Shades of Florida

So there’s certain to be a recanvas (same thing as a recount but they call it a recanvas in NYS) in NY-20. This sort of thing is usually quite orderly in NYS because of the fact that each county has two election commissioners, one Democrat and one Republican. But this one could be so close that things get a little crazy.

Here’s where things may get entertaining. The guy who held this seat before getting beat by Kirsten Gillibrand is John Sweeney, who led the famed Brooks Brothers riot in the 2000 election. If things get tough in this recount, Republicans may bring in a lawyer named Tom Spargo, who reportedly helped Sweeney with the Brooks Brother riot and other stuff in Florida. Spargo is also a former judge who got indicted for bribery a few months ago.

If this gets really tight—and it probably won’t, this stuff is usually orderly in NYS —we could see a whole cast of NYS crazies come out of the woodwork.

But I’m probably hoping for too much.

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Makers and takers

Sometimes Sully’s more Randian than Burkean:

The new cultural divide will not be on guns, gays and God. It will be between the makers and the takers, the producers of wealth and the recipients of redistribution. And it will be about tempering the over-reach that the Democrats will be unable to resist.

(A) Why not just call the Democrats “moochers and looters” and be done with it?

(B) If the divide really becomes the rich versus the poor—the top 10% versus everyone else—how can that not benefit Democrats?

(C) Anyone who thinks that Republicans will ever stop using the three G’s with at least some success is out of his mind.


Update. Good point from JGabriel in the comments:

Well, the producers of wealth are the people who make things: the workers. And the wealthy are the recipients of redistribution.

How the opposite became such a common assumption that we automatically know Sully is saying the opposite, that the Democrats are the “moochers and losers” is really, when you think about, quite strange. And, yes, I know it’s the result of nearly a century of GOP and upper class propaganda, but doesn’t make it any less strange.

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Following NY-20

If you want to follow the results in NY-20, I recommend comparing the incoming county-by-county results from here with the county-by-county results of the 2006 election (in which Gillibrand defeated John Sweeney by 6 points).

Though to some extent it may be possible to get a feel from raw totals, since the results didn’t vary by county that much last time. I’ll keep you posted via updates.

Update. Tedisco up 52-48 with about 15% reporting.

Update 2. Tedisco up 51-49 with about 20% reporting.

Update 3. Tedisco up 52-48 with about 30% reporting. Tedisco’s doing real well in the big county—Saratoga—and I’m not sure why (I don’t know the counties there well enough to know if that’s specifically where he’s from).

Update. Basically tied (Murphy up by a couple hundred votes) with about 45% in .

General update. I don’t know the district that well, but it’s common in NYS for the more urban districts to come in later than the more rural ones. So Democrats often close fairly strong. No idea if that’s the case here. In fact, Delaware, which was the big Republican stronghold hasn’t come in much at all yet.

Update. Tedisco back up by 800 votes with a little more than half in.

Update MikeJ writes:

Tedisco lives a few blocks from Saratoga county in Schenectady county. He was however, an assemblyman representing Saratoga Co. for 26 years.

Don’t be shocked if Tedisco wins on the strength of his popularity as an State Assemblyman. They loves them some State legislators in upstate NYS.

Update. Close to a flat-footed tie—Murphy by 150—with about 70% in.

Update. Tedisco back up slightly with a few more precincts in. A lot of what’s left is Saratoga which may give Tedisco the advantage. On the other hand, hardly any of Columbia is in and that’s where Murphy is strongest.

Update. Tedisco up by a thousand voters with 80% in.

Update. Tedisco up by 1400 with almost 90% in. Saratoga is almost entirely in so what’s left is mostly Columbia and Delaware. This will probably be within a 1000 votes one way or the other tonight, which means we won’t know til the absentees are counted and everything is recanvased. The big story is that Tedisco’s assembly background seems to have helped a lot in Saratoga.

Update. Tedisco by about 120 votes with 22 precincts (out of 610) left, 8 in Columbia and 14 in Saratoga. We won’t know anything about who really won for a few weeks. Shailagh Murray is already pushing for a re-vote.

Update. Murphy up by 250 votes with three precincts from Saratoga left to report.

Update.Murphy up by 81 votes with one precinct in Saratoga left.

Update. Murphy up by 65 after tonight.

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Re: special election in NY

To follow up on John’s earlier post on the special election in NY-20, my opinion is that Larison is partly but not completely right. He writes:

But if Murphy does win it will mean that an out-of-state transplant made up a 20-point deficit against a fixture of regional politics in less than six weeks, and he will have done it in a district where Republicans enjoy a registration advantage of many tens of thousands (71,000 to be exact, which is approximately 25% of the size of the 2008 turnout).

Most of the make-up in deficit was due to name recognition increasing. That happens in any race like this that pits a well-known local guy, Tedisco, against a newcomer like Murphy. Tedisco was never going to win by 20 points. But Larison is right that it’s a Republican district and the Republican candidate is well-known, so Tedisco should be winning pretty comfortably (let’s say by 6-12 points).

Larison also writes:

When Gillibrand won in 2006, it could be written off as part of a wave and a reaction against Sweeney’s scandals, and when Gillibrand was re-elected and Obama carried the district it could be written off to some extent as part of another wave and a reaction against the financial crisis and recession, but if the Democrats hold the seat for the third time that begins to suggest a pattern. It may mean that the GOP’s strongholds in the hinterlands of the Northeast, already disappearing in New Hampshire, are also eroding in upstate New York.

This is mostly right. If Tedisco loses tonight, it means that the Republican party is dead in the northeast. But that may have already been true. They only hold 2 upstate Congressional seats in NYS right now (McHugh and Lee) after holding six seats in 2004. That’s out of 12 so it’s a huge change.

I would argue, though, that New York State has its own brand of politics. There’s still a lot of Rockefeller Republicanism and huge tolerance for taxing and spending among both parties. Unions are big but in state races Republicans do well with unions. NYS is a big state with perceived big cultural differences between upstate and downstate (I’m not sure they’re as big as some people think but the perception is there) and a lot of upstaters are Republicans in order to oppose downstate Democrats, not to support George W. Bush and John McCain. Obama won NY-20 by three points despite the huge Republican registration advantage.

All of that said, as a nearly lifelong State Assembly member, Tedisco should have been able to tap into what it is that makes people in NY-20 stay registered as Republicans. But he was handcuffed by a heavy-handed national strategy.

And that’s what makes this race significant. Republicans are never going to win in New England but they can be competitive in the Rust Belt. Upstate New York is somewhere between New England and the Rust Belt, geographically and culturally (it’s probably a bit closer to the Rust Belt culturally overall). Presumably, there are local Republican officials throughout the Rust Belt who know how to appeal to local voters. But if they’re forced to take orders from southerners (like Cantor and Boehner), then they’re screwed. I think tonight’s race may well be harbinger of that.

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Special Election in NY

Not to step on DougJ’s toes, but Daniel Larison has some interesting thoughts on the special election between Tedisco and Murphy:

Taken in isolation, this outcome wouldn’t matter much. But if Murphy does win it will mean that an out-of-state transplant made up a 20-point deficit against a fixture of regional politics in less than six weeks, and he will have done it in a district where Republicans enjoy a registration advantage of many tens of thousands (71,000 to be exact, which is approximately 25% of the size of the 2008 turnout). When Ogonowski lost a special election for MA-05 in a landslide, there were more than a few Republicans who went wild at how well he had done in a House special election in deep-blue Massachusetts. In that case, Ogonowski’s smaller-than-expected margin of defeat was supposed to signal a Republican resurgence in 2008 (which did not happen), which was never very credible, but are we really supposed to believe that a Democratic win in a traditionally Republican district in a special election doesn’t say something significant about the political fortunes of the GOP? When Gillibrand won in 2006, it could be written off as part of a wave and a reaction against Sweeney’s scandals, and when Gillibrand was re-elected and Obama carried the district it could be written off to some extent as part of another wave and a reaction against the financial crisis and recession, but if the Democrats hold the seat for the third time that begins to suggest a pattern. It may mean that the GOP’s strongholds in the hinterlands of the Northeast, already disappearing in New Hampshire, are also eroding in upstate New York.

I would agree that this should probably be seen as bad news for the Republicans at large in NY, but I am not sure I think there is anything to be really learned about the public and Obama from the outcome of this election, whatever it may be. Now I know full well should Tedisco win, the usual suspects will have banner headlines shouting “OBANOMICS REFUTED” and “THE WORM HAS TURNED- GOP BACK IN BUSINESS.” That doesn’t mean that it is true, nor do I think it means anything really significant should Murphy win. From what I have read (most of which was here and at the Albany Project) leads me to believe that this is just a really attractive Democratic candidate versus a Republican who has run a really, really bad campaign.

Am I wrong to think there is no larger significance to this election? Also, I thought it was weird that Larison frequently referred to Murphy by name but only called Tedisco the “GOP candidate.”

At any rate, I’m hoping DougJ can keep us posted on what is going on.

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Site Changes

Tomorrow the PJ Ads come down, so you all can finally stop complaining about that.

I have thrown up the Amazon link below to the left, and I am working on getting into a blogads network and dealing with the impossible feat of activating a google adsense account. Expect things to look a little funny tomorrow until I have the time to get things set up.

Also, this is why I was so happy with PJ media. I hate dealing with this nonsense.

*** Update ***

This is a test:

Hrmm.

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Stop Blaming It On The CRA

More testimony and evidence that the CRA is not to blame for the current crisis:

Amid the ongoing debate over mortgage lending reform, a top federal regulator took a seat before Congress last week and debunked the myth — popular among conservatives — that a law encouraging loans to low-income communities has been largely responsible for the nation’s housing crisis.

“I can state very definitively,” Sandra Braunstein, director of the Federal Reserve’s consumer and community affairs division, said during a House Financial Institutions subcommittee hearing Wednesday, “that from the research we have done, the Community Reinvestment Act is not one of the causes of the current crisis.”

As a newly minted Democrat, I honestly have ZERO idea why Republicans are so eager to blame this mess on the CRA when there simply is no evidence to support it. The CRA is not one of those things that was ever on my radar when I was unknowingly spewing wingnut talking points, but right now, anywhere you go in the wingnuttosphere and there is a full-throated and frothing rant about the evil CRA. Here is a vintage effort by Stanley Kurtz (obligatory link to Sadly, No’s! comparison of Kurtz to Big Gay Al, which makes me laugh every time I listen to it) which combines the CRA, ACORN, Fannie Mae, Obama, the Chicago Woods Foundation (Boo- AYERS!) and Bill Clinton. The only things missing were gay marriage, Iraqi WMD, and ANWR.

I hate to be this cynical, but other than just trying to avoid any blame for the mess whatsoever, the only reasons I can think of for them continuing to try to pin this current financial crisis on the CRA are pretty ugly and better left unsaid.

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Credit Card Reform

This is surprising:

In a blow to financial firms, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday signed off on legislation that seeks to ban abusive credit-card practices.

While consumer groups and key Democrats lauded the committee’s move, the 12-to-11 vote in favor of the controversial bill was very narrow. Thus, the committee’s chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), said he would work with lawmakers—both Democratic and Republican—to modify the bill and broaden support before the bill hits the Senate floor.

“My intent is to work things out and move forward. This was going to be difficult—I knew that,” Sen. Dodd told reporters after the vote. “This is the first step in a process.”

The bill seeks to prohibit card issuers from unfairly raising interest rates. It would prohibit applying rate increases retroactively to existing balances and it seeks to boost consumer disclosures. Additionally, it seeks to limit certain over-the-limit fees and interest charges and creates new requirements for card issuers looking to extend credit to youngsters under the age of 21. The amended bill would also make it easier for gift-card recipients to use the cards.

The bill probably doesn’t go far enough to rein in the abuses, so it will be interesting to see what the House does.

Also, “youngsters?”

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Sometimes you get a bad king

You all know the joke (repeated in “Annie Hall”) about the two old ladies at the diner, where one says “The food here is terrible, I can barely eat it” and the other says “I agree, and the portions are so small!” That’s exactly how I feel about the New York Times. The paper can be unbearably pretentious, it employs MoDo and Frank Bruni, it botched its WMD reporting terribly, it created the whole Whitewater story out of whole cloth…and it makes me want to cry to think it might disappear!

There have been a couple of really good articles about the head of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. (“Pinch”), over the past few years, both titled “The Inheritance”, one in the New Yorker and one in Vanity Fair. Both quote Gay Talese saying of Pinch that “Sometimes you get a bad king.”

As you probably know, there is no record of serious papers in the United States being publicly owned. The Washington Post, New York Times, and, until recently, the Wall Street Journal are or were owned by the Graham, Sulzberger, and Bancroft families respectively. Pinch essentially inherited the paper from his father. And for all the hand-wringing about the inevitable death of newspapers, his poor business decisions are certainly a large part of why the paper is on death’s door. Michael Calderone summarizes the Vanity Fair piece pretty well:

Bowden makes his case by talking to those who know Sulzberger and running through a laundry list of past mistakes: buying back $1.8 billion worth of stock (that’s now junk); not diversifying enough (unlike the Washington Post buying Kaplan); passing up on investing in Google and Amazon; the $1.1 billion purchase of the New England papers (including the Boston Globe).

Make no mistake: if the newspaper industry were still doing well, some of these decisions would have been good ones. But it seems colossally stupid not to have hedged by investing in other areas rather than doubling down on the newspaper business. I wonder, though, if his doubling down on the newspaper business was really so different from the Big Three doubling down on SUVs or banks doubling down on CDOs and mortgage-backed securities. It’s tempting to think that the serious newspapers were doomed because they could exist only as long as the dynasties that ruled them kept producing effective monarchs. But maybe these hereditary monarchs aren’t really so different from the monarchs produced by our supposedly more meritocratic executive system.

That said, this quiz (from Arianna) comparing Pinch Sulzberger to George W. Bush is a classic.

You decide: is it W or is it Pinch? [Answers below]

1. Which of these men had a father who was considered stupid but is now thought to be a genius compared to his son?

2. Which of these men is currently on the defensive about his support for an incompetent woman in his office?

3. Which of these men may have to ask for the resignation of a subordinate because of a mounting scandal?

4. Which of these men appointed as his top deputy a loyal member of his father’s regime?

5. Which of these two men’s favorite TV series was “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and even owned a watch with the inscription “Live Long and Prosper”?

More »

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Defining normal

I don’t find this especially offensive, but it is interesting to hear Michael Barone define normal (via WM):

This is similar but not identical to a point I’ve often made: that the Republican Party is the party of people who are considered, by themselves and by others, as normal Americans—Northern white Protestants in the 19th century, married white Christians more recently—while the Democratic Party is the party of the out groups who are in some sense seen, by themselves and by others, as not normal—white Southerners and Catholic immigrants in the 19th century, blacks and white seculars more recently. Thus it’s natural for the Democrats to be more fissiparous.

The notion that Republicans are good, upstanding God-fearing Amurkins while Democrats are left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers plays an important role in America’s official political discourse. It’s there when candidates are criticized for not wearing socks and for vacationing in Hawaii. It’s there when other, more patriotic candidates invite reporters to barbecues at one of their many houses.

Also, feel free to make up your own jokes about public bathrooms, adult diapers, dildos, and wet-suits here.

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Random historical note

Some of my best friends are from the small West Indian nation of Guyana (although Guyana is on the South American continent, its history and culture are much closer to that of Trinidad than of, say, Brazil) and they emailed me the obituary of Janet Jagan, a woman from Chicago who became president of Guyana and who died a few days ago at the age of 88. It’s an interesting story:

Born Janet Rosenberg in 1920, she was a student nurse at Cook County Hospital in Chicago when she met Cheddi Jagan, a dentistry student at Northwestern University and the eldest of 11 children of an Indo-Guyanese family of sugar cane workers. His grandparents had arrived in British Guiana from India as indentured laborers.

They married, despite the fierce opposition of her parents, who were Jewish, and in 1943 they moved to British Guiana, where he established a dental practice and they both became involved in radical politics. In 1950, they founded the People’s Progressive Party, and in 1953, in elections under a new Constitution providing greater home rule, Dr. Jagan became chief minister. But the Jagans’ Marxist ideas aroused the suspicions of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who sent warships and troops to topple the new government. The Jagans were jailed.

[....]

Dr. Jagan returned to power in 1957, and Mrs. Jagan became labor minister.

Again, their politics, along with their admiration for Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba, caused alarm in a foreign capital — this time, Washington. According to long-classified documents, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961 to destabilize the Jagan government. The C.I.A. covertly financed a campaign of labor unrest, false information and sabotage that led to race riots and, eventually, the ascension of Forbes Burnham, a black, London-educated lawyer and a leader of the People’s Progressive Party who had become a rival of the Jagans. He became president and prime minister in 1966.

[....]

After her husband died in 1997, she ran for president and won. At campaign rallies, her followers respectfully called her “bhowji,” a Hindi term meaning “elder brother’s wife.” But her government was plagued by street protests and tension with the opposition People’s National Congress.

It’s a typical story, in a way, for a poor country in the Western hemisphere buffeted by failed Marxist ideas and murderous Euro-American interventions.

On a lighter note, how can it be that no Merchant-Ivory style movie has been made about Janet Jagan yet? This has Oscar written all over it.


Update. From the comments, there is this PBS documentary about that Jagans.

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That Is Depressing

In an odd turn of events, a David Brooks column that I almost completely agree with:

There are many experts who think that the whole restructuring strategy is misbegotten. These experts think that costs are not the real problem. The real problem is the product. The cars are not good enough. The management is insular. The reputation is fatally damaged.

But if you are in the restructuring business, you can’t let these stray thoughts get in the way of your restructuring. After all, restructuring is your life. Restructuring is forever. Restructuring is like what dieting is for many of us: You think about it every day. You believe it’s about to work. Nothing really changes.

When the economy cratered last fall, the professionals at G.M. went into Super-Duper Restructuring Overdrive. In October, they warned the Bush administration of a possible bankruptcy filing and started restructuring. In December, they came back asking for a loan while they … (wait for it) ... restructured.

One thing I do take issue with is that American cars are all bad. I just don’t agree with that premise. I had a 1983 Chevy Celebrity that I bought from my grandmother’s estate while I was an undergrad, and that car drove every day, reliably, for 24 years. Beyond changing the oil every couple of thousand miles, some new tires and a battery here and there, that car was a gem. It had a great engine, got decent (for the time) gas mileage, started no matter how cold it was, and never once broke down. I loved that car and would own another one in a heartbeat. Sadly, they don’t make it anymore.

I’m sure there are people who have had miserable experiences with American cars, and I have no doubt that there was a time period where American cars were inferior. I know my father will go to prison before purchasing another Chrysler ever after an experience with a Chrysler wagon in the 80’s, but I think American cars have gotten a bad rap the past decade or so.

Having said that, my mother, sister, and I all drive Subaru wagons, my brother has a Toyota Corolla, and my father drives a Honda Pilot. I guess we just hate America, although my brother-in-law does own a Harley.

One other thing I think about regarding what I believe is the imminent demise of GM. years ago, it was not uncommon in certain regions of WV for there to be only one car dealership, and everyone in the area drove either a Ford pick-up truck or a Chevy pick-up truck, and part of the regional identity was whether or not it was a Ford or Chevy area. You would see hats that said “Ford- Fix or Repair Daily” in Chevy areas, and vice versa. I don’t know how much that has changed the past couple of years, but I wonder if it still holds true. Certainly WV can not be the only place that was like this.

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Earth hour

I don’t have much of an opinion about Earth Hour, but I have to say that the Big Hollywood reaction to it puts the Red State reaction to shame:

One Billion Turn Out Lights to Highlight Threat from Climate Change. When Lights Return, One Million Infidels Found Killed by Terrorists

OK, so if you were mujahedeen, after Saturday night’s display of defiance and retaliation by the Free World against global warming/cooling/something, wouldn’t you totally be like:

“Hey, Infidel — Look! Does one cloud look darker to you than the other?”

“Ohmygod — where?!” (Infidel looks up.)

Sound of throat slashing.

“Works every time! Works every time!” the mujahed laughs to himself as he moves on to the next vigilant infidel.

Ever notice how as the threat of global terrorism reaches a crescendo, so apparently does the threat of global climate change?

Am I silly not to have noticed this link between the threat of global terrorism and the threat of global climate change?

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Dayana does Gitmo

Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza, visited Gitmo last week and here’s what she reported:

We arrived in Gitmo on Friday and stared going around the town, everybody knew Crystle and I were coming so the first thing we did was attend a big lunch and then we visited one of the bars they have in the base. We talked about Gitmo and what is was like living there. The next days we had a wonderful time, this truly was a memorable trip! We hung out with the guys from the East Coast and they showed us the boat inside and out, how they work and what they do, we took a ride around the land and it was a loooot of fun!

We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills. All the guys from the Army were amazing with us.

We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting.

[.....]

I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.

That’s probably just the honey-and-ginger chicken talking.

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Lou Dobbs Is Giving Me Whiplash

First, he is mad because Obama “fired” Wagoner.

Then he weeps for the future of capitalism with the government involved like this.

Then he gets mad because Obama doesn’t know how to handle this crisis and isn’t doing more.

Then he is mad because Obama didn’t fire the head of the UAW.

And then he is mad because Obama might require the unions to make concessions.

And then he is mad because the Obama team is not doing enough for the traditional economy (which I guess is the economy outside of the financial markets and not having to do with the auto industry but doesn’t involve concessions for blue collar workers).

And that was in one 5 minute portion of the show. No mention that half the things that upset him are at odds with the other things that upset him.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Lou Dobbs is just barking mad. CNN, it is time to put the crazy uncle out to pasture.

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