one more thought: Unrealistic expectations. I think folks have a tendency to expect too much too soon without forethought ... especially in view of the fact that Obama is up to his eyeballs in anchovies. If Republicans were cephalopods, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
ReplyDeleteWhat most Democrats fail to understand, which pretty much puts them in the same class as the Republicans is that you cannot have an event, like our financial meltdown, that has affected each and everyone of us personally, and assume that the old political ways of doing things is going to work in the future.
ReplyDeleteThe past is dead and CHANGE is on its way...remember, the stock market crash occurred in 1929 and by the time FDR hit the scence in 1932 the public had a whole lot more time to digest what had occurred.
We are still adjusting to the aftermath of the events of 2008 and it will be a couple of years before the full effect of what occurs dawns on us...but rest assured the CHANGE will be more government not less...and more "socialism"
29 years of blindness to the imbalances of supply side economics takes a while to adjust to but the days of wild west greed are over...
The teabaggers want to believe that they represent a 'new' force in politics but actually history books will end up painting them as the last hoorah of a failed concept.
Jeesh, TAO! We got the point!(just kidding!) I hate when that happens, but usually it's only two repeats - don't think I've seen a fiver before. ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I believe you are correct; despite all the shouting and wet tea lumps, change is coming and it will be with the people, not the politicians. Although I think we will be changing them out, too.
As for these local/regional elections? I think one side wants to read too much into it and the other would like to ignore it.
I have found over the years that local and regional politics are carried out somewhat differently than when you are voting on DC representatives whether president, senator or US representative.
You find more personal considerations than political ones at the local level and even somewhat at the regional level.
My state of NC usually votes for a democratic governer but almost always votes Republican on a national level. This last presidential election was the first time we had gone blue since Carter. So, while I think Dems ought to sit up and pay attention, I don't think this is some kind of death knell for this administration.
What will bring down the house is a)not having a decent health care reform bill signed and b)not getting the economy back on track.
The events in the next year are going to be critical to the Obama administration.
I've been away but came back to this delightful news.
ReplyDeleteOr as Atrios over at Eschaton would say "This is good news for the conservatives!"
Apparently over at the blog "Red State," they're playing it as a tremendous victory!
The first Democrat to win this seat in 120 years, and the crazies see it as a victory?
Oh. We need to sing!
Would someone by so kind as to send me instructions on how to delete posts when ones computer decides to lock up at the same time one is pushing the post button? :)
ReplyDeleteThis is embarrassing...
I took out the duplicate - there was only one when I went into blogger but 5 on my email, so either someone else has removed some or only 2 actually showed up.
ReplyDeleteYou should be able to edit your comments if you go to the website from blogger dashboard.
It that right 8pus?
Me, me me. I was the one who tried to clean it up. How am I doin?.
ReplyDelete:~) I figured that you were probably hard at work scrubbing the walls of extraneous stuff, 8 pus.
ReplyDeleteI think we have it all fixed up now.
By the time I finally figure out all this blogging stuff everyone else will have moved on to something different...
ReplyDeleteGood evening to all:
ReplyDeleteI was at the local democratic headquarters last night (relocated to a local eaterydrinkery for the evening) as the results trickled in.
Listening to the media yesterday I was prepared for a loss by Owens and thinking, "Fuck, now WE'VE got a Bachmannbimbo in NY!". Then I saw the Sienna poll that showed 18% undecided and that cheered me up.
Hoffman's "concession" speech was, to say the least, eerie. He has the affect of Anthony Perkins in "Psycho". When he said he was "Ready to work with Bill Owens" I laughed out loud and said, "he might have to wait a while for that phone call."
I think Sister Sarah, Rushbo and the rest of that flea circus on the reichwing snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Bill Owens thanked, personally, Dede Scozzafava for supporting him. She's dead to the GOP, of course, but if she wants to stay in place as the state legislator from her district I think she might just switch parties. She is liked and respected (and this is not an overnight conversion) by her constituents and most of the dem pols that I talked to.
Hoffman is, I hope, considering a well deserved retirement from the rigors of campaigning; he's got the charisma of, as Capt. Fogg said about something else entirely, a dogshit taco.
Now, then. Please visit my blog, read the post about my young friend, a good cop, and spread the word. Thank you.
Here's how I parse Tuesday's results: the people voted for change. They are discontented by a bad economy, but rejected the wingnutery.
ReplyDeleteHoffman, it must be said, was the quintessential movement monster. As a strategy to draw national Republicans to the right, it was an utter and humiliating failure.
The Teabagger Fail I predicted in April is happening.