Dark Adapted

Had a bunch of elections around the country, and your interpretation of them seems to vary greatly depending on which party you favor. The GOP points to Bob McConnell's overwhelming victory in Virginia as evidence that Virginia is no longer 'purple', and to Chris Christie's upset win over Jon Corzine to take the governorship of New Jersey as a clear shot across the bow of what the Democrats viewed after November 2008 as a permanent change in electoral politics.

Democrats, like Nancy Pelosi and David Axelrod, believe that the more significant race was in the 23rd Congressional District of New York, where Democratic candidate Bill Owens edged out Conservative Party (yes, they have that in New York, which sounds like a reason to invoke the Endangered Species Act) candidate Doug Hoffman. This sort of ignores the fact that there actually was a GOP candidate, Dede Scozzafava, a state assemblyperson who dropped out of the race after being pummelled in the polls, despite RNC backing and who repaid her supporters in the Republican Party (including Newt Gingrich) by endorsing the Democrat rather than Hoffman. There is an meme floating around that the NY-23 seat hadn't been held by a Democrat since before the Civil War, but apparently people who believe that meme have no access to Wikipedia, the last Democrat to hold that seat was elected in 1991, and the seat has changed hands between the parties eight times in the last century.

In terms of the number of voters, overwhelmingly the votes went GOP on the whole, particularly in Virginia where McConnell stomped Creigh Deeds by a 20% vote margin. Considering that McConnell won the State Attorney General race against Deeds by a fraction of a percent in 2008, the players didn't change but the score most certainly did. Chris Christie was outspent 3:1 by Jon Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs partner and very wealthy man who spent heavily in New Jersey media, which means buying lots of air time in NYC and Philadelphia.

The lessons I take away from these results are as follows:

1. It's Still The Economy, Stupid.

Times are tough. When times are tough, voters tend to punish the party in power. The vote totals in favor of the GOP are similar to those in the 1993 by-elections, which implies that 2010 could end up much like the highly-disruptive 1994 election that swept the GOP into power. This is not an endorsement of the GOP, simply an observation that if the DNC believes that running against George W. Bush will work in 2010, I believe they will be rather rudely surprised, assuming the economy does not improve dramatically. Nobody is buying the 3.5% GDP bump. Unemployment and possible future unemployment is what motivated the voters this time around.


Continuing to trumpet a temporary bump in GDP in the face of continued job losses is a net loser for the White House. Compounding this with "jobs created or saved" numbers that not even the network newscasts will report with a straight face is telling the American people that "All is Well" when they clearly know all is NOT well. A scene from Animal House shows how I believe the White House's economic numbers are being received (note: the White House is played by Kevin Bacon):



2. With Enough GOP Help, The Democrats Can Win Seats In Purple Districts.

You would think that this would have been evident from the 2008 election, but it does not hurt to repeat it. John McCain was nominated from a dispirited field of GOP candidates, flirted with selecting a Democrat for a VP and refused to fight his opponent. Bob McConnell and Chris Christie ran disciplined races against Democratic opponents who had numerous campaign visits from the President -- and won.

Dede Scozzafava was the choice of GOP party people in NY-23, not the product of a contested primary. Her policy positions were far to the left of any mainstream Republican to the point where she was endorsed by ACORN, the SEIU and Markos Mouslitas of the Daily Kos. She made Arlen Specter look like Tom DeLay in terms of conservatism.

Even after getting millions of dollars and campaign volunteers from the National Republican Congressional Committee, she turned around and planted the knife squarely in the back of the party by endorsing not Doug Hoffman, who would have caucused with the GOP, but Bill Owens, whose policy positions were only a little to the right of hers. She quit the Saturday before the race because she was destined to finish a distant third no matter what, but given the small margin between Owens and Hoffman it's likely that her Dead Hand endorsement of Owens lost the district for the party she claimed to support. With enough help from incompetent Republicans, Democrats can eke out a victory.

3. Third Parties Feel Good, But Don't Win.

You know that guy, the one who drives a Peugeot just to be different? The person listens to African pop not because he likes it, but because it's different and allows everyone to know they're different when it leaks out their earbuds? Yeah, those people are probably third party voters, and while they're interesting and funky and unique, they're not going to win elections. It's about being pure to themselves and standing out more than getting anything done. Libertarian party, Green party, Peace party -- they're not unAmerican in the sense of treasonous, they are unAmerican in the sense that they're satisfied with being a stumbling block and not actually winning.

Doug Hoffman did not get Republican party support, but he did pick up endorsements from Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee, as well as Glenn Beck. Doug seemed like a really nice guy in the interviews I saw, but somewhat unpolished and not ready for prime time. He did spectacularly well for a third party candidate, but -- and it's an important but -- he still lost. The way he came to be nominated over Scozzafava is part of the story here, and since Owens stands for re-election in 2010 I would love to see Doug lead a combined GOP-Conservative Party ticket in that election after he beats all comers in a primary.

The take-home lesson here is not that we need a Tea Party of staunch fiscal conservatives to spend themselves on futile, uncoordinated and underfunded attempts to win office. I sympathize with these people, I think their hearts are in the right place, but their small-government Constitution-quoting butts belong in the Republican Party. Those folks were sidelined within the GOP sometime around 2000, which was a cardinal mistake on the part of the GOP. Folks like Senator Tom Coburn need to go to the Tea Party folks, and the Tea Party people need to get into the Big Tent. Scozzafavas we don't need, you have to draw the line somewhere and she's farther outside the GOP perimeter than even Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe tend to wander.

The GOP needs the passion of the Tea Party people, and emphasis on small government and fiscal responsibility is the shortest path to rehabilitating the GOP brand.

4. Democrats In Red States And Districts Should Be Hearing Footsteps.

The Dems in Virginia didn't get beat, they got annihilated. Bill Owens in New York is not the newest progressive in Congress, he's the newest Blue Dog, and considering that he almost got beat by an almost-competent Doug Hoffman, I don't see him attending strategy sessions with the far-left Dems from deep blue districts any time soon. There are 83 representatives and 20 senators from states that went for McCain in 2008, and all of these people have good reason to point to the blood on the walls in the Democratic HQs in Virginia and tell their leadership that they are NOT voting for any tax and spend packages, like healthcare. Nancy Pelosi may have picked up another 'blue' seat in the House, but IMO the election results cost her many times that on specific issues from people in her own party.

The counter to the revolt of the Democrats in the House who are looking at serious reelection challenges is for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to say, "Yes, you're right. It looks like a bad district in which to be a Democrat that you have there. If you vote with us, we might give you enough support for you to win in 2010, but if you don't -- good luck." Any party only needs 218 to hold a majority in the House, and Blue Dogs who stand a good chance of being replaced by Republicans in any event may find their votes and themselves not only not needed, but not wanted. It's a dangerous counter for the DCCC to play, but it's entirely possible they will invoke the 'death penalty' to get their signature legislative packages across. After all, they believe that PelosiCare, Cap & Trade and Card Check are what we need, even if we're not smart enough to see it for ourselves.

5. Barack Obama Looks Good In His New Suits, But They Don't Have Tails.

The spin on The One's involvment in NJ and VA is "He wasn't on the ticket, this has nothing to do with him." One Democratic representative said, "He hasn't even been in Virginia," which would have been true at the time if she had added, "in the last four days." Obama campaigned heavily for Corzine, Corzine completely outspent Christie, and Christie still won. McConnell, well, he demolished Creigh Deeds. He was expected to win by 15, but he won by 20. Ouch.

The 2010 elections will hinge on the President's ability to effectively campaign for Democrats. His appearances, his charisma, his connection to young and minority voters were deciding factors in 2008, and the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate are great examples of what having a powerful draw at the top of the ticket can do for a national party, only -- he's not on the ticket in 2010, either. It's debatable whether two state governor elections have anything to say about national politics, but if they have anything to say it's nothing that the Democrats whose names appear below the President/Vice-President block want to hear. Given that Barack Obama will be the lead singer in the DNC's national efforts in 2010, he needs to be able to do better. Any thought that the DNC had created a new grand coalition was cracked by Virginia going so solidly Republican and shattered by reliably-blue New Jersey repudiating Jon Corzine.

The "sea change" that President Obama was supposed to have led lasted all of a year -- a year in which the deficit tripled, more people lost jobs than in the year before and the Stimulus, well, didn't. The President's job is secure through 2012, but the Congress is definitely in play. The President's best hope is that the economy comes back, Iran signs a deal and China keeps its appetite for our debt for another 12 months, because if things continue as they have the voters will usher the Democrats to the door.

That's what I get out of this. Your thoughts?

Yup. On the way to work, at Pine Tree High School. There were three people ahead of me in line, and it took about three minutes of waiting.

The "books" were gone this year, it's all on laptops and little printed-out stickers to sign. We've had E-Slate voting machines for the last few elections, they're pretty simple to use and it took a whopping sixty seconds or so to page through the options and make my choices. I didn't get a sticker, though. I wanted a sticker.

If you've already voted, congratulations. If you haven't voted, get out and vote for John McCain. There's always the possibility that your neighbor's useless kid will set down the bong long enough to find a polling place this year, you need to be there to cancel him out if he does.

No matter who wins, this is going to be a really, really big election. If Barack Obama wins, there will likely be a leftward tilt to the American government not seen since the Great Society days of LBJ, not to mention that America will officially be no longer racist.

The biggest game-changer of all will be if John McCain wins, though. It will be huge because a monstrous swath of the media and political elites will have been shown to be spectacularly and phenominally wrong. A sizable portion of those people will later be found to have been complicit in one of the biggest Psy-Ops attempts in American political history, the inevitability of Barack Obama. They will have missed a huge groundswell of opinion, and completely misread the political situation in the United States. You won't be able to sell anything with a poll for years in this country. It's happened before, in 1994. It may very well happen again.

If you're interested in what I'm saying, there are a couple of fairly long 'think' pieces I would invite you to read. The first one I read was from the oddly-named Zombietime and is called The Left's Big Blunder. Read that one and then go to Sean Malmstrom's site and read his entry called Toast.

Go ahead, I'll wait. I have to go to Starbucks and get my free coffee.

Now that you're back, those are a couple of well-reasoned arguments to keep your chin up, aren't they lil' GOP voter? Did you respond to a poll phone call this year? Me neither. Would you respond to a poll phone call? Yeah, me neither. I believe that McCain voters are horribly under-polled this year, and the majority of the polls show such wild swings and divergence from each other than they're useless. No two "scientific" polls using similar sample size and methodology should show a 15-point difference. The fudging always favors the Democrat.

Do not believe the exit polls, either. The media have too much riding on a Barack Obama win to not call the election as soon as possible and try to create a self-fullfilling prophecy. Exit polls are as subject to bias as anything else, the major bias factor is that Obama voters are more likely to tell you they voted for Obama, and McCain voters have to get back to work.

What if the media are wrong? If you've read the Zombietime and Malmstrom articles you're aware of the media either being swept up in or, in the case of MSNBC, pushing the meme of Obama's inevitability -- the poll-weighting, the Palin-hating (how much do you wish Obama could trade Biden for Palin at this point?). If they're wrong, after all that -- how will you believe them about anything in the future? They will have completely missed the largest political story in modern history because the Democrat/New Party candidate sent a thrill down their leg.

Their objectivity is shot whether Obama wins or loses in my opinion but an Obama loss, even a close one, would be devastating to the credibility of the media. They have obviously picked Obama. They have been less than honest in their role as servants of the public knowledge, and yet believe or at least proclaim their neutrality.

Bull. You get this one wrong legacy media and you're dead to me. You're not looking good even if you get it right. When the Los Angeles Times is sitting on a relevant piece of video like the Khalidi tape, they're cheating. When the San Francisco Chronicle fails to report Barack Obama's punitive carbon tax plans and intent to bankrupt the coal industry in the pursuit of the elimination of a trace gas, only quietly making the audio available online for 10 months, it's a problem.

When the media won't report on how completely insane Joe Biden is, that's a problem. When a guy like me on his couch with a laptop can call BS during the VP debate and then with a few more hours of research find that Joe Biden's version of reality is his and his alone, that's a problem. When the media is denied access to Biden and has more access to Palin without the public really knowing this fact, that's a problem. Right now it's a problem for the consumers of news. If the media gets the election badly wrong, it will rapidly become their problem.

And so, my Survival Guide For Election Night

1. Don't believe a single exit poll unless they show Obama with less-than-expected support. McCain voters are much less likely to answer, and the PUMAs will flat-out lie.

2. If you live west of the Eastern Time Zone, MAKE SURE YOU VOTE. Do not listen to a thing the media says. It's over when the votes are counted, not when the media "calls" a state for one candidate or the other. Pennsylvania is a good example -- the media may call the state because of the outcomes in urban counties but not wait for the rural voters. PA is very, very important, as you'll deduce from the Zombietime and Malmstrom articles.

3. We should know quickly if Obama wins, there are some must-gets for McCain on the East Coast and if he loses FL, VA, PA and OH then it's really over. Go to bed, and start digging your bunker tomorrow morning.

4. If McCain wins PA and FL and VA, it won't be over until the last Obama lawyer throws in the towel, but winning those three goes a long way to winning overall. It will still take MO and OH and NV to go Red this year, but if McCain can flip PA it will be huge.

Best of luck to us all, I've been praying for the country and for McCain and Palin for weeks now.

I might do a liveblog of the election returns, but maybe not. I think I have one more Palin piece in me before the election but I have miles to go on the PACS before I can do that.

Well, I didn't post anything about the second debate between John McCain & Barack Obama because it was so dull I was afraid I would lose the meager readership I have simply by mentioning it. Nothing happened, literally. People asked questions that the candidates didn't answer, and many talking points were repeated. About the only thing I can say is that I'm glad there weren't 9 more "Town Hall" formats scheduled, and Tom Brokaw has strangely become much more compelling in text than in real life.

Bob Schieffer moderated debate #3, which is the first one that John McCain really showed up for. He was animated and engaged, a little too wordy at some points (stepping on his own points on occasion), but much better than in previous debates. He took it to Obama on the over-the-top accusations of John Lewis, and the best line of the night was "I'm not George W. Bush. If you wanted to run against him you should have run four years ago."

As an aside, while I liked McCain getting on Obama about the falsehoods and distortions, McCain lacks the carpe jugulum (Latin - seize the neck) attitude that his running mate displays pretty well. He made his attacks but did not press them. He landed blows but refused to try to sit on Obama's rhetorical chest and continue pounding until Obama could not reply. It's just not in him, I guess. I have heard it is a generational thing, but either way McCain keeps letting things like Obama's "cut taxes for 95% of taxpayers" line float past unmolested.

The star of the third debate, who wasn't even present, was undoubtedly Joe the Plumber, better known as Joe Wurzelbacher, a Ohioan who Barack Obama had the misfortune to stumble upon and engage in conversation while being videotaped.

Joe the Plumber asked Obama if he was really going to raise taxes on him, Joe was considering purchasing the small plumbing business where he works but was worried that the increased taxes would make it unprofitable to work beyond the 10-12 hours a day he already put in.

Obama, foolishly, was honest. As quoted at Fox News:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too," Obama responded. "My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Oops. In one comment, Barack Obama may have undone four months of careful tacking to the center on economic issues. We may have a problem or even a series of problems in the economy right now, but when one of the people that could be President starts speaking in language dripping with socialist overtones I believe Americans will start to listen a little more critically.

Sensing an unforced error, John McCain mentioned "Joe the Plumber" nine times in the third debate, with Obama forced to mention him twice. The election has a poster child, Ladies and Gentlemen.


Now what makes this infuriating to me is that immediately the left side of the blogging community and the media set to "vetting" Joe the Plumber as if he did anything other than ask a question of Barack Obama.

Within 48 hours we now know that Joe Wurzelbach's actual name is Samuel J. Wurzelbach, he is twice-divorced and does not have a plumber's license, though he does work for a plumber. His home address has been published, his tax lein (filed in 2007) publicized and his local plumber's union notified, lest he actually work as a plumber somewhere near where he lives. He has cameras all over him, and he doesn't have to worry about any of his secrets being revealed. If you can find it online, it's going to be revealed about him.

The real question I have is why Joe the Plumber is getting the third degree? And why is the Obama campaign so completely silent on the public strip-and-cavity search that its allies are performing to a "civilian", a voter? He's just a guy, or he was before he committed the unpardonable act of making Barack Obama flub a question in front of a camera.

I see this as tremendously not-helpful for Barack Obama, because it doesn't bode well for free speech or even criticism should he become President. Apparently the rule is that if you question Barack Obama or his policies, then you make yourself the subject of inquiry. The question to be answered is not, "What is Barack Obama's reply?" but rather, "What makes you think you have standing to ask The One a question?"

At this point, would you want Barack Obama to come up to you and say, "Hi, do you have any questions I can answer?" In essence, he would be asking you if you think it's worth your privacy in case he gets stumped. Joe didn't even set himself up to be a rival of Barack Obama, Barack came to his house and because Joe didn't kiss the ring and move along, he gets both barrels from the press and the left wing.

The vitriol directed toward Joe the Plumber is pretty similar to that directed toward Sarah Palin, in that neither of them were considered to have sufficient stature to question Barack Obama's policies or conclusions. There was a collective, "Who the hell are YOU?" response, as if Joe or Sarah sat down at the cool kids' table in junior high school unbidden. What I find so interesting is that it is the alleged egalitarians and Friends of The Common Man, the leftists, who are the most incensed when an unelite person skewers one of the anointed.

Well, I have a tiny little soapbox, but when the press comes calling I will stand up and say, "I am Joe the Plumber." Somebody has to stop this kind of thing. We need to get in the habit of making our questions and criticisms known, so that maybe an potential Obama government will worry about trying to stifle dissent.

Polls are tightening. If you're of a GOP or conservative bent, keep your powder dry and be sure you vote. This is far from over.