Election 2009

While Republicans continue holding up the governor races in Virginia and New Jersey as evidence of some sort of revitalization, other indicators have been overlooked – ones that show the Republicans, and the tea party movement in general, are not doing too well.

Remember back on Labor Day when there was a huge tea party rally here in Ohio? This happened in the heart of the reddest corner of the state of Ohio, and it’s an area you surely would think has become a teabagger Mecca. Well don’t be so quick on that:

The reign of the anti-school tax activists on area school boards was a short one.

One four-year term - starting with their taking office in January 2006 - and now voters decided last week that some of the region's highest profile activist board members are out.

Their one-and-done political trend was mainly focused in Greater Cincinnati's northern suburban districts, where four years ago an anti-school tax movement had grown to win enough voters to put like-minded candidates on the governing boards of a handful of Butler and Warren county school systems.

Fairfield School Board incumbent Arnie Engel, who tried four times to get elected to Fairfield Schools governing board before finally winning in fall 2005, this time finished a distant fourth in the race for three open seats.

In Warren County's Mason School Board race, self-proclaimed "Christian conservative" incumbent Jennifer Miller ended up fifth out of eight candidates vying for three seats.

In the Monroe school board race, fiscal conservative Mike Irwin lost his re-election bid, finishing dead last among five candidates.

Everyone of those school districts actually outline where that tea party was held. If all politics are still local, then news like this actually shows that the Republicans have a much tougher battle ahead than they are thinking

Steve Benen finds one of the most important lessons from Tuesday night:

Keep in mind, the two Republican statewide candidates who won this week -- Christie in New Jersey and McDonnell and Virginia -- wanted nothing to do with Palin, while the high profile conservative candidate who embraced Palin -- Doug Hoffman in NY23 -- lost in a district that hadn't elected a Democrat since the 19th century.

The big loser Tuesday night wasn’t Democrats, despite what the beltway and MSM try to tell you. Instead the biggest loser was Sarah Palin and all her little minions. Now if only the Democrats can realize that.

Yesterday TPM ran a story talking about how Tuesday’s election made healthcare reform just a “bit easier”. Here is the basic overview of that reasoning:

The NY-23 seat abdicated by Republican John McHugh (who resigned to become Secretary of the Army) went to Democrat Bill Owens--the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a century. And the CA-10 seat abdicated by Democrat Ellen Tauscher (who resigned to become Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs) went to Democrat John Garamendi.

That creates some simple arithmetic. Yesterday, Democrats had 256 voting members in the House. By week's end, they'll have 258. Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could afford to lose no more than 38 Democratic votes on a landmark health care reform bill. Next week, after Owens and Garamendi are sworn in, she can lose up to 40. For legislation this historic and far-reaching, she'll need every vote she can get--and both seem likely to support reform

Sadly this little celebratory post may have been premature. Democrats have never been good at reading the tea leafs, and that is becoming more evident as election 2009 fades further into history:

Democrats on Capitol Hill began a nervous debate Wednesday about the course President Obama has set for their party, with some questioning whether they should emphasize job creation over some of the more ambitious items on the president's agenda.

The conversations came as White House officials insisted that the party's gubernatorial defeats in Virginia and New Jersey had few implications for Obama's standing or for Democratic prospects in the 2010 midterm elections.

But moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt. Liberal lawmakers, meanwhile, said the party's shortcoming came in moving too slowly on health-care reform and other items that would satisfy a base becoming disenchanted with the failure to deliver rapid change in government.

As I posted yesterday the biggest failure of Creigh Deeds is that he ran against the Obama/Democratic agenda. This was an instant turnoff to the base that came out in overwhelming numbers last year and helped elect President Obama. It’s not that Obama wasn’t on the ballot –it’s that his agenda wasn’t.

Another failure has come in the way that Democrats have gone after healthcare reform. This country looses out on a lot of business because they have to fork out so much to insure employees. A perfect example is when Toyota decided to build a new plant in Ontario last year instead of their first choice of the United States. The big reason:

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

“Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

So we miss out on bringing business in because of the higher cost per employee companies have to face here.

This is where the Democrats have failed miserably on healthcare, and why they should have started with pushing universal coverage. Simply put, it plays into the possibility of creating far more jobs in the U.S.

Now we are stuck with spineless Democrats who are reading Tuesday’s results totally wrong and now could end up with no reform at all. It’s time for Democrats to stand on principal instead of listening to spin. It’s time for them to deliver on what they promised us last year.

As  I mentioned earlier, a major contributing factor to the huge loss Creigh Deeds suffered last night was from the fact that he ended up running against the Democratic agenda. Markos gives some needed warning to the Democrats on what happened last night:

Giving Republicans cover by stymying the reform agenda that won Democrats the 2006 and 2008 elections won't win them any conservative votes. In a base election, and 2010 will certainly be one, the party that better rallies its base will win. And abandoning the promises that got Democrats elected is a sure fire way to make sure that the activist base stays home and refuses to do the heavy lifting every campaign needs to win, and makes sure that less committed Democrats say "fuck it" and stay home on election night.

This is exactly what the Democrats have been doing this year, and healthcare is a shining example. Instead of starting out with a package that the left would have loved, something like universal coverage, the Democrats immediately started bowing to the Republicans and making healthcare less liberal. That was before the rightwing attacks could even start. Once they did then Democrats took even more out of the reform.

The Democrats need to remember who their base is, the people who will go out and knock on doors, man phone banks and most importantly – vote. The whole notion of bipartisanship gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling, like saying “a world without war”, but in reality it is just a fantasy. As soon as Democrats and the White House recognize this and stop bowing down to the party of 20%, then they will see their odds greatly improve in 2010 and beyond. Run like you did in 2008 and deliver on what you promise, then see what happens. I guarantee the results will be very pleasant to our side.

That is the new meme emerging following the two gubernatorial losses last night for Democrats. I seemed to have missed it where Obama was on the ballot, but that’s what all the talking heads want us to think.

Let’s take a look at Creigh Deeds and the Virginia race. Actually have a look at Think Progress and you will notice how Deeds made a sharp move to the right towards the end of the race. Moves like that won’t bring in any last minute voters, but it will certainly tell the more progressive crowd to just stay home, including those Obama voters.

Then we have a new message being pushed by the right saying that the Democrats should move “more towards the center'”. That’s an interesting angle considering the conservatives want the Republicans to move more towards the right. Sadly we can expect the Democratic leadership to heed this warning and do just that. They are already talking about moving health care reform until next year, and we know what that means. It will then be “well we got to worry about the midterms so let’s go ahead and put it off until 2011”.

The problem is that Democrats are gullible, and not just the elected ones but even the membership at large, including many in the progressive blogosphere. I have pointed out in the past how many Democrats seemed to drink the Kool-Aid that Obama is some uber-liberal, comparable to Ghandi light. Afghanistan is a perfect example of this. The left is acting like Obama has broken some promise by not pulling the troops out of Afghanistan, when he actually is doing what he campaigned on. Instead of listening to the candidate, the left chose to listen to the right wing talking points. This practice is very dangerous for any progressive movement.

The Democrats need to learn how to control the message. Until they can do that they will exist as puppets to the right. Falling for the new meme that the left must move towards the “center” is not a way of doing this.

Just reading Eric Erickson’s post on RedState trying to spin NY-23 into a great victory, I can’t help but notice his closing:

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

In other words they are going to teabag Charlie Crist next.

But that isn’t the only interesting thing in his post. For example:

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives. In 2008, many conservatives sat home instead of voting for John McCain. Now, in NY-23, conservatives rallied and destroyed the Republican candidate the establishment chose.

So if they didn’t vote for John McCain, what about the primaries? John McCain was chosen by the Republican electorate to be their nominee.

(Source: Wikipedia)

That’s an awful lot of green, which represents states voting for McCain. How did he pull it out over the conservatives when they have such a “strong base”, or did the conservatives decide not to even vote in the primaries?

Why the conservatives are championing around NY-23 is because they did have an impact. Of course this was in an off year, and that was the only congressional race. What will they do next year with hundreds of races to worry about?

Another thing to consider is what we will never know. What would have happened if Scozzafava didn’t drop out? Perhaps she would have siphoned off enough votes from Owens that Hoffman could have ended up winning. Then perhaps people like Erick could really celebrate today.

When there is a ton of finger pointing at the Democrats going on, it can only mean one thing – ELECTION DAY!

Earlier today, the Hoffman campaign and conservative bloggers threw a fit over a very nefarious accusation: That somebody had slashed the tire of a Hoffman poll-watcher's pickup truck.

"Hoffman Poll Watcher Has Tires Slashed," blared Red State, with photos of the truck and its flat tire. And Hoffman himself chimed in.

"We just had a report that one of our pollsters in Clinton County just had their tires slashed," Hoffman said. "So I think the Democrats are doing everything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd District."

However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the local police captain said there's another explanation: "This was not a tire slashing--this was some guy who drove over a bottle and cut his tire."

Does this remind anyone of Ashley Todd?

Again from NY-23:

We crunched the FEC contribution numbers this afternoon to discover that 95 percent of Hoffman’s donations came from individuals and PACs based outside of the district. (Hoffman himself doesn’t even live in NY-23.) Only $12,360 of the $265,341 he’s raised came from potential constituents. Hoffman collected money from donors in 35 states. Of the total 146 donors, only 22 were actually from within the district he hopes to represent. The campaign’s biggest backer is the Washington-based Club for Growth, accounting for more than one-third of all fundraising ($83,260).

So only 5% of the money he raised was actually from people he would represent. Like I always said – it’s not a democracy, it’s an auction. This just cements that notion in stone.

It was just a year ago we kept hearing news of John McCain using famous songs for his campaign without the express written permission of the copyright holder. It seems like that practice is trickling down through the ranks of the GOP and now we have New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie as the latest culprit:

Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for Governor of New Jersey in Tuesday's knife-edge gubernatorial election, has been called out as a copyright thief. The 47-year-old lawyer, who was controversially appointed by George W. Bush as a U.S. Attorney in 2001 on Karl Rove's recommendation after being a top Bush fund-raiser in the 2000 election, has created an election commercial that steals copyright-protected material from British comedy troupe Monty Python -- without permission or credit.

As an interesting sidebar, Christie has been a practicing attorney for 22 years and still decided he was above the law. Monty Python isn’t backing down though:

Monty Python's Terry Jones says that the troupe is strongly considering suing the Republican for his copyright infringement:

Hopefully the people of New Jersey will make an informed decision tomorrow when heading to the polls. I don’t think they want a thief sitting in the Governor’s mansion.

I believe this news is a perfect example of my “sliding scale” of political parties I discussed in my previous post. A lot will try and claim that Scozzafava made this decision out of malice against people like Palin, but I believe it isn’t that simple.

Scozzafava was more to the right on fiscal issues, while being more to the left on social issues. For example, Scozzafava supported the Bush tax cuts, yet supported gay marriage and reproductive rights. By having two other candidates from opposite sides of the political spectrum, she was able to chose which candidate best represented her views. In this case that pushed her to the left with Bill Owens.

Now this doesn’t make the race a certainty for Owens – its still anyone's game. What it does do is give him a little boost, but this close to Election Day makes it really hard to capitalize off of it.

And even if you don’t agree with my political theory here, one thing is for certain – this is like cocaine to political junkies. We generally don’t see this kind of action in normal elections, but these special elections always open us up to bigger side shows.

I have used this quote before, but it bares repeating:

The validity of this quote by our first President came to mind while reading the reactions from the news that Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate for NY-23, has suspended her campaign. The most interesting and pertinent reaction came from Newt Gingrich:

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

What Gingrich is describing there is something becoming far to common in politics today. Instead of letting the people who would be represented by that candidate make the decision, you now got people exerting pressure from all over the country – even people who never been to a district like NY-23.

This is a major problem for the right. The far right is pushing out the moderates, effectively shrinking the size of their tent. Instead of embracing the ideals of the people, they are trying to force the people to embrace the ideals of the few. This is no recipe for success if the GOP wants to regain control.

As long as we are stuck with having parties we need more than one to maintain checks and balances within the halls of Congress. To insure that we need to break away from a two-party system. Perhaps there is a silver lining to what is happening in NY-23. Maybe we will see the start of a split that will give us a Conservative Party and a Republican Party, then that momentum could move to the left and give us a Democratic Party and a Liberal Party. While the Conservative and Liberals would not likely come up with anything together, we could quiet possibly see legislation supported by Republicans and Liberals or Democrats and Conservatives.

Having a system like this would be a big win for America. The two party monopoly we have in politics today would cease to exist and the need to try and garner support from the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum would be no more. We would have a sliding scale instead of teeter-totter when it comes to legislation. It would also keep pressure on each party to keep with their base ideals. Having equally powerful parties on each side of the more common Republican and Democratic parties would force those members to stay more within the confines of their party.

For this too work though it would have to be a consensus amongst both our current parties. If just one party splits up then their chances of ever regaining control would become extinct. Both parties would have to decide to split at the same time. Sadly that is something we won’t see without a national initiative to start it. Big donors withholding money and the grassroots joining forces to push the issue. That would choke off the current two parties and force them to listen to ‘we the people’.