Far be it from me to deprive the national news media their ability to drum up hysterical psycho-drama every waking moment of the day, but I thought that I might offer a few good reasons to cast a bit of doubt on the dire predictions of the smarmy, gossipy Washington press corps so eloquently embodied in Dana Millbank and others. And while I fully understand that I have no voice on the national level, I thought I’d give you a few good reasons to be less amazed than they will profess to be come the end of this latest election cycle:
#5: Just because your “agin” one Party does not make you “fer” another:
Its hard to believe I actually need to say this out loud, but I will: just because I’m pissed at a Democrat does not mean I will vote for a Republican. There has to be a reason to believe that the Republican will do better, which as I will address below, is dubious at best right now. As fun as the media finds it to refer to the people who watch their shows and pay their salaries as “pitchfork-wielding,” knuckle-dragging thugs, the fact is that most of us do not even own pitchforks in the first place. Those of us who do probably have better uses for them. You know, because we think for ourselves.
#4: The Republican capacity to self-immolate.
Republicans had things pretty locked up in Arizona. That is, until Sharon Angle won the nomination there. Now Reid is up by 7. That is, despite a completely upside-down approval rating for Reid in his state. With other winners like Rand Paul and the rest of the Katzenjammer Kids, we can have at least some faith in the Republicans ability to mess this up. And indeed, it is a standard trait of the non-incumbent party that they tend to play Keystone Cops until such time as they simply cannot help but be more attractive than the incumbent party.
From apologies to BP to declaring the inscrutable “Repeal and Replace” agenda for both HCR and now Fin Reg, to describing the financial crisis as an “ant,” to telling the unemployed to just “get a job,” its hard to imagine how Democrats could do a better job of painting the Republicans as out-of-touch. Worse for Republicans, the outlandishly misguided behavior is not atypical, but rather reinforces classic stereotypes of the Republican Party that have traditionally hung their chances out to dry when the issue is the economy. That makes a lot of people’s stomachs hurt when it comes time to actually vote for Republicans.
#3: The Low Turnout Myth
There is no doubt but that turnout can be expected to be lower than it was in the last election. Count on the media to point that out relentlessly, regardless of who wins what, as proof that their analysis is right. But if the last election was a record-setting election – it was – and if turnout in mid-terms is generally lower than in presidential elections – it is – then predicting that turnout will be lower is not exactly the stuff of sages. And I fully expect that the turnout, while lower than the presidential election of 2008, will likely be higher than it was in the previous mid-term election.
Because while we know that mid-terms get less attention, generally, this is not one of those general years. This is not a year when people get to just kick back and be happy with their jobs and wrap Christmas presents. Things are serious and serious-minded people will come out to vote.
Another classic canard of the national news media – one which on its face is self-negating – is that because turnout is low, mid-term elections are both dominated by Conservative voters and also an opportunity for a “protest vote.” The extent to which this concept is true is the extent to which Conservative voters “protest” Liberal and Democratic administrations and no farther. One or the other has to be true, or they’re both false.
Finally, while there’s every reason to think that some people who are angry over the current state of the economy – as distinct from Conservative voters who are just extra angry for their own reasons – will want to “protest” the current administration and Congress, they’ll have to step beyond the blogs, the comments, the FaceBook posts, the cameras, the televisions, the radios, the brave talk at the water cooler and step into that curiously quiet and disquieting space known as a voting booth and actually pull the lever. Which leads me to the next point:
#2: No plan, no vote.
Protest is one thing. But no one disputes the fact that our nation is in a precarious spot right now. This is not the time to simply throw the lever against the incumbent party and feel better about yourself. Polls are showing that Americans generally favour experience over fresh faces – a fact that works better for Dems *after* the 2008 than before it. People are paying very close attention to the news and election politics right now because they need to make what most anyone sees as a very important decision at a very risky time. And when they’re in that booth, what good reason is there to vote in a Republican?
Because the Republicans have shown no new messages, no plan and much worse, absolutely no leadership in the last year and a half. There is absolutely no reason to think that we will do anything other than return to the exact same position we were in on November of 2008 if we put the same party back into power.
#1: America digs a winner
To complain about the “obstructionist” non-incumbent party is a means of applying political pressure. To complain about an incumbent party that “won’t listen to our ideas” is just whining. That was as true for Democrats as it currently is for Republicans. In order to show that you can lead, you have to win something. Right now, Republican wins are few and far between whereas the Democrats are on fire with some of the biggest legislation ever passed in my lifetime. You don’t have to like it to see that they’re winning. And winning is a powerful thing in American politics.
Democrats were able to bring the Bush Agenda to a slow, creaking halt around 2005. And they won big in 2006. By 2008, it wasn’t just that the country was in a dire situation, but rather that Republicans seemed completely ill-equiped to provide an answer that did them in. So far, Republicans have yet to have the same types of successes with the Democratic agenda. If anything, they’ve whipped up a lot of nasty, racist, belligerent protest to the Democratic agenda that dragged the HCR debates well past their welcome… and then lost, anyway.
No plan, no wins, a nasty case of foot-in-mouth and a lot of hasty assumptions about how people will vote do not necessarily add up to a winning strategy. Plan on hearing the phrase “The Republicans snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” quite a lot by December. That’s not because they really did so badly, but because pundits so completely and intentionally misjudged what is about to happen. Certainly, Democrats will loose seats. Certainly, Republicans will crow about the victories. But the needle won’t have moved appreciably in this next election.
One final point of purely meta, purely Monday Night Football-ish kind of analysis: this is not 1994 by any measure. In 1994, Democrats had controlled Congress almost consistently for twenty years, were riddled with House scandals, were completely dysfunctional and “suffering” from a perfectly good economy where Republicans could play on greed. Republicans meanwhile had a very organized team and a “Contract With America,” which for all the silliness inherent in that title, was at least a well-laidout set of policy agenda. Democrats currently have no serious scandals brewing, have not had time to become unwelcome as a ruling Party and are very well orga-…. well, bad example.
What the hell is going on in the 23rd? Here we have a district which hasn’t been a Democratic district since the Civil War – when the Democratic Party was the Conservative choice – and we’ve got the whole country up in arms over the results? Trust me: any way the primary turns out, it’ll be a Republican in the 23rd. I’m a big fan of game-day statistics.
So, that’s the big disappointment for Dems. What’s the deal with Republicans? Why is it important to Fred Thompson – whose own presidential aspirations seemed to be such a bore to him – or Sarah Palin – whose gubernatorial responsibilities proved equally tiresome? Is the Baby Jesus scheduled to be born in Watertown? Is Sam Waterson making a movie in Massena?
And the media. The 23rd is a staunch member of the “fly-over” community of which the media is rarely aware. But suddenly, the opinions of residents in sleepy little Speculator are of monumental import. They must be so proud.
Or is the business of reforming health care – and in the case of Republicans, losing that battle – what has become so tiresome?
Jo Meleca-Voigt flagged this one on FaceBook. The D&C’s Jill Terreri reports on the Independence Party and its workings. The Independence Party rarely runs it’s own candidates for anything, but rather raises money for candidates whom it endorses as a second party. This is a very lucrative and sought-after endorsement.
Of course these days, candidates aren’t even putting their primary party affiliation on their placards or television commercials, so how’s anyone supposed to know about this secondary endorsement? Seems like the kind of thing that can lead to abuse….
Huffington Post editor Nico Pitney is live-blogging the newest spark of tension in Iran today. Oh, boy, here we go again. Wish the protesters and the people of Iran a safe, lasting and happy ending to their plight:
Iran Uprising Blogging: Latest Updates.
The governor of South Carolina poked some chick in Argentina. Oh yes. And they’re hacking people up with axes in Iran.
In case it seems important to anyone outside the media.
Again, just reacting to what I’m watching on TV this morning. Mitt Romney, the brain trust of the Republican Party, is on This Week. He repeats what so many other Republicans say when posed the question, “you’re losing young people; you’re losing the Hispanic vote; you’re losing well-educated voters. What do you do to change all that?”
His canned response, “well, what you don’t do is change your principles.”
Well, actually, you do. If you’re losing Hispanic votes, you probably want to cool it on the xenophobe tip, encouraging minutemen and advocating for a huge, ugly wall along the border. If you’re losing young voters, you probably want to ease up on attacking their gay friends with whom they grew up. If you’re losing educated voters, you may want to adopt a more rigorous standard for scientific principles and party platform than the current standard, “what does the bible say?”
Seriously. You change your principles.
I just can’t keep my eyes off the Iranian election. It’s fascinating, mostly because it’s hard to know where all the forces at work in this most fascinating of elections come from.
And so, with a profound lack of knowledge on Iranian affairs, I present my unordered list of questions I have no answers to.
Is the clerical power center encouraging the opposition parties in this election? Dissent is not often encouraged in Iran and no Iranian leader has lost his gig as fast as Ahmadinejad might be. Is this an expression of Iran’s leadership’s dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad?
OK, if this is a legitimate social movement – and even if it isn’t – can the leadership pull some funny business with the vote and pull the country from the brink? Would they want to do that? What would be the reaction of all these hopeful young people of Ahmadinejad wins? What would be the reaction if there is a suggestion that the election is rigged?
And I hate to ask it, but is there a possibility of violence at the end of this election? There’s a lot of emotion already in a country where elections are traditionally moments when the leadership legitimizes itself.
I guess we’ll know at least the answers to a few of these questions by lunch time, tomorrow. Richard Engle was on Rachel Maddow’s show this evening saying that the voting and counting is predicted to happen fast. We’ll see.
Poor li'l Emo. . .
Much has been made of John McCain’s new ad campaign, which describes Barack Obama as a “Celebrity” and compares him to Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears. Barack himself chose to address this campaign, albeit tangentially, in MO today. Josh Marshall and a host of Liberal bloggers have picked up on this new gambit as a means to a white girls/black guys scare tactic ala the attacks on Harold Ford. And since the media is showing McCain’s ads more than McCain is, I guess there’s no harm in linking to it here:
So, perhaps I lack nuance. But really, even if what they intended to do was paint Obama as a nigga with a taste for white ass, is that what they’ve accomplished? I never thought about this ad like that even once. My impression was: “are we voting for President of the United States or of the Death Cab for Cutie Fan Club?”
Because this ad is the pissing-est, moaning-est, most emasculated pile of crap I’ve ever seen in a presidential election cycle. It’s not “withering” as someone recently described the ad, if by withering you mean damaging to Obama; it is as though they video taped John McCain’s balls shrinking into infinity. If the best defense you can come up with against a popular figure is, “oh, he’s sooooo popular! Why don’t you just marry him?” you should probably pack your Depends and call it a day.
And to follow this gelding display with a lame “tax and spend liberal” line, as though you didn’t notice the entire tenor of this campaign is better than that, just makes things worse.
Don’t get me wrong: there is a specific and significant strain of anti-elite, anti-celebrity sentiment that, when properly tapped into, can be the death-knell of any successful campaign. There is a way to cut into a candidate by making him look like the “popular” kid everybody hated in school. Or the rich kid. John Kerry and para-sailing come to mind.
But this ain’t it. This is just pathetic.
Great news for Jon Powers (whom I was supposed to meet with last night, which didn’t happen for personal reasons). The embattled NRCC Chairman and scandal-monger Tom Reynolds has announced he will be retiring. That leaves the seat wide open, no incumbency issues for Jon Powers to deal with, in a political environment which has thus far swung in the direction of Democrats.
The Daily Politics – NY Daily News
But the recent NRCC fraud scandal – some of which took place on his watch – has made his re-election effort that much more difficult in an already tough year (increasingly Democratic state, presidential election etc).
Were he to run, this would be the second election-year scandal in a row for Reynolds. The first, of course, was the Mark Foley page debacle.
