[As I was prepared to hit “Publish” I noticed that Emo Cole already posted about this. I’m posting it anyway. I’m out of control. I must be stopped. -ABLxx]
I read this little news item in Politico this morning, and my immediate reaction was a predictable “WTF?!”
No matter who wins West Virginia’s special election race for governor Tuesday, it’s already clear who the loser is: President Barack Obama.
A last-minute carpet-bomb of anti-Obama television ads and robocalls has transformed what was once a 30-point contest into a margin-of-error nail-biter that has Republicans emboldened and Democrats anxious as voters head to the polls.
If Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin can withstand the late surge by Republican drilling executive Bill Maloney, it will be in spite of the toxic drag of an unpopular president in this traditionally Democratic state. If Maloney can cap off his unlikely comeback, the White House will shoulder the blame for yet another special election loss — potentially the third in three weeks.
“Frankly, with [Obama’s] approval rating at 30 percent, it’ll be easy to do,” said Jim Dornan, a GOP operative who worked on John Raese’s unsuccessful 2010 Senate bid. “Even if it’s close, I think any Democrat running in the 1st Congressional District and [Rep. Nick] Rahall run pretty far away from the president in 2012.”
Obama was largely absent from the campaign until late last week. But that’s how the cash-flush Republican Governors Association planned it, betting a late stealth attack would pad their previous messaging on Tomblin as an ethically challenged politician who embodied “go along, get along” politics.
Well, think again, hosers:
Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin beat back a torrent of late Republican attacks linking him to President Obama to win the West Virginia governorship Tuesday night.
~snip~
“We all came together to tell outside groups that no one is going to tell us what to do in West Virginia,” said Tomblin in remarks from his victory party in Charleston. “We may be open for business, but West Virginia is not for sale.”
“Tonight the people of West Virginia sent a clear message to national Republicans. Even in the most competitive circumstances, Gov. Tomblin was able to highlight his record of effectiveness and withstand Republican attempts to nationalize the race,” said Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. “Ultimately, the people of West Virginia elected Gov. Tomblin because they know he is best suited to create jobs and expand opportunity.”
Hey, Politico! Fancy a steaming mug of STFU to wash down that crow?
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]
sfinny
Boo-Yah. In-your-face. Ha-Ha.
The Dangerman
Given the nominating process for the Republican has been anything but smooth so far, the PTB and their buddies in the MSM will have to work extra hard to try to make an interesting horse race from what could be a Secretariat at the Belmont beat down.
Yes, I know the economy blows, but I think some of the Republican Shenanigans will boomerang badly (and I’d be far from surprised from a Tea Party, 3rd Party, run).
sfinny
Well that’s funny, I just saw the chance at getting in first and decided to be obnoxious. Guess it worked.
Violet
No crow for them. From the article:
They already set up the meme. No matter what the outcome, it’s bad for Obama.
Corner Stone
I wonder what dear opal will have to say about this post.
horatius
Can we have more such loserdom from Obama all the way to 2012 and beyond??
opal
Bad intel on the carpets.
It could happen to anyone.
Chris T.
“No matter whether Democrats win the presidency and sweep the House and Senate in 2012, it’s bad news for Obama…”
Violet
@opal: I thought Rosie was usually responsible for the carpet bombs.
Redshift
This is BAD NEWS! For Barack Obama!
Got it.
aisce
@ the dangerman
uh huh. secretariat.
why, i expect the president will get 112% of the vote in 2012. in fact, i think we might have to invent some new numbers entirely just to properly gauge the magnitude of his surely unprecedented reelection.
TooManyJens
@The Dangerman:
I don’t know that I share your optimism, but 1973 Belmont reference FTW.
The Dangerman
@aisce:
Um, no.
My point (perhaps badly made) was that there are entities that badly NEED a horse race where really there shouldn’t be one; this is not a 50/50 election. If the economy starts to go the right way, it won’t be.
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman:
I’m trying to figure out how to finish this phrase.
“Yes, I know the economy blows, but so does your mom!”
“Yes, I know the economy blows, but just consider 10% U3!”
“Yes, I know the economy blows, but c’mon! C’mon!!” AKA the Peter Griffin
I mean, what’s after this part?
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Fucking liberal media, how does it work?
pete
@aisce: Ah, hah, so you’re the one who acquired Diebold Election Systems … aka Premier Election Solutions, aka whatever alias they are skulking around under nowadays.
The Dangerman
@Corner Stone:
…but I think some of the Republican Shenanigans will boomerang badly (and I’d be far from surprised from a Tea Party, 3rd Party, run).
Always happy to help the reading impaired.
Karen
You mean I don’t have to turn off the volume during every commercial on at late night anymore? (during SNL on last Saturday they played the Anti-Obama/Anti-Tomblin ads 4 times. In 90 minutes. I thought that living in Silver Spring, MD would spare me from those ads. Nope.
I know it’s only a temporary respite but if need be I’ll just DVR all the TV shows so I can zip through the ads. I can tolerate regular commercials. I can’t tolerate the political ads and I figure that I’ll be choked with them.
opal
@aisce:
This is clearly an important species we’re dealing with…
Karen
@The Dangerman:
Which is why the GOP will never ever let that happen.
handy
@The Dangerman:
Secretariat at the Belmont. Do Obots dream of magical ponies too?
Corner Stone
@The Dangerman: There will be nothing, and I mean nothing, more important than the economy come ’12.
The R nominee can call every interviewer Macaca while he signs autographs in blood and if U3 is still 9%+ it won’t matter.
He can be pulled along Main St. in a city garbage can while wearing a crown of woven rosemary and it won’t matter.
Lockewasright
A state that went McCain in 2008 by a margin of more than 13% elects a democratic governor after the rethug creeps drop a ton of cash tying the dem to Obama and that’s bad news for the president?! Uh… what?
Jenny
Fucking laughable.
Obama lost West Virgina by 13 points, even though he won nationally by 7 points.
Obama lost West Virgina by 13 points, even though he won Virgina by 6 points.
Yet, somehow, WV is a “traditionally Democratic state”.
aisce
@ the dangerman
this doesn’t even have anything to do with obama personally.
2008 wasn’t even a seriously contested election post-lehman. obama got 53% of the vote. 53.
that was the biggest win in a quarter century.
clinton-dole was the most indifferently received election i can remember. clinton won in a landslide. with 49% of the vote.
bush-kerry. bush-gore. bush-dukakis. why would you not expect another roughly 50/50 election this time? especially with a weak economy?
Jenny
Politico = Propagando
hhex65
@Lockewasright: that’s worthy of a lolwut?! even, cue the pear with teeth
handy
@Jenny:
That’s some recent tradition you’re citing there, but yes, WV has traditionally been Democratic.
Lockewasright
@aisce: I expect the teahadists’ disproportionate influence on the GOP nomination process and an extremely weak field to result in a toxic nominee.
suzanne
@Corner Stone:
Nah. Did you hear that Mitt Romney’s a Mormon? Those people aren’t even CHRISTIANS!
In all seriousness, I have to confess to a hint of schadenfreude when I learned this weekend that the LDS Church baptized Hitler and Eva Braun by proxy. If I was trying to come up with a comic-book-supervillain-esque religious corporation, I think it would look a lot like the LDS.
gnomedad
@ABL:
Props for the Great White North reference, eh?
Comrade Kevin
@Jenny: That’s one election, not a “tradition”.
aisce
@ jenny
two democratic senators. democratic governors going back. only two statewide republican governors/senators elected in sixty years. i just checked.
now, granted, these are the kinds of democrats who might have been members of the klan once upon a time, but there’s no reason that a state can’t be traditionally democratic and traditionally conservative at the same time.
handy
@suzanne:
The magic underoos is what cinches it for me. (They’ve even got secret identity “costumes”!)
Violet
@suzanne:
Didn’t they also baptize Obama’s mother by proxy?
Corner Stone
@suzanne: He’s a what now?
That shit’s bananas, bee eh en eh en eh ess.
Jenny
Obama is in such electoral danger, that Chris Chrisie
just launched his candidacy.The Dangerman
@aisce:
I’ll just run off a few off the top of my head:
1) As Corner Stone correctly points out, this election will be about the economy. No doubt. Now, check the numbers for who the public blames for the economy, Obama or Bush? Bad news for the Right, it’s overwhelmingly Bush. Hear any rumblings about Jeb jumping into this weak field? Exactly.
2) The economy is traditionally Democratic turf and the traditional Republican turf is foreign affairs (read: “soft on communism”, “soft on terrorism”, etc). The Republicans will have to play of the Democratic field next year; good luck reselling the Bush Tax cuts being good for the economy again.
3) It looks like it will be Romney (although I’m still thinking Palin will jump in; filing, IIRC, is 10/15 in some states and there is a debate on 10/11, so watch Sarah jump in around 10/12 to 10/14). If Romney is the candidate, I don’t see Tea Partiers falling in line. I don’t care if they make a hard right choice for VP; Romney won’t sell to the base. Won’t happen.
4) As predicted above, I would be far from surprised about a 3rd Party run from the Right (call it Tea Party, call it pissed off conservatives that hate Romney, call it whatever).
Recall, I didn’t say it WOULD be a blowout. I said, IIRC, it COULD be an easy win. Economy improves (even minimally), 3rd Party run, Romney being a weak candidate, etc.; get 2 or 3 of those to break your way, it’s over.
William Hurley
You really don’t understand politics do you.
A strongly favored candidate, at the outset, faces a headwind due to the electorate’s disaffection for his party’s leader and the huge surge of special interest cash squeaks out a win.
The second order lesson here is that aggressively fighting the opposition produces unexpected and positive results. Obama could learn from that too.
In sum, this result and the linked poll instruct wiser minds to seek an electable alternative to the damaged, doomed incumbent occupying the White House.
FlipYrWhig
@aisce:
Or, to put it another way, there are millions of people who are quite happy to vote for local and state-wide Democrats but who balk at the national party for being too liberal. Unsurprisingly enough, finding a way to speak to those people’s political preferences, no matter how contradictory or self-negating they are, tends to be a pressing matter for Democratic strategy.
handy
@The Dangerman:
So,
1) Let’s see how that goes in 12-14 months when the media is doing a fullcourt press on the Obama economy.
2) I can think of one election 30 years ago where the Republicans were able to do exactly that. (Mind you no one in the field now can even touch Reagan as a candidate)
3) It will be Romney but the TP will fall in line if he gives them enough grist like McCain did in ’08. And no, Palin’s not running. For anything
4) I could easily predict a 3rd party run from the left that could be as problematic for Obama.
Jenny
@aisce: Gore lost it by 7 pts, even though he won the popular vote. Kerry lost it by 13 pts, even though he lost nationally by only 2 pts.
The only thing traditional, is the Dems can no longer carry it, even when they win traditional republican states like Indiana, Virgina, and North Carolina.
gwangung
@William Hurley:
Not in your universe, no.
Spaghetti Lee
Wow:
“We may be open for business, but West Virginia is not for sale.”
For all the talk about him being a conservadem, this is one hell of a battle cry. I’d love to see language like this get adopted more.
opal
@aisce:
Of course not.
If Hillary had won the primary I’d feel the same way.
/jk
Spaghetti Lee
@handy:
4) I could easily predict a 3rd party run from the left that could be as problematic for Obama.
OK. Who?
aisce
@ jenny
this has nothing to do with presidential politics, what is wrong with you? are you trying to be as stupidly wrong as politico, just from the other direction?
it was an off year election for governor. a democrat won. just like his predecessor. and his predecessor before that. democrats win state office all the time. but yeah, not presidential elections. which this wasn’t.
one might conclude that wv dems are perfectly content with their local, parochial version of the party, but reject the broader national coalition as representing too many of “those kinds of people.”
The Dangerman
@handy:
No disagreement there. (Edit: Other than the time frame since the election is 13 months out).
1980 was more than about the economy (see Hostages, Iranian).
I don’t see it that way, but YMMV; my read is the Tea Partiers and their ilk are tired of getting the crumbs left over for them.
This goes back to #3; I suppose a 3rd Party run from the Left is possible, but, really, is there any 3rd party entity making as much noise as the hard right? I don’t see it.
Lockewasright
@Spaghetti Lee: Hold on while I check Craig’s List.
Firebaggers are a joke.
handy
@Spaghetti Lee:
Forgive me for not answering your question directly I don’t see it any more likely the TP (or Super Sarah Party or whomever) 3rd party siphoning off votes for the GOP as it happening to Obama from the Left.
Comrade Kevin
LOL
tam1MI
@The Dangerman:
Occupy Wall Street.
FlipYrWhig
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t know about in this particular case, but “Open for business” rhetoric often means anti-regulation, anti-OSHA, anti-environment, etc. That’s still pretty conservative. It’s just conservative with populist shading.
BTW, at this point, whenever a political candidate touts himself as a “small businessman,” it gives me the heebie-jeebies. No offense to people who run small businesses, but in political rhetoric it just plays as the set-up for any number of aggravating stances on issues.
eemom
@suzanne:
howzat? Ms. Feminist Humanist Champion of Obese People thinks it’s cool to poke fun at someone’s……..religion??
Well I’ll be danged.
Spaghetti Lee
@The Dangerman:
I don’t see it that way, but YMMV; my read is the Tea Partiers and their ilk are tired of getting the crumbs left over for them.
I’m starting to see it your way. I’ve been saying that the Tea Party will fall in line because that’s just what Republicans do, and that’s how they win. But now that basically everyone aside from Romney is gone or mortally wounded, they all lined up behind…Herman Cain. Seriously, TPM had a thing today about how Cain’s been the beneficiary of Perry’s decline. Now, Cain’s a laughingstock, but I think that the fact that there’s so many Republicans voicing their support for him means they’re desperate for someone, anyone, besides Romney. The non-Romney “front-runner” has changed like 4 times now, but Romney’s never picked up any support throughout that cycle. Makes you think.
Of course, Perry’s decline was caused by the Tea Party itself. They suddenly got it into their panicky little heads that he’s a secret liberal or something, and dumped him like a broken toy. That speaks to its own kind of desperation, I think. They want their super-conservative hero on a white horse so very desperately, but they’re not going to get him. Anyone who can act the part, though, will gain a lot of support, at least until they tear him apart too.
It’s all very bizarre. It’s well past time to be coalescing behind a front-runner, but the GOP isn’t even close. Romney gets the nod, and after all these disappointments, I don’t think the Tea Party can take it anymore. Question is, who exactly could be that third-party guy who’s pure and conservative enough? Maybe some wingnut house freshman. Walsh-West 2012!
greenjeans
excellent news for john mccain!
Comrade Kevin
@suzanne:
Scientology, anyone?
Spaghetti Lee
@handy:
You don’t think a third-party right winger is more likely than a third-party left-winger? I’d say neither one is very likely, but that the former is more likely. The left has its internal divisions, but it’s nothing like the series of political one night stands the GOP has been going through these past months.
Comrade Kevin
@eemom: There’s a difference between individual Mormons (or Catholics, Scientologists, whatever) and the LDS, Catholic, etc, churches as institutions.
Lockewasright
@tam1MI: Obama can co-opt the Occupy folks’ message to a degree and benefit in a general from doing so while letting the air out of a 3rd party candidate. I don’t think the same can be said of a teahadist threat to a GOP candidate in a general election. They poll about as likable as a forehead pimple on prom night these days. They’re the most active part of the GOP base, so they have disproportionate impact in a primary universe, but fall flat in a general election. Think of the 2010 senate opportunity blown by nomination of teahadist RWNJ candidates and realize that the teahadists’ popularity has dropped off of a cliff since the debt ceiling hostage crisis. The emoprogs may refuse to see it, but Obama ate their lunch in that deal.
Jenny
@aisce:
15 of 35 West Virginia governors (43 percent) have been Republican.
43 percent — also known as “all the time”.
The Dangerman
@tam1MI:
An interesting development, sure, but they have to be around for a while before I’m sold there is any “there” there.
Mike
@The Dangerman:
I long for Democrats to give the kind of crumbs the Teabbaggers get from their party. They keep bitching about how their filet mignons are overdone, while we get moldy bread and are told that’s the best the party can do for us.
Serves those spoiled brats right!
Comrade Kevin
@Jenny: The phrase “all the time” doesn’t mean “every time”.
handy
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think wingnuts hatred of Obama outweighs any impetus for Third Party purity purge, not denying that such an impulse does exist there. Do they have a candidate problem? Sure, but as silly as it sounds in my head as I type this, Romney is less a liability to that end than say Bob Dole was in 96.
As for the other side of the equation, any serious primary push is unlikely if the economy keeps tanking Obama and his people better brace for the possibility, because it won’t be pretty.
eemom
@Comrade Kevin:
Sure. And there’s a difference between ad hoc sanctimonious hypocrites, and Hypocrisy as an Institution.
Corner Stone
@Lockewasright: “firebagger”. “emoprogs”?
What the heck are you talking about?
handy
@Jenny:
What are you quibbling about? The description “traditionally Democratic” is accurate as far as it goes. Meaning, Democrats win pretty regularly at all levels across the state.
The Dangerman
@Spaghetti Lee:
This.
The Republican Party has fucking sold it’s soul (sold it’s fucking soul?) to the Tea Party. The Corporatist (Romney) wing wants to pat the TP’ers on the head and say “now be good little voters and get in line” and … I just don’t see it. Stringing out the Right for more than a Generation on Roe v. Wade (“just elect us this one more time and we’ll overturn it”) has created a monster that wants what it wants and wants it now.
Spaghetti Lee
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, it’s not what my platonic ideal of a politician would say, but as a way to define yourself in a state that’s always going to be pretty conservative and pretty dependent on the energy industry, while still setting up some rhetorical distance between yourself and the Koch crowd, maybe bring in some moderates, I think it’s good for that kind of thing. I think “open for business” doesn’t have to be bad, although the Republicans have certainly made it that way. In the long term, it’s not like the government and big business can either pretend the other one doesn’t exist, so I’d rather have them work together than always be trying to destroy each other.
Or maybe I’m just desperate for any pushback of any kind against the Koch crowd, and I had such low expectations for this guy that even a bit of election-night give-em-hell is a nice surprise. And maybe it’s just because I’ve had Wisconsin on the brain for most of the year, but it reads to me like a slam Scott Walker. “Wisconsin is open for business” was his slogan, after all.
I agree about the “small businessman” thing. Tomblin himself has been in WV government since ’75, so he probably knows the state real well and his politics were formed in a time when the state was much more friendly to liberal Democrats than it is now. Frankly, I trust a “career politician”, a slur for so many people, more than some dingbat who thinks he can represent the interests of American citizens just because he ran a pizza place or a car dealership for a few years without running it bankrupt.
Comrade Kevin
@eemom: It’s like you fed my comment through an automatic rebutting machine. You parse the words, but don’t understand. Not surprising.
Chris T.
@Comrade Kevin: No, the phrase “all the time” means “at least 97.3512% of the time”, obviously. :-)
Seriously, what does qualify as “all the time”? 50%? 55%? 70%? 90%? 99.999%?
aisce
@ comrade kevin
jenny knows what it means. she’s just desperately spinning for no reason. what the fuck ever.
eemom
@Comrade Kevin:
well, that could be because what you said made no particular sense in response to what I said. Totally surprising.
Spaghetti Lee
@Jenny:
OK, look. I like your enthusiasm, but you’ve got to stop it with this crap. Those 15 Republicans? Only 4 of them have been from the last 80 years. A whole lot of them were from the civil war era, which makes sense given that the existence of West Virginia is due to its breaking away from the pro-slavery South, and the Republicans were the anti-slavery party at the time. Another passel of Republican governors were from the Teddy Roosevelt era, when the Republican Party was a still a lot different from what it is today. The insinuation you were making is that modern West Virginia elects Republican governors almost every other cycle, which just isn’t true. And the state and the Republican Party have both changed a lot from the time when it did regularly elect GOP governors.
Seriously, do some research, provide some context, something. This is just bullcrap.
Joey Maloney
@The Dangerman:
What I fear is that the entire campaign will be just a sideshow. The real action is happening at the state level, where Republican governors, legislators, and secretaries of state are poised to disenfranchise (I read) 5 million Democrats. It won’t matter how much enthusiasm Obama is able to generate or how clownish his opponent is, if only one side gets to vote
eemom
@Comrade Kevin:
you may also too have noticed that individual practitioners of religions tend to take it kind of individually personally when the institutions to which they subscribe are maligned, as institutions.
Or not. You’re kind of — what’s the word? — dense, that way.
FlipYrWhig
@Spaghetti Lee:
I agree with all this. I think it translates to the national level, too, and that’s where a lot of the blogosphere left starts to get very grumpy: how to talk to a nation that leans conservative, even a reasonable chunk of the Democrats, is extremely tricky. But, more importantly, yes, if we’re going to have “conservative” Democrats in the fold, populist-sounding ones are much better than the alternative.
Lockewasright
@Corner Stone:
firebagger:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=firebagger
emoprog:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emo%20prog
Emoprogs refuse to see it, but Obama ate the teabaggers’ lunch on the debt ceiling deal. It was the point at which the far right was really exposed. The tea party republicans’ role in the debacle hurt them politically much worse than any damage anyone else suffered in the process.
Anne Laurie
@eemom: Fvck. You’re a Mormon?
rb
@eemom: oh for fuck’s sake, give it a rest.
We get it. You hate fatties. Please mount a different hobbyhorse.
Djur
@Spaghetti Lee: Number of governors isn’t really the best measure. In the last 60 years, 40 have been served by Democrats, 20 by Republicans. Fun fact: although four noncontiguous Republican governorships were served in that time, they were served by only two men. One of those men was Cecil Underwood, who served as the state’s 25th and 32nd governor — he left office in ’61 and re-entered it in ’97.
John Raese, who ran against Manchin in 2010, had run twice previously for Senate and once previously for Governor, and failed all of those times. This should give you an idea of the richness and depth of the GOP slate in West Virginia.
The main pattern I can see in West Virginia statewide politics is that incumbents tend to win — especially senators. I mean, yes, they’ve had two Democrats in the senate forever, but it was Byrd and Rockefeller. Rockefeller squeaked it out in ’84. Manchin won comfortably in ’10, but he was personally popular, ran as far right from the party as is imaginable, and Raese was a perennial loser. My guess is that when Rockefeller retires, a Republican will replace him, and in the long run West Virginia is a Republican state.
eemom
@rb:
who the fuck are you?
polyorchnid octopunch
Just to follow up on the canuckistan/secretariat ref… the dippers just won another majority in Manitoba today. Er… the dippers being the NDP, which are the so-shul-ist party in Canada. Along the way, we have an election on Friday in Ontario, and the reactionaries are getting their ass handed to them. It looks like we’re going to get a minority government, with the dippers holding the balance of power.
At the national level, it looks like Harper has seriously overreached. His hatred of all things hippy has led him to propose legislation that will hand out bigger sentences to dope smokers than child rapists. That news just came out a week or so ago, and it’s not playing well in Peterborough.
BTW, the whole soshulism thing… I’m willing to bet that wordpress uses a regular expression to look for the dreaded pill word. I’m guessing it’s something like “.*[cC][iI1l][aA4][lL1][iI1l][sS5].*” If it were turned into something like “.*![sS]![oO]![cC][iI1l][aA4][lL1][iI1l][sS5]![iI]![sS]![mM].*” it would reject the pill word but allow the political word. To be completely fair, that will depend a bit on the implmentation in wordpress, which I’m not familiar with at all… but should at least give the flavour of how to solve the problem.
ETA: …and having seen the results of attempting to post the regex, well, FYWP. Feel free to get in touch with me out of band if you’d like the real version of that string.
eemom
@Anne Laurie:
nah. A scientologist. I always root for the ultra-underdog.
polyorchnid octopunch
@eemom: Too bad most if not all of them deserve it.
Bmaccnm
@eemom: For fuck’s sake, what is WRONG with you? These are words on a screen. You read them, and if you don’t agree with them, you construct a logical response or you scroll on by. There is absolutely no reason to make comments to someone on a screen that you wouldn’t make to their face. If you are angry, take a drink. Or a hike. Don’t spew bile over everyone here because you feel bad. Just don’t.
rb
@eemom: someone with a relatively low BMI. But for the purposes of your ongoing anti-fat nastiness jihad, kindly consider two chris christies’ worth of chill the fuck out.
Allan
@William Hurley: Wow, I’ve never seen a comment that was stuck in moderation since 2008 before.
William Hurley
@The Dangerman:
There will be no 3rd party from the right in 2012. The reason is simple.
No money.
Now, it is plausible, though only remotely, that GOPers will “go national” with their “tried & true” tactic of recruiting and funding a fake alternative to the Democrat. In fact, one could simply ask Ralph Nader how such deception works. Nader was the recipient of GOP generosity to a great extent in 2004. Nader received funding, staff assistance, free facilities and free communications access (phone, web) in every state he wanted them – and the GOP picked up the check.
Nader’s flaunting of election law earned him a hard look by Oregon’s SoS who concluded that Nader had violated state law and removed his name from the ballot. Several other states investigated the Nader campaign and the Nader-GOP link, but I can only remember Oregon’s legal response.
William Hurley
@Allan:
Hmm, I’m not yet familiar with all of the rules here – explicit and, of course, implicit – so I’m not exactly clear as to what you’re referring to.
I might be able to venture a guess though.
Care to share, and enlighten?
eemom
@Bmaccnm: @rb:
wow, I’ve spawned my very own zombie troll brigade! Kewl.
Follow me on twitter: @kissmyasstrolz.com
sherparick
I heard Mike Allen on WTOP coming into work today. He was pretty much all broken up about Christie deciding not to get into the Republican race. Apparently faced with the prospect over the next few months of writing about whether Perry can come back against Romney and Republican debates trending into exact immitations of Monty Pytho’s Raving Loony Party soundoffs, he and Vanderhei are mischievously going to seek entertainment by encouraging readers nominate 3rd Party and Independent candidates as “alternative choices” (including Bill Clinton who I believe is inelgible having already served two terms as President) who will somehow magically solve problems that have been building for the last 30 years and abolish the Senate. The saddest thing is that not the greed and selfishness of our current elite, but their shallow, grifting ways as exemplified in Allen’s and Vanderhei’s obsession to make a buck anyway they can.
sherparick
Another point about Politico’s wankery is that although West Virginia stop being a “traditional Democratic state” about a half generation ago. It has gone Republican in the last three Presidential elections, conincidentally, as Global warming emerged as a political issue (even in 1996, Bill Clinton’s % of the vote fell from what it had been in 1992), and Democrats appeared to become the anti-coal party and the steel and associated heavy industry along the Ohio went into the toliet as companies shifted production to China after Clinton negotiated their entry into the WTO. Meanwhile, eastern West Virginia has become an ex-urb to D.C. and Northern Virginia, and ex-urbs tend to vote Republican across the country.
I would say, perhaps from necessity, that the President has had the light bulb come on that his best chance is start defending the interests of the working class (which is everyone who depends on a pay check from someone else to pay their bills) and defending the New Deal and Great Society programs of Social Security and Medicare. And he is getting beaten up for it by the culture liberals/economic neoliberals in the high media culture (see the Economist, Tom Friedman, WaPo, etc.) for “waging class war.” He needs just to keep pounding with the jobs bill, hit on the inequity of cutting social security while cutting taxes for millionaires,
By the way, we environmentalist always have this surprise look on our face when politicians drop us like hot potato. It would be nice that instead of beating up our friends, we would defeat some wacko in a Republican primary or in general election in a district that trends Republican. That would do more to help our issues then all the sit-ins one pulls in front of the White House.
FlipYrWhig
@sherparick: I’m getting worried that environmentalists are going the way of gun control advocates — where both parties try to outdo each other to show how little they care about the issue, because it’s such an electoral loser.
Bob L
So a democrat wins in Appalachia which is the heart of the TeaBagger country and this is a rejection of Obama?
Paul in KY
@eemom: I hope your thetans are well ;-)
MBunge
@William Hurley: “The second order lesson here is that aggressively fighting the opposition produces unexpected and positive results. Obama could learn from that too.”
Health care reform and the repeal of DADT say “Hi!”
I’m not old enough to remember but when Jimmy Carter helped forge the Camp David Accords, did a bunch of liberals whine about how he could have gotten peace between Israel and Syria too if he had just been a better moderator?
Mike
Cindy Henshaw
@Joey Maloney: THIS.