Hill Dems. don't want to vote on Dem. agenda

Members of Congress ask us to support them because they claim to share our values and our agenda. Then, they win -- and they whine and moan when we actually expect them to pass the agenda they promised during the campaign. According to The Hill,several Democrats are actively trying to ditch the Democratic agenda:

Vulnerable House and Senate Democrats want their leaders to skip the party?s controversial legislative agenda for next year to help save their seats in Congress.

In the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections, they don?t want to be forced to vote on climate change, immigration reform and gays in the military, which they say should be set aside so Congress can focus on jobs and the economy.

Got that? Key Democratic constituencies (environmentalists, Latinos and gays) = "controversial legislative agenda." So, here's the question: Why should we support any Democrats who throw us under the bus? Trying winning elections without environmentalists, Latinos and gays. Try it.

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Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

How do you apply for the position of "pundit" and "sage"? The easiest way is to misread the lessons of a special election, and then write about it for a major newspaper. Warning: the least thought out and most incorrect columns will take a day or so more to write.

Dan Balz:

Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It's not 2008 anymore

Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorates in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 coalition and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year's midterm elections.

That's especially true if you run away from the Democrats and the President, who did just as well in the exit poll as he did in the election of 2008. So maybe it is still 2008 if you're Obama, and maybe Deeds doesn't represent 2008.

See Balz, who covers his bases with

Tuesday's elections provided the first tangible evidence that Republicans can win their support with the right kind of candidates and the right messages. That is an ominous development for Democrats if it continues unabated into next year. But Republicans could squander that opportunity if they demand candidates who are too conservative to appeal to the middle.

If?

NYT:

Democrats won a special election in New York State’s northernmost Congressional district Tuesday, a setback for national conservatives who heavily promoted a third candidate in what became an intense debate over the direction of the Republican Party.

While Republicans celebrate VA, they implode in NY.

Ruth Marcus writing in Balz' paper:

Advice to readers about the coming orgy of analysis about the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: Ignore it. Disquisitions on The Meaning of It All for President Obama or the 2009 results as a harbinger for Congress in 2010 have scant basis in reality.

Oops. How did that column slip in?

EJ Dionne:

No one expects that young voters will be as excited by this year’s election (or by next year’s midterms) as they were by Obama’s own candidacy. But Democrats are more dependent on young voters than ever before – something I wrote about earlier this fall. Virginia should bring home to them the imperative of mobilizing the millennials with more than just a nice ad toward the end of a campaign.

Maureen Dowd:  

In those days, [Rush Limbaugh] called himself a "harmless little fuzzball." He’s a lot less harmless now. I went on to columny, as my pal Bill Safire called it, and Rush went on to calumny.

As he and Sarah Palin conduct their auto-da-fé of moderate Republicans — "Moderates by definition have no principles," he told his radio audience on Monday — Limbaugh is more than ever the face of his party, as Rahm Emanuel said.

He’s also the mouth.

Final word goes to Harold Meyerson:

Republicans can claim shouting rights in Virginia and New Jersey, and the Democrats have picked up that furiously contested House seat in northern New York state (which gives the Democrats 49 House members and the Republicans two in America’s northeast corner -- New England and New York). But there can be no joy on Wall Street. The two aging financial whiz kids on tonight’s ballots -- former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine and Bloomberg’s Michael Bloomberg -- seriously underperformed.

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Grab bag: elections and stuff

After every election, it’s just like McDonald’s selling hamburgers, pundits are going[...]

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Wednesday Morning Science Supplement

Wednesday Morning Science Supplement is an Open Thread27 Story Final.From Yahoo News Science1 Obama urges action as Europe ups pressure on USby Michael Mathes, AFP1 hr 1 min agoWASHINGTON (AFP) - US President Barack Obama stood shoulder to shoulder with[...]

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Mike's Blog Roundup

Runnin' Scared: Hoffman concedes in NY 23, but the Tea Baggers are still eager to burn down the GOP pup tent

darrel plant: Populist campaigns are a barometer of how difficult the times are, and if you think things are bad now, wait until you hear a politician comparing himself (or herself) to Huey Long.

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: Cramer 'buy' recommendation goes bankrupt

his vorpal sword: The Secret Masters: Freedom Works and their Oregon franchises

AlterNet: Meet the 28 (male) anti-choice Dems who are stalling health care reform

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: The Daily Censored, Unemployed and Trying, The Immoral Minority, Mark Of The Beast

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http://crooksandliars.com/mike-finnigan/mikes-blog-roundup-336

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2008 Electorate: East and South Asian Americans,
Diverse and Growing

The national exit polls showed nearly two-thirds of those identifying themselves as Asian voted for[...]

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Two-thirds of a vacuum filled

Body

White House senior adviser David Axelrod perhaps framed it best, and if not best, at least with admirable economy: "The real story here is, I think this thing is ambiguous."

That of course is true, yet the pregnant downsides to last night's elections -- in addition to the media's growing narrative of President Obama's lack of one -- outweighed, no doubt, the positives for Obama's larger agenda. And in politics it's always more prudent to internally analyze one's weaknesses and the opposition's strengths rather than celebrate whatever success has been had.

Such as Democrat Bill Owens' victory over Conservative Doug Hoffman, whose most uplifting scene was surely this, as reported this morning by the Times: "Mr. Hoffman spoke to a deflated crowd of about 50 in a hotel ballroom here soon after midnight."

Just where, Ms. Palin and Messrs. Armey and Beck, is the far-right hoopla now? On the other hand, Owens failed to gain a plurality, so I doubt he'll be shopping for real estate in Washington, D.C. anytime soon. His district remains staunchly Republican, even though, momentarily, it was converted by lobotomized freaks into a wretched freak show of the lowest unibrow.

So, all things considered, out of New York came the good news. The race's freakishness will be analyzed for weeks, but in brief it seems that Hoffman & Co. was a conservative bridge too far. But not so, obviously, in New Jersey and Virginia.

There, the customary off-year demographic plague hit: African-American voters, as well as younger and thus first-time voters -- those who were so responsible for propelling Obama and larger Democratic majorities into office a year ago -- simply failed to show. But, as noted, that's rather typical. Old, cranky, white folks tend to dominate off-year elections. Hello, 2010.

What was unsettling, therefore, was how independents broke (a trend also significant in the Hoffman race, even though he lost). "Independent voters," observed the Times, "who in New Jersey favored the president in 2008 and in Virginia split between Mr. Obama and John McCain, delivered strong margins for both Mr. Christie [in New Jersey] and Mr. McDonnell [in Virginia]."

True, there were commanding local and regional reasons as to why these election-determining independents broke Republican; but the fact remains, they did -- and virtually on the heels of what was soberly interpreted as a realignment in 2008.

The White House, of course, will focus intensely on the regional nature of these races, but that cannot, and will not, explain them in their totality -- especially New Jersey's, in which an incumbent Democratic governor, sitting in a royal blue state, and for whom Obama made multiple appearances, lost to a grossly outspent Republican.

What's more, or rather what's worse, is what Adam Nagourney observed this morning and what I've fretted about for several days: "That [center-right independent] swing will certainly be noted by moderate Congressional Democrats facing re-election next year, who may now be more reluctant to support Mr. Obama on tough votes in Congress."

I can assure you with exceptional confidence that there is no one this morning in the White House's political office or Democratic Congressional leadership who is high-fiving much of anything about yesterday's results. On balance, they were a disaster.

Yes, a Democrat eked out a victory in New York, further reducing the GOP's northeast presence. Yet there may be some uncomfortable element of truth in this: "I would say it?s the tip of the spear," said Dick Armey, several days ago, about NY-23.

And don't expect yesterday to dampen his zeal for long. A close loss can, after a little recuperation, energize even more than success -- and he wasn't merely puffing when he added, "We are the biggest source of energy in American politics today."

For sure, the tea partyers aren't, and FreedomWorks isn't, and certainly Sarah Palin's Facebook page is and shall remain a political joke -- but all lie within a general mood of national frustration and disgruntlement just waiting to be exploited. The Hoffman-converts, and in particular non-ideological independents who cast their votes his way, are but one variable in a political vacuum being filled.

The year 2010 is still light years away, so it's impossible to extrapolate with any real precision what yesterday's results will mean down the road. But one thing, at least, should be blisteringly clear to Beltway Democrats: They have failed to capitalize on last year's historic election.

 

Read The Full Article:
http://blog.buzzflash.com/carpenter/536

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Early Morning Swim: Election Roundup

Oh noes! The teabaggers lose again!!! So did Sarah Palin. GOP takes back VA; wins in NJ. Democrat wins GOP district in CA. Bloomberg back in NYC. Gay marriage repealed in Maine. But wins in Washington. Nate has the analysis.[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/11/04/early-morning-swim-election-roundup/

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Good times on Wall Street - $117.6 billion set
aside for bonuses

And the year isn't even over yet. Ahh yes, lessons learned starting with "let them rot and go bankrupt next time." As important as the Wall Street bailout was for preventing a much worse recession, any possibility of future assistance has been wiped out with this excessive greed. Playing Mr. Nice Guy with Wall Street is never good policy.

Critics say it is also a sign that banks have learned few lessons from last year's financial crisis, which has been widely blamed on Wall Street's pursuit of short-term profits that pumped up pay.

"Banks don't appear to have learned much, at least on the compensation side, from what we've been through," said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University. "Don't tell me you are bringing me back to the good old days of yesterday. Getting back to pre-Bear Stearns or Lehman is not fixing it. It is setting us up for another fall."

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Would Marriage Equality Have Won In Maine With
Even A Tiny Bit Of Help From The DNC Or White House

Yesterday a friend called my attention to an e-mail urging Democratic Party members in Maine to get involved in the election by joining the get out the vote effort-- in New Jersey. You think that may have pissed off the thousands of Mainers working their asses off to fight off an attack from the Catholic Church and right wing bigots against their right to marry?
This morning I've been seeing a lot of e-mails like this one from Michael Crawford: "The absence of the DNC and OFA was definitely noticed in the LGBT community and for a lot of us future donation requests will simply be deleted. If the DNC and OFA weren't even willing to send an email supporting our right to full equality, why should we give them one red cent? LGBT people are involved in virtually every progressive fight from health care reform and climate change to immigration reform and net neutrality and we are happy to do so because we understand their value to our collective futures. But, it seems that time and again when LGBT equality is the question, we are left to fend for ourselves. I don't mean to discount the work of some fantastic straight allies, but for the DNC and OFA this was missed opportunity to stand with members of the LGBT community who have stood for Democratic candidates with our wallets and our votes."

Pam Spaulding takes it in another direction today at her blog:

What this loss in Maine (and the victory in Washington State) says to me is that I am so grateful that my civil rights, as a person of color, were not put up to a popular vote. As we've seen over and over in the last year, the emergence of naked racism lives despite laws on the books banning discrimination based on race. Reality-based arguments to people who are raised with bias have little motivation to change their thinking outside of keeping their bigotry out of the realm of law-breaking (and even then-- it still occurs!). The feelings simply go underground.

That public expressions of racism have re-emerged and been cultivated by a major political party shows the work the LGBT community has to do as it waits for equality at the federal level. Changing hearts and minds every day is necessary -- not just when there's a pending bigoted mob rule ballot measure.

LGBTs-- and more importantly, allies-- need to come out of the closet advocating for equality in ways large and small. It's the only way to move many voters, particularly the ones who think they don't know someone who is gay. Too many politicians who support us privately still don't have the spine to step up their game when our rights are under attack. That has to change.

Doug may be holed up in Florida working on plans to bring down the Blue Dog caucus but that didn't stop him from taking some time to contemplate that for two years in a row, by popular vote, rights were taken away from gay people based on bigotry. He sent this:

I'm Saying Every Straight Person Who Doesn't Start Speaking Up Is A Spineless Weasel

-by Doug Kahn

A question for all the people in Maine (and in the 30 other elections) who rejected equality for LGBT people. What in flipping hell is wrong with you straight people? And what's wrong with you, all you straight people who won't speak up against the inhumanity of other straight people, you who let pass all the hate speech in day-to-day life?

You enjoy being the ruling class so much that you look away from reason, you refuse to think?

Count on it, in 40 years we'll all be talking about you the way we now talk about the idiots who opposed equality for African-Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. The morons who maintained that women really shouldn't be allowed to go to law school or medical school. And the larger group who stood around and did nothing, said nothing, didn't tell their friends off.

I hope your grandchildren read about this in school, come home and ask, with an attitude of disbelief, what you did about the injustice. You did something, didn't you grandma, grandpa? Your well-deserved destiny is the shame and disgust that comes from your loved ones.

Read The Full Article:
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2009/11/would-marriage-equality-have-won-in.h
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