Chambliss Wins in Geogia, Holding on to Contested GOP Senate Spot:
Looks like the Democrats won't get to 60 in the Senate. Here's the news from Georgia's runoff election:
With 96 percent of the state’s precincts reporting in the runoff election, [incumbent Republican Saxby] Chambliss had 57.5 percent of the vote, and his Democratic challenger, Jim Martin, 42.5 percent. The margin was far greater than the three percentage points that separated the two men in the Nov. 4 election, when neither won the required 50 percent. Many of the Democrats who turned out last month in enthusiastic support of Barack Obama apparently did not show up at the polls on Tuesday. . . .
A little more than two million people voted in the runoff, compared with 3.7 million on Nov. 4.
Orin's a total loon, an off-the-reservation mental charity case whose low IQ would allow him to murder with impunity and then avoid the death penalty -- even in Texas! Despite his assuredly balding pate, he has more hair follicles than brain cells.
Some may consider these remarks unfounded exaggerations, but, for emphasis, let me repeat these claims, however much they may depart from the topic of the thread and however much they may appear to constitute in spirit and style a substance-free bout of invective. I'll say for the record: Orin is frankly not a super-nice guy.
And I believe this so whole-heartedly that I'm willing to commit this federal crime to assert it.
Wait, are you calling me bald? Geez, not sure what I did to deserve that.
I've heard unfounded rumors are now a key ingredient to felony stew. May help establish a tortious act, and I felt like living dangerously from my PC tonight.
To actually try to make a topical comment, from what I could tell out-of-state, the ads in GA became unusually negative. Shame.
- Babe Ruth -
If those are the numbers, filibusters are possible in theory but very difficult to sustain in practice. All the Dems will need to do on any given issue is peel away 1 or 2 Republicans and they'll have Collins, Snowe, Specter and McCain for that, plus others depending on the issue.
Even with 59 votes, I can see Reid falling short if Obama presses him to push it too hard on some issues. For instance, I doubt we are going to see the radical gun control agenda in Congress that we hear bandied about (at most, renew the assault weapon ban and require background checks for private sales).
"We're bringing Saxby back"
Long term, I think this does not bode well for them in 2010. Without Obama at the top of the ticket and millions of guilty white people wanting to vote of a black man and millions of extra black voters wanting their guy to win, many Democratic Reps and Senators from Red states and Red districts will be left alone with an angry and motivated Republican base. Further, with no Presidential race and no Republicans in power, all the focus will be on the Congress and Reid and Pelosi and its 20% approval rating. The numbers favor the Democrats holding a small majority in the Senate. In the House, I hope Pelosi enjoys her last two years as speaker.
This Democratic majority is terrible news for the Democrats as it means that no Democrats will win again. Makes sense, eh?
This Democratic majority is terrible news for the Democrats as it means that no Democrats will win again. Makes sense, eh?"
Perhaps I wrote in too long of sentences or used too many big words for you to understand. I don't really know how to explain what I wrote above in any simpler terms that it already is. What about it do you not understand? I am trying to help you here, but your comment is so nonsensical and nonresponsive that I am not sure how to go about explaining things to you. Let me try to break it down for you in smaller simpler sentences.
1. The Democrats benefited from a large pro-Obama turnout this year.
2. Obama isn't running in 2010.
3. If the Republicans can fillabuster, that means the Democrats are prevented from passing anything they want.
4. Since the Democrats can't pass anything they want, they will be able to pass more centrist things and tell the left that they would have liked to have passed a more leftists agenda, but they couldn't. This allows the Democrats to govern from the center but not have to answer to the left, which is a good thing for Democrats.
5. In 2010, there will be a lower turnout, no national top of the ticket, many Democrats running for re-election in conservative districts and states. Without the help of the large Obama turnout, those Democrats are going to have a harder time winning.
I know you are probably a liberal so I have to work with you a bit. But, that is as simple as I can make it. If you have an intelligible question or issue, please raise it.
The Democrat gained from a cache of found ballots in Ramsey County, along with a decision on rejected absentee votes. by Mike Kaszuba and Curt Brown, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Dec. 3, 2008).
It is reported that a precinct in Maplewood, MN, a St. Paul suburb (which leans Democrat), recently "discovered" 171 ballots that allegedly had not previously been counted. It is reported that on election day the precinct started using one electronic machine, which malfunctioned after 171 ballots had been cast. The precinct switched to another machine, but until now, it it reported that "no one remembered" to pull the 171 ballots out of the original machine and count them. When these votes are counted, Franken gets a net gain of 37 votes.
There is, however, one small problem with this version of the facts. By counting the 171 "new" votes, together with those already counted, that yields a total number of "votes" that exceeds the number of people who showed up and voted in the precinct by 31.
Are you going for irony?
"Fillabuster"
I think they will. There are a lot of Democrats from rural and Southern Districts that are going to face the music in 2010. There will be a few Dem Senators who will as well, like Reid in Nevada that are going to have a tough time to, but the numbers favor the Dems in the Senate so it would take a tidle wave for them to lose it. Congress has a lower approval rating than Bush. There is no reason to believe that it will go up over the next two years. Predicting that an organization with a 24% approval rating facing an election where it will be the only issue will change parties, is not exactly going out on a limb.
Also, there are plenty of reasons to vote for Obama other than guilt. If you can't even conceive of why someone would make that choice perhaps you need to think a bit harder.
Being a factor or even an important factor doesn't make it the only factor. White guilt certainly drove a lot of voting for Obama both directly and indirectly through people being more willing to ignore his opaque or often contradictory positions. I have met any number of people who honestly seem to believe that Obama will end warrantless wiretapping (whatever that is since most of them have no idea how "wiretapping" and data mining actually work) yet don't know or care that Obama voted for the FISA re-authorization. They don't know because they don't want to know. The pleasure of voting for the first black man for President is too great to be bothered with the details.
Yes there are some coherent Obama supporters but even most of them seem to support him on the hope that he is lying about something or other in order to get elected. I have never seen a politician held to such a low standard before or had so many hopes and fears projected on him. That I think is nothing more than the result of white guilt and white America's on going obsession with race.
"Fillabuster" was not a simple spelling/typing error, as I assume "comentary" was. It bespeaks a basic unfamiliarity with the term.
That is the most egregiously silly statement I've seen on this blog for a long time. I'm going to go ahead and say that racism drove a lot of voting for McCain based on same nonsensical logic that presupposes a magical ability to determine mental causation.
But injecting race into the discussion, when the results are easily explained without the "white guilt" phenomenon, makes me wonder about you. The results are easily explained by either (a) Obama was a better candidate or (b) he was not but people were uninformed, without you needing to play the race card.
Hit a nerve did I? The truth usually does that. As far as McCain voting, no doubt more than a few people voted for McCain because they don't like black people. Maybe the country has turned into a racial utopia and I just missed it, but I doubt it. But the racial issue goes both ways. Black people certainly turned out in huge numbers to vote for a black candidate and by necessity against a white candidate. White people certainly voted against Obama because he was black and for Obama because they loved the idea of a black man finally being President. Isn't that why he was billed as a "transformational candidate"? If white people were not voting for a black man to exercise their racial demons and were instead just voting for a conventional liberal, just what is so transformational about him?
John C. Kluge
I certainly think you did. In Massachusetts the wiggling puppy excitement of most of the liberals I knew at being able to vote for the first time in their lives for a "black person" was overt to the point of being embarrassing. Their annoyance when I pointed this out was revelatory in a Freudian way.
Also, overall approval ratings of "Congress" are meaningless in predicting elections. First, Dems in Congress have a higher overall approval rating than Repubs in Congress. Second, and more importantly, these elections are done one rep at a time, not nationally.
Note that if "Disapproval of Congress = voting out the bastards in charge," the Dems wouldn't have picked up a bunch of seats in this election.
The less you say I'm wrong, the more no one has refuted me because I'm right.
Silly liberals, I know you and your racism better than you know yourselves.
They had a popular top of the ticket and a very motivated base and a very unmotivated Republican base. None of that will be true in 2010.
Indeed, on the strength of his convictions, I think we should save some money and just swear in whatever Republicans he thinks will win in 2010.
Unless, God forbid, they do a good job.
That is always possible if highly unlikely. No Congress, sans maybe the 1994-1996 Congress has done a good job in the last 150 years. I wouldn't bet on this one beating the trend.
And yet, as was pointed out above, there is traditionally a pretty strong pro-incumbent bias in Congressional elections. So much so that the Republicans used to favor term limits -- that is, until they recaptured the majority for a while.
Though the analyst linked to above also agrees with JosephSlater et al. that disapproval does not equal electoral failure by any means.]
You have to look at relative performance.
I think that trend is going to start to come to an end in some ways. We have seen the control of Congress swing from Dem to Republican back to Dem in just 12 years. This after decades of Republican and then Democratic dominance during the 20th Century. People are not as strongly affiliated with the parties as they once were. As a result the parties depend more and more on a motivated base to win. The base isn't always motivated. I think you will see Congress swing from party to party more frequently in the future. I also think you will see more divided government. I really think the House will swing back Republican in 2010.
Since two can play this game, you're not counting the Republicans Lieberman, Landrieu and Rockefeller.
Don't feed the trolls.
Regarding the 2010 Senate picture -- those Senators up in 2010 are those who survived 2004, a Presidential election year in which ALL toss-ups went to the GOP. In short, there are more Republicans who won with small margins in 2004 than Democrats, making it unlikely that more than a seat or two will swing, no matter the prevailing political winds.
As for the House, the entire House is up as usual but I'd be shocked if the Republicans managed an even dozen pickups -- nowhere close to enough to regain the majority, and all from deep red districts that should never have been Republican.
If the economic winds are pointing towards "getting better", I'd not be surprised by Democratic pickups in the Senate, and a break-even in the House.
I agree with you about the Senate. The House I think is different. Pelosi is one of the most unpopular politicians in the country. No one has any use for the Congress right now and that will be the case in 2010. There just won't be a reason for Dems to show up at the ballot box and there will be lots of reason, revenge mostly, for Republicans to show up. Also cultural issues like guns and abortion were completely off the table this election. It is probable that a Democratic Congress won't do things the assault weapons ban or try to force Catholic Hospitals to give abortions in order to be eligible for medicare patients. If they do any of those things the backlash is going to be enormous. Also, the bailout are extremly unpopular. The Big three bailout is opposed by 61% of the country. But, if the Congress can't deliver on gun control, card check, abortion, and bailouts for the UAW, its base will revolt and stay home. Further, this recession is going to be horrible and probably won't be over in 2010. They are going to have a difficult time blaming it on the Republicans after two years of power. Then throw in a nuclear Iran and the danger of a big terrorist attack. There is no way the Democrats can govern sanely and remain popular without completely disapointing their base. They have a tough row to hoe.
My method of communication may be different, but I do add substance to the argument, and my intent is not to incite an emotional response in any but myself.
Indeed in this very thread I noted you were right, JohnCK and provided a cite.
Hardly trolling *sniff*]
And a wonderful legacy they left for us.
JCK, there is not much left for me to say, except that Ms. Pelosi is not running in a national election. If you think that the non-R base is going to turn R, you need to provide some actual evidence. After all, Chambliss won the runoff by moving to the center.
At this point it's way to early to say anything really definitive about how the 2010 congressional elections. There's too much time in between for important things to happen that will change the election landscape. Not to mention that we don't know who will be running against any incumbents or who might retire. About the only comment here that makes sense is to look at which Senate seats are up for election in '10. Republicans defend 19 and Democrats defend 15.
As a Republican I certainly hope that JohnOK is right about the House in 2010 and I hope that lots of conservatives are thinking that way. Right now such a belief is little more than something taken on faith. But folks on the ground who have faith in their side winning are likely to be more motivated.
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