Absolute lunatics are polling over 40%. Is the crazification factor dead?
Will Alvin Greene redeem the theory?
Grayson is getting killed. Probably for not being progressive enough. Or maybe, just maybe, the reason health care and other Democratic policy initiatives are polling HORRIBLY in red-leaning districts is because THEY ARE RED-LEANING DISTRICTS. I dunno. But I bet if we got the public option Grayson would be winning. Just because.
Hunter Gathers
40% is the new crazification number. So long, 27.
Spaghetti Lee
I don’t care what side of the pissing match this puts me on-I’m gonna miss that crazy fucker. Hope he runs again someday.
Scott
See, I’m not paying any attention to the election crazy tonight. I’ve got a stack of old comics I’m reading instead. It’s nice to read about a world where good people win, justice wins out over injustice, and crazy people get incarcerated at Arkham…
Hal
In all seriousness, what will the left make of Grayson’s defeat? Here’s a guy who couldn’t be more Progressive if you paid him. Of course, he is in Florida.
gbear
Are we going to have to take up a collection for your bail before the night is over?
Evolved Deep Southerner
Man, I’ll bet you guys all wish you were down here in South Carolina with me right about now.
I think I went a perfect 0-for-however-many-candidates/amendments when I voted earlier. I need to start shorting stocks and making some bread with this gift.
Spaghetti Lee
The one that’s going to make me angriest is if Rick Scott wins. He’s not merely crazy, he is a goddamn criminal. He’s up 50-47 with maybe 20% of precincts counted. Hopefully, they were all in North Florida.
D.N. Nation
@Hal:
That Florida is, as it always has been and will be, a complete lost cause.
Citizen_X
Perhaps you meant “health care and other Democratic policy initiatives are not polling better?”
In other news, Ding-dong, the witch is dead.
TR
MSNBC calling WV-Sen for Manchin.
stuckinred
@Evolved Deep Southerner: Down my ass.
maye
it would make me smile, on this otherwise gloomy day. if Sestak pulled it off in PA.
WereBear
It’s freakin’ Florida. If you don’t go there because you’re cranky, the heat will get you there.
Spaghetti Lee
Alvin Greene got 40-something too. I honestly thought that race would be some kind of record-setter for blowouts. For those of us who are amazed how well a freak like Paladino polls even in a dark blue state, well, there’s a reverse to that.
Gravenstone
WV just called for Manchin. At least one more brick in the Senatorial firewall.
Davis X. Machina
@Hal: Re Grayson. They’ll run him against Obama in the primaries. Heard it here first.
Omnes Omnibus
I don’t know. O’Donnell is at 32% right now. I think that might be a good test case.
beltane
WV called for Manchin. Raese can now go back to Flordia and play with his lasers.
khead
I suggest relaxing to the smooth stylings of southern WV’s own James H. “Smokey” Shott.
That should cheer you up.
MikeJ
27% is the crazy factor. 40% means they picked up 13% of the stupid, uninformed, or high vote.
wengler
I never expect anything good out of America’s wang(Florida).
Grayson was ill-served by the fact that he is in a conservative district and his race was nationalized to some extent.
There is always hope tonight that Bachmann will go down. Though she is a batshit crazy rightwinger in a conservative Catholic district.
freelancer
@TR:
So John Raes…uhh Razy…uhhh Reezay…heh John Reese’s Pieces melted in Halloween bag, eh? Heh-Heh.
Spaghetti Lee
Holy shit, could Hoyer lose? He’s down right now.
TR
@maye:
Same here. I’m glad to see the WWE Wife and the Witch both get shown the door, but Pat Toomey is just as bad.
I’m hoping to see at least one of Penn., Colo., and Alaska break to the sane side. On the last one, I’ll even take a Murkowski win as a good thing. As long as the oily guy with the hired goons doesn’t win.
gwangung
Yeah, that drives me crazy about some posters, who argue as if all districts/states are the same and that you could easily get rid of Blue Dog Dems and replace ’em with progressive folks.
Spaghetti Lee
Also, the Nazi is getting his ass kicked.
asiangrrlMN
In bold on Yahoo!
What media narrative?
I really want to see the Dems hold on to both the House and the Senate not only for a saner America but because I want to see how the media contorts itself to fit that into their preexisting narrative.
Spaghetti Lee
And reports of Barney Frank’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
jwb
@MikeJ: I concur with MikeJ here. It’s the 27% plus the uniformed and so anxious about the economy that anyone has to be better than the current crop.
celticdragonchick
I think all the rules went right out the fucking window for this election, including the 27% crazy rule.
I have no idea if this is permanent or not, although I lean towards a long term shift towards more crazeee and GOP pols refusing to talk to anybody not on Fox.
Spaghetti Lee
Joe Donnelly might pull it off. Course, I’d rather he lose and Perriello or Grayson hang around, but whatcha gonna do.
celticdragonchick
@MikeJ:
Good take on that.
Southern Beale
But Christine O’Donnell and Linda McMahon both lost.
Here in TN “Blue Dog” Lincoln Davis, whose chief of staff once famously said he didn’t know for sure of Obama was “terrorist connected,” appears to have lost to a crazy man who terrorized his wife and held a gun in his mouth for three hours.
So, you know, when given a choice, Tennessee voters will opt for the most crazy-assed pol out there.
Omnes Omnibus
Looking at the map on TPM, I am not seeing anything scary yet.
Cacti
Yep.
Those reddish districts are voting R because they trust the GOP to get them their public option.
ChrisZ
Poor John Cole, when was the last time he had an election not go his way?
LarsThorwald
Kucinich, who made a transparent appeal for cash on the GOS last week, is way ahead.
My man Frank Kratovil, who is a Blue Dog who voted against pretty much any significant legislation of import here, is losing by 6 here in MD-1.
What was that Truman said? Given the choice between a Democrat trying to pretend to be a Republican, and the real thing, voters will go for the real thing every time.
SP
Eh, who cares about Florida- they just elected people who will ensure the whole place is underwater in 50 years.
Cat Lady
Newton is coming in more than 2:1 for Barney Frank, so we’ll see how his teatard towns come in. Hopefully teh jooz will save his bacon, so to speak.
FlipYrWhig
Bully pulpit, that’s why!
Evolved Deep Southerner
@stuckinred: No matter what the compass says, you can’t get more down than where I’m at.
Mnemosyne
Still another two hours until the polls close in California, but I’m mildly optimistic. I was hard-pressed not to smack my co-worker in the back of the head when he started talking about how he’s going to switch his registration to Libertarian because the system is so screwed up right now. He’s also apparently a Ron Paul worshipper (anyone shocked to hear he’s a 25-year-old white guy?)
I gently reminded him that a lot of the teabaggers are running as Libertarians and he was like, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Argh!
LarsThorwald
By the way, I think Manchin is going to provide more headaches than his victory may be worth. The Ben Nelson from the Holler, if you will.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Scott: Nice try. You see, Bruce Wayne is actually a patient at Arkham Asylum. In his solitude, he has constructed an elaborate fantasy scenario where he is actually a costumed superhero. But he’s really just insane.
All of the villains are doctors and nurses – the Joker is the director of the asylum. That’s why Batman can never permanently defeat them, because he’s never really defeating them in the first place.
Robin, Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon and the rest of his allies are simply sympathetic neighboring patients.
Southern Beale
@asiangrrlMN:
I know. Would have been fun to see Chuck Todd and the rest try to walk back from their “GOP Tsunami” narrative.
Anya
Grayson is losing because he tried to out crazy the wingnuts. Dems, cannot copy their tactics. They seem like parents trying to be hip, in order to be relate to their kids. It does not work. He tried the same tactics as the wingnuts and it back fired.
Resident Firebagger
Blanche Lincoln lost. Now her lobbyist career can click into high gear…
Loneoak
You could reasonably blame Grayson’s loss on his tone/tactics. He did call his opponent Taliban Dan, after all. Not only does that make Sullivan leak ‘tears’ from his Burke glands, it’s not a great tactic.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: The way I see it, when you’re crazy, crazy feels comfortable.
MattR
@asiangrrlMN: We are a center right nation and the Tea Party was too far to the right so mainstream America ended up rejecting them.
mclaren
9/11 drove everyone insane. It just took a little longer for the crazy to take hold in the rest of the population.
40% is the new 27%, as folks above have mentioned. Soon, it’ll be 55%. Then 66%…then 70%. By that point, candidates will run on a platform of repealing the Second Law of Thermodynamics and abolishing the law of gravity — and they’ll win.
Spaghetti Lee
Um, I think 4 precincts are in on the Lincoln Davis race. Hold yer horses, people.
Violet
@SP:
And covered in oil from leaks in the Gulf before that.
khead
The Kratovil/Harris race will end up in court.
I’m just glad their commercials will stop.
Rick Boucher in SWVA = toast
FlipYrWhig
@LarsThorwald: Sometimes when the choice is between a Republican and a starkly different Democrat, the winner is still the Republican, because that’s what the people of the district want, and the only way to sway them even slightly leftwards is to muddy the distinctions by running a Republican-lite Democrat. If you ran progressives everywhere, the blogosphere would be ecstatic, and the House would end up like 36% Democrats.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Gravenstone: What “firewall?” Hell, with a Democratic near-supermajority, it’s been a wall of runny shit the last two years.
MikeJ
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
That was Buffy. S6E1, “Normal Again”
LarsThorwald
Louisiana has to be pissed that they no longer have a lock on fucknut crazy candidates.
lamh32
Alan Grayson just conceded!
Steve
Russ Feingold is going to be the poster child to rebut the “Dems just need to boldly run on progressivism!” argument for a long time. I can’t believe the toolishness of the guy he’s losing to.
Jewish Steel
Who is that dude? So familiar…Oh, It’s Michael Steel! (no relation)
Comrade Luke
So according to my research, Franken was seated on July 7, 2009 and Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009. That means the Democrats had 60 votes for 49 days, right?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@MikeJ: It was? I picked that up somewhere online, but I’ve never seen the show.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@beltane: Who called that one, based on what?
Spaghetti Lee
Alexi Giannoulias is killing Mark Kirk, by the way. We’re talking 70-30 with about 10% of the vote.
LarsThorwald
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That fucking paragon of Nepotism, Luke Russert, just called Democrat Rick Boucher, who lost, “Rick BOO-SHER”.
What a fucking douchebag.
Violet
Poor Alan Grayson. I loved him in the House. Sigh.
mr. whipple
Grayson is another.
Anya
Luke Russert is interviewing Michael Steel. Why does that depress me.
FlipYrWhig
@Steve: No, we’ve already seen the counterargument a few times around here, which is that St. Russ was stabbed in the back by a lack of support from the Democratic establishment.
LarsThorwald
So MSNBC just called it for Dan Webster, defeating Alan Grayson.
So, is this kind of a victory for Jane Hamsher because the winner was a member of the Tea Party she wanted to team up with?
300baud
Some are born crazy, some achieve crazy, and some have crazy thrust upon them.
Recessions thrust crazy on a lot of people. The erosion of white male privilege, made obvious by the election of a brown guy with a funny name, pushed some unstable low-class bigots over the line. Plus a lot of people achieved crazy because that was more comfortable than dealing with reality, especially with Fox News and Sarah Palin and the Koch Brothers encouraging them to lose their shit.
Once the economy gets better, I have every hope that a lot of the newly crazy will say, “WTF was I thinking?” And we’ll resume our steady march to sanity.
Spaghetti Lee
Looks like Ben Chandler’s going to pull it out.
MattR
@Anya:
I think that was the episode of South Park I saw last night. They had to choose between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Cacti
@Comrade Luke:
And of course the 60 included uber douche Joe Lieberman.
LarsThorwald
Marsha Blackburn is bleating at me from the TeeVee, and if what she says is true, then this Republican Congress is going to overreach dramatically.
Tweety is grilling her ass.
bostondreams
@Spaghetti Lee:
How in the name of the FSM can the state have elected that huckster, fraud, wingnut?
As a teacher, this depresses me. Goodbye tenure. Hello more freaking testing.
Southern Beale
Maybe Alan Grayson could find himself a job on MSNBC? He’s certainly entertaining enough …
Kryptik
And lo, the ‘DEMOCRATS WERE TOO GODDAMN LEFTIE FUCKERS!’ narrative is complete. And there goes the Republic…
Scott
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
I think I’ve got that issue somewhere. But it was Spider-Man, and Green Goblin or Mysterio was the villain…
debit
KO is snickering while Tweety tries to slap down Blackburn.
Violet
I’m interested that the polls in Texas have been closed for almost an hour, yet the Governor’s race hasn’t even been brought up as far as I can tell. Perry and White must be closer than I thought.
jwb
@Anya: On the other hand in this election, he was probably toast no matter what he did, so I’m glad he went down doing it his way.
pattonbt
@Davis X. Machina:
I don’t know why anyone should be afraid of people “primarying” Obama in 2012. I like Obama, and am relatively happy with his performance, which translates for me that, as a politician, he is exceeding my expectations (my expectations of any politician to achieve anything near what I hope and want from a society are always very low based on “how politics works in the real world”). I’ve always said, politicians have tremendous capacity to make things terrible (see Bush) and limited capacity to make things great (they have reasonable capacity to make things OK).
But that said, I’d like to see some good robust challenges to Obama. One, I think it builds interest and gets the base excited in the run up to the general. And two, I’d like to see who thinks they will be ready in 2016 – a chance to see the bench if you will.
I don’t like making predictions, because I am not a pro, but barring financial catastrophe in the US, I can’t see Obama losing in 2012. He is likable and competent and people have high favorables of him. And I see the chances of some “-gate” type controversy that could swing that perception of him or his administration being very, very low.
So bring on the primaries.
lamh32
So Alexi is up in IL, but the returns are from urban counties like Chicago, it’s the rural areas we have to worry about!
I think Chicago will have come through!
asiangrrlMN
@Southern Beale: Yep. I want to see them trip over their own tongues making a halfway decent explanation.
@MattR: Damn. I think that is the strategy they would employ. Fuck.
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Yes. There is an ep in which Buffy doesn’t know if her whole life is just her insane imagination at work.
P.S. LOVE Batman and the Arkham Asylum story arc.
Southern Beale
Well On The Biggest Loser the Blue Team won the weigh-in. Metaphor? Please?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
Rand Paul beats Jack Conway. I guess holding down a tiny woman and stomping on her head is what the voters of Kentucky want from their distinguished senators.
Anya
@Spaghetti Lee: I so want him to win because I do not want to hear about how the GOP took Obama’s seat.
Suffern ACE
@Spaghetti Lee: If that 40 holds true, I’d take that as DeMint is not nearly as popular as one might think.
BTD
Way to hold off on the circular firing squad there Cole.
You are ridiculous.
slag
Sad to see Grayson and Feingold go down.
Spaghetti Lee
You know, I wouldn’t mind this so much if it was a culling of the Blue Dogs, but it looks like Donnelly and Connolly, for two, are gonna hang on, while Perriello and Grayson go out. Ain’t right I tell ya.
Southern Beale
@pattonbt:
I don’t want to see Obama primaried in 2012. He’s a known factor, we know what kind of President he is. Someone new will be, you know, new.
Martin
None of this refudiates crazification, btw. It’d only prove it false if less than 27% voted for the batshit candidate. 27% is a lower bound, not an upper one.
debit
You know, I wonder if the GOP is going to stop government in its tracks, how will they bring earmarks home?
joe from Lowell
Alan Grayson took one for the team. The Republicans poured a ton of their money into that district, which is red enough that they shouldn’t have had to worry about it, and thus helped Democratic candidates nationwide.
He drew fire that would have hit other people. Thank you, Alan Grayson, for everything.
Southern Beale
Big shocker, Bill Haslam (R) won governor of TN. Hell, our Democratic candidate was so lame even *I* couldn’t vote for him.
Anya
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: The two candidates were not even close, in terms of quality but to be fair, crazy Rand, cannot be held responsible for what his campaign volunteer did.
andy
@Comrade Luke: yup
Spaghetti Lee
Good thing VA’s got Class 1 and 2 senators. Otherwise the GOP would probably take the Senate. Moran and Bobby Scott are gonna be the only two Dems left in Connolly loses.
James E. Powell
@LarsThorwald:
It wasn’t like the guy he’s replacing, Byrd, was any great liberal. Byrd was, and Manchin is, very popular in West Virginia. I have to concede reality to a person who knows his or her state.
The issue with Blue Dogs: Are they Blue Dogs because the voters in their states or districts feel strongly that way? Or is it because their corporate donors feel strongly that way?
Was it okay for the national Democratic Party to refuse to consider civil rights because it needed the Dixiecrats? Or was it better for the country and its people that the Democrats moved forward and cut the Dixecrats loose? I think we can get general agreement that it was better to move forward on civil rights.
So the question now is, are the issues that divide Blue Dogs from the Democratic mainstream as important as civil rights?
Violet
@Suffern ACE:
I would have voted for Greene if I lived in SC. I mean, I’m not going to vote for DeMint, and Greene wasn’t going to win, so why not vote for the Democrat to make a point. Plus, it would be kind of fun to vote for the crazy. What if he did win? Wouldn’t that be a kick?
jwb
@300baud: This will certainly happen so long as we don’t cross the tipping point threshold of crazy. Because once crazy takes hold of power, it’s very difficult to get rid of. Crazy is not called crazy for nothing, you know, and they will do crazy, crazy shit if they have the power to do so.
Smitty Werben Man Jensen
@Violet:
I don’t think the polls are completely closed yet. Keep in mind that far west TX is in the Mountain Time Zone.
Citizen_X
@Violet: Seriously. I voted for White today, but I thought is merely a noble gesture for a decent, doomed candidate. Yet here we are, nearly an hour after polls closed, and there’s no “OMFG White got his ass kikked watta LOOSER Go Perree!” just yet.
Wheresat 10% gap the polls showed, hm?
Edit: Smitty Werben Man Jensen: Doh! Forgot about that.
Amanda in the South Bay
@MikeJ:
My pick is stupid. Especially in somewhat purpleish states like VA and IN, I guess blue collar people are occasionally really fucking stupid and vote against their own interests.
Southern Beale
@LarsThorwald:
I despise Marsha Blackburn. Sadly, she’s been gerrymandered into a permanent job. Which is so mavericky in this anti-incumbent climate.
Whatever.
Violet
UGH. Republicans projected to take House.
FUCK.
debit
MSNBC just called the GOP taking the house.
gbear
So is Carl Rove getting his money’s worth tonight? All those millions and millions of dollars…
Comrade Luke
@joe from Lowell:
What candidates did he help?
jwb
@bostondreams: On the bright side, there probably won’t be any money to pay teachers, so that whole tenure thing will probably turn out to be moot anyway.
Spaghetti Lee
Oh, Jesus, that would be so AWESOME if Bill White pulled it out. Maybe get rid of that shitty-ass gerrymandering DeLay put up.
LarsThorwald
Here’s a summary of Tweety grilling Marsha Blackburn:
Tweety: What is the GOP’s top priority?
Blackburn: Make the tax cuts permanent.
Tweety: Then what? That adds $700 billion to the deficit. How do you offset that?
Blackburn: Then we cut spending?
Tweety: Cut what? What are you going to cut?
Blackburn: Well, I think we need to cut unnecessary federal spending.
Tweety: Like what? Name a program you would cut?
Blackburn: Well, we need to do what we did in Tennessee, which was an across the board cut.
Tweety: Okay, so that’s Medicare, Social Security, Defense–
Blackburn: No, we’d cut discretionary spending.
Tweety: But that includes Defense. You going to cut Defense?
Blackburn: No, that’s not what I meant.
Tweety: Okay, so no cuts to Social Security or Medicare or Defense. That leaves about 7 or 8% of the budget. How do you cut the deficit that way? What programs would you cut?
Blackburn: We would doit across the board.
Tweety: Yes, but what programs would you cut?
Blackburn: I will be happy to sit down with you and have a conversation about that.
Tweety: WHAT PROGRAMS WOULD YOU CUT?
Blackburn: You know what, Chris, we will have leadership that will sit down and–
Tweety: WHAT WOULD YOU CUT? NAME A PROGRAM!
Blackburn: — walk through the budget line by line and…
Fucking amazing.
dms
I’ve got as good a sense of humor as anyone, and I often laugh at and criticize myself. But could you just once back off your DFH beating. It’s old and not very funny.
I’m impressed with how impressed you are with yourself, but I don’t find you very impressive.
You alone are the reason I will stop reading this blog.
Violet
@Smitty Werben Man Jensen:
Yeah, I always forget about that. They just showed Texas polls as closing and I remembered the far west bit of the state.
stuckinred
@Evolved Deep Southerner: touche, it just made me think of Jimmy Buffett’s Honey Do
numbskull
@Hal: He was the number target for the Rs.
Spaghetti Lee
Vince Sheheen is winning by 325 votes.
Why is no one talking about all these governors’ races-oh wait, fucking Narrative. Sheesh, I’ll never make it in the media.
Southern Beale
War with Iran, Fuck yeah! Whose on board!
/sarcasm
jwb
@Spaghetti Lee: It was in the cards, however.
scarshapedstar
I bet if we got the public option then we would have a public option!
I’m pretty sure Alan Grayson would agree with me.
Martin Gifford
John Cole wrote:
Let me explain, John…
If you continually surrender to the Republicans, then the Republicans are perceived as correct, and the overton window stabilises to the right.
Then a centrist like Grayson seems crazy and gets hammered.
The Lesson: Everyone should fight with Grayson to move the window towards the centre. If progressives fight together, you will win because truth is on your side.
John’s Lesson: Everyone should continue enabling the Republicans by compromising, surrendering, and not fighting. If you fight you lose, so surrender first. Then you might get re-elected to surrender another day.
stuckinred
@dms: I spose we’re supposed to care WHO you are talking to?
jwb
@debit: tax cuts, of course!
hildebrand
@pattonbt: Right, because Carter getting primaried was so good for him.
Spaghetti Lee
Christ Almighty, Rick Scott’s gonna win. What scared FL away from Sink? Was it really just her Asian-ness?
asiangrrlMN
@Southern Beale: And, a diversion of energy, money, and time. Really. Not needed.
Greenhouse Guy
I just can’t watch the coverage. Russ vs. jackass is too close to call. I’ll grab a beer and listen to this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqZZlL0l5Uk&ob=av2n
and some Old Medicine Crow music.
Violet
@Spaghetti Lee:
The good news is, they did top of the hour races and TX far west just closed, so they showed TX and they DID NOT show the Governor’s race. It could be closer than they thought.
Oh, and FUCK YOU RAND PAUL.
some other guy
Speaking as a resident of Wisconsin who had to sit through roughly 1.65 billion campaign ads, I can tell you that Russ did not run as a “bold progressive” this cycle. In fact, I’m not sure what kind of message he was trying to send, aside from “Ron Johnson is liar and hypocrite.”
I didn’t see a single ad from him touting his progressive voting record (e.g., against PATRIOT Act, against the Iraq AUMF, for HCR, etc.).
I’m actually pretty surprised I didn’t see any ads from him about voting against TARP, either, considering the political climate these days.
Comrade Luke
@Martin Gifford:
Oh man, I hope John finishes the drinks he ordered, plus another round, before responding to this.
I gotta go make some popcorn.
LarsThorwald
Rand Paul is calmly and reasonably addressing his supporters about his moderate proposal to burn the Reichstag.
stuckinred
This punk ass mothefucker Rand Paul is gonna kill the country club Repukes! What an asshole.
Amanda in the South Bay
I guess I can’t get too upset about all these Indiana, Virginia, etc districts turning GOP. I mean, these were marginally purple states anyways, I don’t think its that big of a surprise. We’ll just have to wait a few years for blue collar/low info America to catch its senses.
max hats
@ Martin Gifford
“The window” is a stupid fucking concept. That’s why Glenn Beck believes in it.
stuckinred
This punk ass motherfucker Rand Paul is gonna kill the country club Repukes! What an asshole.
morzer
@Martin Gifford:
That’s touching, but so hopelessly naive that you really shouldn’t be allowed out on your own.
LarsThorwald
I swear to God, someone at the Rand Paul rally just yelled “DEATH TO LIBERALS!”
I am not fucking kidding.
jwb
@LarsThorwald: Tweety will be back in line by Sunday, I guarantee it.
SIA
@LarsThorwald: That there. But at least we don’t have to come up with the cash for the Lasers in the Sky (sing to the tune of “Spirit in the Sky”).
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Anya: Maybe so, but you can certainly hold Paul responsible for his refusal to actually condemn the act of stomping on a woman’s head, rather than using the event as an excuse to tut-tut both sides for getting all wound up.
The most depressing thing about this election is that Nate Silver’s projections are shaping up to be extremely accurate. In other words, youth and minority voting was just as pathetic as everyone feared. But the old white guy demographic made it to the polls just fine.
Fuck it. No more worrying. If this car is going off the cliff, then by god I’m gonna enjoy the ride down.
Omnes Omnibus
@joe from Lowell: This.
WereBear
I am so bummed about Grayson, but he had a big target on his back and a ton of money poured into the race, so at least he can go down knowing that he really got under the Republicans’ skin.
Speaker Boehner. I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Must invest in foam rocks to throw at the screen.
Spaghetti Lee
I love how we get expressly told to not start the circular firing squad, but we do it anyway, including the guy who told us not to.
And Feingold ain’t dead yet. It’s too close to call as of now.
maye
@LarsThorwald: This is good. And if the Dems were smart (sigh) they’d take this tack everytime the camera or mic is on a Republican. Go on offense about the fucking deficit and hammer it day in and day out. Today, the electorate might have forgotten what charlatans they are, but the rest of us should never let up starting tonight.
Spaghetti Lee
A lot of the PA Blue Dogs seem to be holding on. Dahlkemper, Altmire, that crowd. And they said PA was gonna be a bloodbath. Hope that bodes well for the Admiral.
merrinc
@Loneoak:
Yeah, it was just hunky-dory when Saxy Chambliss ran ads showing Max Clelland morphing into Osama Bin Laden a year after 9/11. But Dems have to play nice.
mclaren
@300baud:
So, based on America’s duplication of Japan’s ongoing “lost two decades” (and counting) we can look forward to a return to sanity in…what? 30 years?
Cool beans.
Oh, no…wait–we’ll hit Peak Oil by then and the global economy will rip itself apart.
Never mind.
South of I-10
@stuckinred: Jeebus he’s annoying!!
Jules
@LarsThorwald:
I thought it was “Aqua Buddha”…
Martin Gifford
@morzer:
So all the progress we have made in the world has nothing to do with progressives fighting together?
Amanda in the South Bay
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Yeah, I’m beginning to hate white people over 50.
Hopefully the youth vote in CA will pass Prop 19. If it loses, and the exit polls show young people didn’t turn out, I’m gonna have zero sympathy for young people picked up by CA law enforcement for marijuana related charges.
Quiddity
John snarks that having the public option would not have helped Grayson. By that logic, perhaps no health care bill would have been best, politically.
GregB
Rand Paul:
Government cannot create prosperity and government is evil.
Thanks for voting me into political office so that I can create prosperity!
Spaghetti Lee
North Carolina’s looking pretty good too. Kissell, McIntyre and Price are all winning. Jesus Christ, people, why so glum?
SIA
@Spaghetti Lee: That’s encouraging; about an hour ago I read that the exit polls had Kirk up +6.
pattonbt
@Southern Beale: Well I guess I am thinking more of a “friendly” primary than a Ted Kennedy primary. If things are going moderately, it will be hard for a primary opponent to make any headway and actually “damage” Obama in terms of the general. But I think a good healthy primary is good……and healthy.
Again, I’m pretty much a functioning idiot so there’s that.
jwb
@maye: That wouldn’t be very nice of them, now, would it? So what’s the over/under line on the Dems playing nice?
Suffern ACE
@some other guy: Russ’s races have always been close. If I remember right, the guy he replaced, Kasten, was a drunk who had multiple DUIs and a mean one, who coasted Gaylord Nelson out of office on Reagan’s coat tails. Russ was supposed to be a one termer. He stayed on for three.
FlipYrWhig
@Martin Gifford: Would you say that being a bold progressive can never fail, it can only be failed?
morzer
@mclaren:
We are not replicating Japan’s lost decade, you ignorant fuckhead. They had 3.6% unemployment during it, their GNP increased by 10%, life expectancy increased to 80, savings rate rose to 20%. If we get so lucky as to replicate their “lost” decade we should go down on our knees and give thanks to Flying Spaghetti Monster, or whatever deity morons like you worship.
stuckinred
@Amanda in the South Bay: Come on now, what the fuck kind of thing is that to say?
Chris G
@FlipYrWhig: The Democratic establishment being the DSCC whose assistance he refused?
SIA
@Anya: That’s when I pushed the “mute” button. ‘Nuff of dat.
Spaghetti Lee
Horse Porn just lost. Don’t give up on teh Crazy Factor just yet.
Baroness
@some other guy: You can tell people he voted no on TARP until your face turns a respectable shade of Democratic blue and they won’t believe you. He is a Democrat, and therefore he voted for every. single. bailout. Obviously.
Russ seemed to be running on basis of his experience but if he loses because he decided to run away from healthcare reform and to the center, it’s what he deserves. Not the guy I busted my ass to get back into office, I can say that much.
Oscar Leroy
Yeah, John, it’s ridiculous to say that if Democrats had passed a plan that two thirds of the country liked, they would be doing better. What a crazy notion!
El Cid
David Brooks says the new Republican House will be sober and experienced and focused on passing a practical agenda by compromising with the Democrats. What’s to worry?
morzer
@Martin Gifford:
In brief, no. Show me an election won by “truth”. Just one.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Quiddity:
Grayson was an outlier, a pickup on Obama’s coattails in a district that any Dem, Blue Dog or not, was going to have a hard time holding onto this year.
Spaghetti Lee
Jesus, fuck TPM. A bunch of Dems are holding on in PA and NC and all they want to talk about is Aqua Buddha’s victory dance.
morzer
@El Cid:
Well, there go the savings achieved by health care reform. Clearly, keeping Brooks adequately medicated is going to require a trillion dollar investment over the next ten years – at best!
FlipYrWhig
@Quiddity:
I don’t think there’s any question that no health care bill would have been best _politically_. Once you take it up, though, ending up with a long and contentious debate _and_ no bill is _much, much worse_ politically than a long a contentious debate that results in some kind of defensible bill.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Fuck David Brooks with a very rusty pitchfork.
I’m going back to writing. Keep the faith, guys and gals.
morzer
@Spaghetti Lee:
Where are you getting the good news from?
change
Looking like a real thumpin’ for your side every way you look.
It was a real pleasure to see Alan Grayson go down, especially.
Looking forward to Reid biting the dust soon, and Toomey and Buck winning.
Do you remember the hope? The change? That night in Chicago? When you thought the Democrats would win forever and that Obama would transform politics? Do you remember when you thought he could fix everything?
It turns out that when the lights go off, the teleprompter is carted away, and the Hollywood set goes into a back lot, all there is is an unprepared, unexperienced, arrogant, incompetent empty suit left.
Martin Gifford
@celticdragonchick:
Because the Democrats are enabling it with
bipartisanshipco-dependence.Spaghetti Lee
@El Cid:
To get to know each other, they can all have some salad at Appl-oh, I can’t do it.
jwb
@El Cid: Yes, Bobo has been grazing at the Applebee’s salad bar again, hasn’t he.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris G: Martin Gifford just did the defense of Grayson that I’ve heard before applied to Feingold.
LarsThorwald
Lawrence O’Donnell talking about how Rand Paul can prevent a vote on increasing the debt ceiling is giving me the fucking willies.
Kerry Reid
@LarsThorwald:
A foot to the cranium may break my skull, but names will never … oh. Never mind.
mr. whipple
@El Cid:
LOL. I’ll have what Bobo is smoking.
Spaghetti Lee
TPM’s election map. I’m complaining that their front page article is about Rand Paul. Fuck Rand Paul.
Baroness
MSNBC is getting really worked up over the Feingold race when the only returns are apparently from Dane and Brown counties. Jesus, let’s save the rioting until Milwaukee gets in.
Mnemosyne
@Quiddity:
Sadly, that’s probably true. Health care is such a hot button issue and has been so demagogued by the Republicans that it was pretty much a no-win situation to take it up at all.
Case in point: Rick Scott, the ex-CEO whose company had to pay the largest fine ever for Medicare fraud, is about to become the next governor of Florida by running on — wait for it — repealing the healthcare law.
jwb
@Spaghetti Lee: Which of these things fits the narrative? Those are the only results you will see, because they have their story scripted, by golly, and they are going to tell it—the truth be damned!
Amanda in the South Bay
@stuckinred:
I was talking to a 20 something co worker last week, and I told her to get out and vote, at least do it for Prop 19. She sorta shrugged it off and said that since she missed the deadline for absentee balloting, she probably couldn’t make it to vote cause of school and work. I held my tongue, but was still pretty pissed. People need to get off their lazy asses and do something rather than complaining.
It just rankled me the wrong way, cause i’m in the same boat, only i don’t own a car, and I invested about 10 minutes of my time and filled out an absentee ballot form like a long time ago.
Its the laziness factor that kills me. Fuck, I’m young (31) and I’m certainly going to benefit from Prop 19, so its not as if I want cops arresting 20 somethings. And note I said only if the exit polls show young people staying home.
debit
@change: I’m looking forward to your lot fixing everything in two years. They are going to fix things, right?
Southern Beale
To celebrate his big victory, Rand Paul is going to stomp on some women’s heads tonight.
FlipYrWhig
@change: Jesus, teleprompter snark. If only Democratic politicians could extemporize as adeptly as Sharron Angle and Ken Buck.
LarsThorwald
@change: Ladies and gentlemen, your white male voter of 2010.
Citizen_X
@Violet: OK, now I feel good again. Mountain-time-zone TX is pretty much just El Paso, and is as blue as any of your edjumacated coastal-elite districts. By the conventional wisdom, they should have had a good idea of what’s going on in the rest of the state by now. So, yeah, looks closer than they assumed.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say I’ll be glad to get this election hokum behind us, so we can get back to battling the scourge that is FDL, the greatest threat to ever face our great nation.
khead
Lucky for me, I have 8 full years before I join the hated.
The good news is maybe the government will pay for a wheel chair for me then. That’s what the teevee says anyway.
Khead +3
General Stuck
Just heard Rand Paul, and also some other wingnuts in congress are balking at raising the debt ceiling when it needs to be raised to keep the US from defaulting on it’s debt and sending us and the world to hell in a hand basket. Fun times.
And MSNBC has projected the GOP to win the House with a 238 seat majority. fuck me dead
morzer
@jwb:
Someone should warn him that smoking asparagus can seriously damage your health.
Karen
@Spaghetti Lee:
I guess he wasn’t in my district because he wasn’t one of my choices…
jwb
@morzer: Yes, it will be interesting to see if Bobo shows any concern for the deficit once tax cuts becomes the answer to every problem again.
Spaghetti Lee
FUCK YEAH SESTAK!
stuckinred
@Amanda in the South Bay: Why would that make you hate me?
LarsThorwald
Sarah Palin is no longer a threat. Rand Paul is the most dangerous person in America.
MikeJ
Argh. Watching the biopic about Grover Cleveland Alexander on TCM. Ronald Reagan in the lead role, and his team is about to face the Yankees in the World Series. I know it’s a movie about something that happened 85 years ago, but it’s so hard to know who to cheer for.
Judas Escargot
@LarsThorwald:
Rand Paul is calmly and reasonably addressing his supporters about his moderate proposal to burn the Reichstag..
If only Leni Riefenstahl were still alive, to film it.
More seriously, though– watching the speech and where’s Ron Paul? The whole family’s there. But not the father, to celebrate the Tea Party Tidal Wave.
El Cid
@change: I never thought the Dem’s would win forever. Therefore I’m grateful that the Democrats piled more legislative achievements in 2 years than anyone since LBJ.
On the plus side for Republicans, I expect Democrats in the Senate to go along with most of what Republicans want. And only in a few cases will it be vetoed.
Restrung
I’m ready for some cable shitwit to say Rand Paul ~= Al Franken. And then they fight each other, and they will. I hope.
jwb
@change: No, won’t be taking any of that strawberry rhubarb pie, thank you. Try again, when you have some other pie to pedal.
Southern Beale
I do feel like Dems have only themselves to blame.
change
And now it’s finally official…the GOP will take the House.
And we will have the power of the purse strings and the subpoena power.
Buckle up, liberals, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
Spaghetti Lee
Pat Quinn and Ted Strickland are winning, btw.
And what the hell is all this about projecting the house? Dems are winning in a bunch of crucial races, and lots of Dem seats haven’t even been counted yet.
lamh32
They’re calling texas for Rick Perry
debit
Seriously, now that it’s almost over, I look forward to the clusterfuck that will be the House of Representatives.
stuckinred
@jwb: Please just don’t talk to this clown.
me
@LarsThorwald: Rand will fold like a cheap suit. Look at the civil rights act stuff.
Amanda in the South Bay
@stuckinred:
Geez, I hope I didn’t start the Baby Boomer Wars, ver 2.0 or whatever. Its nothing personal, but I think its pretty obvious what age group and ethnicity (I’m white too!!) is fueling the GOP surge.
El Cid
@change: Oh, I don’t think it will be a bumpy ride just for liberals.
General Stuck
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Not if FDL and the other netroot fools finally figure out it’s the wingnuts who are the greatest threat to ever face this nation, and they should be fighting republicans rather than fellow democrats. That goes for the firebagging morons that slither in and out of balloon juice as well.
jwb
@debit: Every problem can be solved by tax cuts. This time we’ll get our ponies for sure.
Martin Gifford
@FlipYrWhig:
You might fail in the short-term or if no one fights with you. But if you fight together, then you win in the long-term. Obama said the right thing in the short-term regarding Bush’s plan to invade Iraq, but reaped the reward when fighting Clinton for the nomination because she supported the war. Truth and progressive policies and fighting together work best in the long-term.
@morzer:
Obama 2008. His promises were essentially centrist, but he became rightwing on “security” issues and an economic rationalist (center-right) on health care and economic issues.
PeakVT
Is anyone here from NH? WTF is going on? It looks like all three federal seats are going to the Repukes.
change
@Spaghetti Lee:
Denial is the first step to recovery…
Comrade Luke
I’m jealous of Nero. At least he had a fiddle.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@change: I was wondering when you’d show up.
bostondreams
@change:
Sigh. Again with the teleprompter crap? And the man has done far better than the fraud McCain would have. Especially considering he had to pick up the pieces that the morons in the previous administration left on the floor as they destroyed the military and the economy.
Get over yourself.
stuckinred
@Amanda in the South Bay: Well, let er rip. It is what it is.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@change: Sure, clap and cheer. Just remember this: despite what you’ve been told, unless you’re liquid to the tune of $10 mil or more, you ain’t one of the elect. You won’t be sharing in the spoils of the upcoming Republican lootfest.
You’re down here, with us. And the only consolation I’ll have when the shit really hits the fan is that you morons will be suffering along with the rest of us. Probably a bit worse, what with your idiotic entitlement.
But go ahead and clap. Enjoy it while you can.
Spaghetti Lee
Oh, and troll? Buck and Toomey are both losing right now.
lamh32
Here’s another state I don’t plan on moving to : Oklahoma
voters there voted to ban SHARIA LAW from their state!
Crazy fuckers!!!
debit
@jwb: Woo hoo, I love ponies. Especially tax cut ponies.
jwb
@LarsThorwald: If he decides to take up the leadership of the teatards, he could well be. If he decides that he prefers wingnut welfare, then maybe not. I’m betting he will receive an offer he can’t refuse.
freelancer
Jesus, why the fuck isn’t Maddow on NBC’s network coverage to offset this hagiography of Boehner and the House Repubs?
This coverage is nauseating.
Spaghetti Lee
@PeakVT:
Well, NH-2 is still close. 48-47 for the GOPer with only 30/188 precincts counted.
me
@lamh32: But I bet they’re cool with Leviticus even though it’s even more idiotic.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: You are seriously starting to piss me off with your anti-strawberry rhubarb pie rhetoric. It’s prejudice. Prejudice, I say! A duel at dawn!
@Restrung: Oh, it’ll happen. Al Franken will rip Rand Paul to shreds.
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: Yep. This. Anyone who votes for any of these asswipes needs to shut the fuck up when s/he gets royally screwed by his/her betters. I will brook no tolerance on this issue.
Southern Beale
Joe “You Lie” Wilson losing to Rob Miller 52% to 46%, 29% precincts reporting.
MikeJ
@Martin Gifford: So your argument is that being liberal helps you in Democratic primaries?
djork
Joe “You Lie” Wilson is currently down in SC. 51% to 45%.
That would be a nice consolation prize.
curious
ofa just emailed for help with last-minute gotv calls: http://my.barackobama.com/E-DayCalls
“Polls are open in parts of the country as late as midnight Eastern Time — and we urgently need more folks to call voters from home once the polls have closed in their area.
We’re calling only to those voters in races we believe are coming down to the wire.
That means every call you make from now until midnight Eastern Time is even more crucial, even more focused, and even more likely to have a big impact.”
bostondreams
@change:
Subpoena? What? That worked out soooo well for you folks in the 1990’s, didn’t it?
And what will you do in 2 years to maintain those seats you gained, especially if the economy is still rough? Because, you know, you have the purse strings and all that.
morzer
@Martin Gifford:
You have an odd view of truth for a “progressive”. Do the math and explain to the rest of us how 20% of the country – at best – constitutes an invincible electoral base.
Cat Lady
Martha Coakley won! (Attorney General)
Barney Frank is winning big. Deval Patrick is holding on to a 9 point lead. The proposition to roll back sales tax is losing. Massachusetts is keeping the light on for sanity, for when the fever breaks.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
About them nekkid pics you said were floa… Ahem. Anyway, as you wuz.
lamh32
Seriously, what is going on in SC. is Shaheen still leading?
DonkeyKong
Forget all the gasbags on cable and lean into your laptop screen to commune with the ghost of Lee Atwater.
Let Lee break it down to you from the past that never seems to be past.
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
As I like to say, Appomattox was only half time.
Oscar Leroy
@Quiddity:
“John snarks that having the public option would not have helped Grayson. By that logic, perhaps no health care bill would have been best, politically. ”
Honestly, who the hell knows what John is saying anymore?
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
“I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say I’ll be glad to get this election hokum behind us, so we can get back to battling the scourge that is FDL, the greatest threat to ever face our great nation. ”
No, the media is the greatest threat to our nation. THEN fdl, then people who don’t want the president to kill Americans without due process.
change
@bostondreams:
It worked so well that by 2000 we had a Republican President, Republican House, and Republican Senate.
Only this time it will take only four years.
Democrats picked up seats in 2008 despite the economy being bad, because people blame the President.
We’re in the driver’s seat. The catbirds seat. In control.
jwb
@Jrod the Cookie Thief: $10 million? hardly. I think you need to have $100 million or show that you know how to win a couple of elections before you are taken at all seriously in those circles.
South of I-10
And they call for David Fucking Vitter. For fuck’s sake.
slag
@djork: You lie!
policomic
@FlipYrWhig: You are correct. Not that I’m happy about it, but this is reality. I don’t want to come across as validating the “center-right nation” b.s., though. That’s an inaccurate generalization which overlooks the ways state and district boundaries figure into who wins elections, the disjunctions between eligible and actual voters, and the ease with which some voters (not a majority, maybe, but enough to matter) are swayed by insincere bullshit (see Thos. Frank).
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@General Stuck: You talking about me? I know you’re stupid, so let me lay it out: I voted a straight D ticket in every election I’ve ever voted. I supported Obama in 2008 and I support him now. I don’t like FDL and I don’t like Jane Hamsher.
My position has always been that people who spend far, far more energy opposing far leftists than they do opposing the right are stupid. They’re wasting their energy on something that will never, ever help any Democrat.
Of course, in your wet little head, that makes me a fARRRRbagger. Eat shit, you useless lump.
Martin Gifford
@MikeJ:
Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election.
morzer
@Cat Lady:
Well, there is a long tradition of Massachusetts rising up against outside tyranny….
Karen
If Grayson’s losing isn’t an example of how Conservadems win in red states where the the more left leaning Dems don’t I don’t know what is.
Anya
@Spaghetti Lee: NBC would’t have made the projection if the roles were reversed. Dems, should cry foul. It’s irresponsible since the folks at west coast are still voting.
Lawrence O’donnell is yelling at some corporate teabagger.
merrinc
@El Cid:
Of course not. But as members of the Reality Based Community, we understand that. I’d say its gonna be a rude awakening for the Repubs but they’ll likely just go on to the next delusion.
suzanne
Polls close here in Arizona in about half an hour. I’m going to the Mitchell Victory (we hope!) party, so I might drop in on that for an hour or so. Races here are gonna be nailbiters.
Think good thoughts.
gwangung
Well….seems like some folks are completely missing Cole’s point and think he’s punching hippies.
That’s as stupid as the mass media and Rand Paul.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@jwb: $10 million liquid, as in cash. Anyone with that much cash on hand almost certainly either has ten of millions more tied up in investments or just won the lotto.
You gotta have cash free if you’re gonna grease the right palms.
Oscar Leroy
@General Stuck:
“Not if FDL and the other netroot fools finally figure out it’s the wingnuts who are the greatest threat to ever face this nation, and they should be fighting republicans rather than fellow democrats. That goes for the firebagging morons that slither in and out of balloon juice as well. ”
It isn’t Republicans who established a deficit commission to cut Social Security, my mother’s sole source of support. Protecting it will require fighting Democrats, sorry to say. If you don’t have the stomach for that–if you care more about the letter after an elected official’s name than what he or she wants to do–that’s fine. Not everyone is useful.
AxelFoley
@Davis X. Machina:
And then proceed to get destroyed in the primaries.
nevsky42
Shit, losing Tom Perriello (VA-5) sucks. Partisan politics aside, he was a great fucking congressman with constituent service and accessibility. He ran a tough race, defended his health care reform vote, and seriously overperformed in this district. Of course, I doubt national Dems will look at this four-point race that by all rights he should have lost by double digits and take the lesson that Dems that (wo)man up and run on their record do better than spineless worms.
I hope Mr. Perriello decides to stay in Virginia politics, either another run in 2012 or statewide…
Comrade Luke
@Karen: What good would a Conservadem have done for Democrats? They’d spend two years pulling out the football and then get creamed in the next election.
PurpleGirl
@Amanda in the South Bay: hey, not fair. I’m close to 60 and I’m proudly liberal.
J. Michael Neal
@Spaghetti Lee: TPM is breathless and easily distracted by shiny objects? No. No way. Alert the . . . wait, they are the media.
b-psycho
@General Stuck: I know this is going to sound contrarian, maybe even wingnutty around here, but when it comes to the debt ceiling I can’t help but ask:
If it’s going to have to keep being raised ad infinitum, why even fucking have a debt ceiling at all?
Seriously. No real effort will be made to address the debt, so there’s no point in the charade.
morzer
@change:
Lad, put some effort into the trolling.. Right now you come across as Diet Pepsi that thinks of itself as single malt.
superfly
Keep kicking that strawman’s ass, Cole. You’re @#$%ing great at it.
Karen
@bostondreams:
change must be a huge Sarah Palin groupie. Either that or he didn’t get the memo about McCain suddenly getting sick or getting into an accident, etc. forcing Sarah Palin to become the Pres.
Kristine
@change:
That’s because your lot can’t drive for shit.
Cacti
@Oscar Leroy:
No, they just tried to turn it over to the tender mercies of Wall Street.
Here’s a thought…
Open your mouth as wide as you can and cram your fist inside.
El Cid
@merrinc: I’m not yet convinced it will be a rude awakening for Republicans. I think it will be an even ruder awakening for a lot of Americans who think it’s a good idea to just do some more change.
Suffern ACE
@lamh32: I’d expect more of that in 2012, frankly. Sharia Law is going to be the new don’t let gays adopt.
Amanda in the South Bay
@PurpleGirl:
Well, I think the polling will show that a key group that supported the GOP will be the old and the white. Exceptions, obviously, but I think that’s what the numbers will show. Don’t older people usually turn out for midterms and the youngins stay home?
Restrung
@b-psycho:
ding, ding ding! Great question. I’d like to hear a good answer to that one.
Why the fuck are you asking it at a blog called Balloon-Juice?
Oscar Leroy
@Cacti:
Such wise and witty commentary one finds here. I hope you didn’t spend too much time researching your response. It is getting late, after all.
Yes, Republicans tried to screw with Social Security. Who is trying to screw with it now? Democrats. If, while our country’s most basic guarantee to one of its most vulnerable constituencies is chipped away, you want to repeat as a mantra “Republicans would have been worse, Republicans would have been worse” hey, whatever gets you through the night.
frosty
@stuckinred: After spending 11 hours poll-watching in South PA, I hope Amanda will allow me a reinterpretation:
Yeah, I’m beginning to hate ignorant angry lizard-brained white people over 50 who believe every fear-inducing lie they hear, read, or see and refuse to recognize the hypocrisy and idiocy in the tottering wall of beliefs they’ve constructed to hide from the real world.
b-psycho
Looked at the exit poll stuff at HuffPo. I don’t get it, if most people blame bankers for the economy then how come they aren’t voting for soshulists?
(Yes, I mean soshulists, not Democrats.)
maye
@merrinc: I can’t wait for Speaker Boehner to be called upon daily to tell us how he’s saving us from socialism. I’m looking forward to it.
El Cid
@Karen: As Digby just pointed out, the right-running Dem right near Grayson is getting killed too. So, do we get to generalize from that, too?
Suffern ACE
@Restrung: It gives the deficit peacocks a chance to prove that they are serious about the debt. That is all.
Wile E. Quixote
@change:
Hey Change, do you remember 9/11 when 3,000 Americans died and George W. Bush did nothing but sit there reading My Pet Goat? I sure do. And do you remember how we were told that we had to go to war with Iraq because they had WMD and were involved in 9/11? I sure do. And do you remember when New Orleans was destroyed? I sure do. And do you remember how George W. Bush and the Republicans increased the size of the deficit and the size of the government more than any president since Lyndon B. Johnson? I sure do. But I’ll bet that all you can remember is how manly you thought George W. Bush looked in his flight suit, standing there under that “Mission Accomplished” banner.
freelancer
@Kristine:
You’re such a racist.
frosty
@change: My wife made some really really good apple pie last week. Two of ’em, in fact. And I only got two pieces: the rest of the family cleaned it out of the ‘fridge while I was still thinking about it.
Next time: Apple pie for breakfast! Yum!!
Martin Gifford
@morzer:
On the issues, most people in America are center or even center-left. It is just that it gets drowned out because the Democrats are afraid to embrace that. They are afraid of being called socialists, because they surrendered to that fear in the past rather than standing their ground and making the argument.
BTW, I find it fascinating when I visit this blog that most of comments are fighting for the status quo. I simply say fight and tell the truth, and the commentators say, no we can’t fight and we can’t tell the truth. Then the commentators complain when the Republicans get back up off the floor. And the comentators blame the country for craziness, and the progressives for fighting. It’s kinda weird.
It seems to me that the Democratic politicians are like codependent spouses of the drunk Republicans and the Balloon-Juicers are the children agreeing with the codependent spouse that he/she should accept the abuse and the drunkenness because that’s the way the family is. Yet the family is that way because the codependent spouse won’t stand his/her ground and fight for the truth.
In politics, if you don’t fight, you lose. Current reality was created by past failure to fight, and future reality will be created by current failure to fight.
salacious crumb
i know i am gonna get flamed here, but ill say it. I for one am glad to see grayson lose. not super glad but glad just another crazy right winger when it came to supporting right wing Israeli policies not that his replacement will be any better still …just like Hillary got booted out for her war mongering ways so does Grayson. good riddance.
J. Michael Neal
Looking at Norah O’Donnell is the best thing that’s happened so far tonight. If Sestak wins, that my overtake it.
morzer
@[email protected]:
Except that your method of fighting is like taking a swizzle stick into battle against men armed with Kalashnikovs. You don’t seem to realize that politics is hard work, and fantasizing about how it will be easy if we tell the truth doesn’t get you anywhere.
PurpleGirl
@Amanda in the South Bay: I don’t consider myself old, the boomers started being born in 1948. The war year babies (1940 to 1946/47), now there is the group that really makes up the GOP base and teabaggers. People forget about the war year babies…
Mike in NC
@maye:
I don’t envy Orange Boehner. He’s going to be under a great deal of stress to get shit done, and of course it’ll just be a train wreck on Capitol Hill.
For an alcoholic and a three-pack a day chain smoker, that ain’t good.
Restrung
everybody I voted for is going to win! Except maybe county atty.
Best most happiest happy vote? Otto. Ok, Ritchie. They’re both good. Good people make good government. They’re us.
I am not a witch!
J. Michael Neal
@El Cid: Generalize to what? Pointing at Grayson is meant as a counter to those people, and there have been a lot of them, who keep arguing that if Democrats would just talk like deep progressives, that would be sufficient to produce victories. That simply isn’t true.
No one has argued that if you just talk like a centrist, we’ll all win. What we’ve said is that there are a lot of districts, too many of them, where running as a conservative Democrat is necessary to win. It isn’t sufficient. So, fine, generalize to the argument that it isn’t. It’s going to be a short one, though, because no one is going to try to rebut it.
Martin Gifford
@morzer:
Are you saying that the Republicans are super-powerful and Democrats are weak?
Anyway, I never said it would be easy. But there is no other option unless you just want your team to win. Why settle for such low standards? Because fighting is too hard?
General Stuck
@Jrod the Cookie Thief:
Where in my comment did I claim you were a firebagger? You pop off with some smart ass remark about FDL and Bj, and I responded to that. Why are you so fucking self centered? If I am insulting you personally, there will be no doubt about it, like now you blathering idiot.
General Stuck
@Cacti: LOL, that was spot on, and saved me the trouble of responding.
Oscar Leroy
@[email protected]:
It’s true. Most people here don’t care for fighting. They want to get the media to alter its reporting so it presents a better narrative which. . . leads to victory, somehow. But suggest the president get off his duff to twist a Senator’s arm or two and they call you a shrieking radical.
frosty
@Amanda in the South Bay: Sadly, that was my experience today. I was poll-watching new and infrequent D’s. The thinking being, I guess, that there’s no need to call Yellow Dog Democrats like me, ’cause we’ll get to the polls if we have to crawl over broken glass.
Got a couple dozen <35 Ds. Against a couple hundred of your 50+ old angry white Rs, sad to say.
...now I try to be amused
@Quiddity:
I seriously wonder if the health care bill will turn out to be 2010’s equivalent of the Civil Rights Act, a Democratic good deed that does not go unpunished.
morzer
@Wile E. Quixote:
Change was Dubya’s Pet Goat. He’s been walking funny and bleating soprano ever since.
frosty
@PurpleGirl: Hmm, now that’s splitting hairs. Boomer Wars 3.0?
Seriously, it’s not generations, it’s mindset. The worst, most intransigent “conservatives” I know are the ones in their 40s who came of age during Reagan. These are guys in professions, with MS degrees, who can’t see economic reality even when you show them the graphs and charts.
Oscar Leroy
@General Stuck:
I thought you ignore everything I say?
Cerberus
You know, I don’t think there’s been an election yet where I could be universally happy (an otherwise decent 2008 election map had some nasty ass hiccups in my home state).
C’la vie and all that. Pick up the pieces and start fighting tomorrow.
And in case people have forgotten due to complete myopic stupidity, “progressives” aren’t your enemy.
It’s actually important to have people fighting for liberal and progressive values on a social level rather than just being authoritarians about a party and trying to do right by their “election prospects”. It helps make sure elections mean something and aids bills becoming “no-brainers” or at least being electorally possible in our very broken system.
Many of the people getting chewed out don’t deserve it.
Despite only recently moving to the area I’m living in now and massive unemployment, job searching, and other worries, I still found time to pound the pavement getting out the vote, keeping my relatives informed and motivated and even talking some of them down from very stupid mistakes they were about to do (my uncle was considering Meg Whitman for awhile).
I fought with my secretary of state’s website and phone staff in order to get all my information and make sure our change of address forms went through and also woke up at 6:30 am this morning so I could vote first thing in the morning so my partner would have enough time to drive to the other side of the bay to vote because her change of address form apparently got lost in the mail. And I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to research her old district so she could be well informed at the polls.
All of the other hated progressive whiny pants I know fought hard to do similar things and certainly didn’t throw votes towards Team Nutjob. And I know the same is true of most of the reflexive hippie punchers here too.
The point I’m making is that we’re all scared and frustrated and angry, because the system seems so broken, fixing it so futile, and voting just doesn’t seem like enough to fix it. We’re either distancing ourselves from the slow sausage making policy side to keep ourselves invested in the long fight or getting obsessed with the slow sausage in order to keep from focusing on how long the long fight is likely to be.
But we’re all on the same side, we’re all frustrated, scared, and angry. And we’re all hurting to see how well lies, bullshit, and open hate sell as long as you have enough money in your campaign and enough dominance of the media.
It may be impossible to stop the ourobouros of frustration that is any fight for what is right, but we need each other. Sausage makers and dreamers, truth tellers and electability fetishists.
Cause it’s going to be long and painful and it always seems there’s a bitter sting to any election night no matter how uplifting.
What matters is we keep fighting whether day by day or year by year.
Tonight isn’t the end, and we don’t ever get to rest.
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: I never said that. Oh, sure, you might have ‘evidence’ that I said that, but I never did. It’s your word against mine. What is this thing called the intertubez?
General Stuck
@Oscar Leroy:
unless it is responding to one of my comments, yes, I do ignore you.
Oscar Leroy
This is going to be the new group-think insta-meme, I see: “Alan Grayson lost, so that means running as more liberal isn’t the answer at all. I mean, if one guy in one district can’t pull it off, most people can’t!”
It makes no sense whatsoever, but then again neither does blaming 90% of our troubles on the media.
dlnelson
i am from the camp, why vote, both sides are bought and paid for. We need to get young folks, in their 20s and 30s, who do not care about same sex, gays, and are not bought and paid for. These are the kids, that have student loans, have been student athletes, student scholars, they live with a diverse community, (we live close to the Bay area), life in San Fran is so diff from MN and ND. Young kids do not care, unless they are from the deep south. I heard Rushbo say that polls do not reflect public opinion, it is to sway public opinion. No one had polls during bush, it was not pushed on a daily basis. I have had it with corporate hackery. By the way I did vote, I encouraged my family to vote, and everyone voted. I do believe the voting count is corrupted. I am stupified with how stupid voters are. I am going to watch something other than the over paid idiots. I hope the cooking channel has a good program, I am so sick of all this nonsense. In fact I am an Obama supporter, but everyone around him is a corporate whore. On both sides. Politics is an expensive business, and we the public are screwed. I am mad.
dlnelson
i am from the camp, why vote, both sides are bought and paid for. We need to get young folks, in their 20s and 30s, who do not care about same sex, gays, and are not bought and paid for. These are the kids, that have student loans, have been student athletes, student scholars, they live with a diverse community, (we live close to the Bay area), life in San Fran is so diff from MN and ND. Young kids do not care, unless they are from the deep south. I heard Rushbo say that polls do not reflect public opinion, it is to sway public opinion. No one had polls during bush, it was not pushed on a daily basis. I have had it with corporate hackery. By the way I did vote, I encouraged my family to vote, and everyone voted. I do believe the voting count is corrupted. I am stupified with how stupid voters are. I am going to watch something other than the over paid idiots. I hope the cooking channel has a good program, I am so sick of all this nonsense. In fact I am an Obama supporter, but everyone around him is a corporate whore. On both sides. Politics is an expensive business, and we the public are screwed. I am mad.
Oscar Leroy
@General Stuck:
LOL. You’re a complete joke.
General Stuck
@Oscar Leroy:
Quit falling in love with me troll
Oscar Leroy
After re-reading some comments, it occurred to me that people like Cacti might simply not know about the deficit commission. Here’s a primer:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/08/AR2010060805081.html?wprss=rss_politics
PurpleGirl
@frosty: It was Amanda and you who are making quite broad generalizations about people 50+. I’m just trying to broaden that idea and better define age groupings. Yes, 40-somethings who came of age with Reagan are more conservative. But not all 50+ people are old farts and conservatives. I really hate it when the boomers are blamed for things as if all boomers are the fucking same. In MY experience you have to somewhere include the war year babies and their mindsets. (People like my older sister.) And 50 is NOT old anymore. Based on my parents’ age when they died, I have close to another 30 years to live.
Cerberus
And the pie-loving troll illustrates a deep functional problem which is that too many have been encouraged to dissassociate themselves from reality and politics so much, that they are eager to treat it as if it was sports fandom, as if it carried no more importance than cheering on the Giants at the World Series, hoping your “team” beats their “team” on the point spread so you can feel like you contributed to the victory.
This works well to the Gilded Age style rich fucks who’ve bought off lots of Congress, but not so well to the rest of us. Because politics isn’t a game. This shit matters.
And I think it’s why a lot of “shrieking progressives” sometimes seem so insufferable. This shit getting mired, conservadems hippie-punching and watering down, republicans playing obstructionist means that someone’s relative dies of a preventable disease, someone can’t find a job to save their life, another person kills themself because there’s no one to help them, people continue to go uneducated or live lives more oppressed, more joyless, or more fearful than they need.
When bills against women get passed so that someone can grandstand that they have meaty bipartisan balls, real women suffer. When someone wants to appease racists by passing insane immigration bills, real minorities suffer. When someone decides to run on gays deserving to die and no one thinks it’s ever safe to speak up for them, real gay teens die.
Yeah, good progress was made in some sectors and more than less I’m happy with what did occur in the apparent two years we got, but the real suffering is real. And we can vote and we can fight for democrats, and we can get our friends and families to vote with us and pound the pavement and shout out the truth, but it can get really brutal, because sometimes it seems like everyone else is just looking for the short term score to say “booyeah my team won!”
And when it gets shallow like that, it’s apparently very easy to convince people that beating Team Hippie will make them happy, that everyone should join Team Racist Sexist White Male because they are winners, like fuckers wearing Yankee hats because they are always in the playoffs.
It’s real life and it matters.
It matters that we vote for sane people and that we try for as progressive as we can get and if we can’t get more that we fight to educate our districts.
This shit is our goddamn lives. And by that, I don’t mean comfortable white male privilege shit, I mean that of us long-suffering minorities.
Martin Gifford
I keep getting moderated out for some reason. I’ll repost this, and it will be my last comment for now.
morzer wrote:
Are you saying that the Republicans are super-powerful and Democrats are weak?
Anyway, I never said it would be easy. But there is no other option unless you just want your team to win. Why settle for such low standards? Because fighting is too hard?
On the issues, most people in America are center or even center-left. It is just that it gets drowned out because the Democrats are afraid to embrace that. They are afraid of being called socialists, because they surrendered to that fear in the past rather than standing their ground and making the argument.
BTW, I find it fascinating when I visit this blog that most of comments are fighting for the status quo. I simply say fight and tell the truth, and the commentators say, no we can’t fight and we can’t tell the truth. Then the commentators complain when the Republicans get back up off the floor. And the comentators blame the country for craziness, and the progressives for fighting. It’s kinda weird.
It seems to me that the Democratic politicians are like codependent spouses of the drunk Republicans and the Balloon-Juicers are the children agreeing with the codependent spouse that he/she should accept the abuse and the drunkenness because that’s the way the family is. Yet the family is that way because the codependent spouse won’t stand his/her ground and fight for the truth.
In politics, if you don’t fight, you lose. Current reality was created by past failure to fight, and future reality will be created by current failure to fight.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@General Stuck: Gee whiz, General Joke, I guess I assumed that since you’ve called me a firebagger on numerous occasions, and were responding to my comment to take a shot at firebaggers, a group which you’ve stated previously in no uncertain terms that I’m a part of, that you were taking a shot at me.
How silly of me. I shouldn’t expect a troll like you to remember the bullshit you’ve spouted for more than the ten seconds it takes you hunt and peck it out.
If it happened more than one meal ago, and it doesn’t support whatever inane argument you’re making presently, it didn’t happen, right? You really would make a good Republican.
Feh. Whatever. You’re just as fucked here as me and everyone else, you ain’t worth hating. You’re not the enemy, just a little slow. Try not to die before November 2012, keep voting D, and by all means have your silly troll fun.
General Stuck
Man o man, we got some odd ducks commenting here these days.
Tone in DC
@LarsThorwald:
Good one.
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@Cerberus: Amen.
There’s never a good time to fight for what’s right. On top of that, every tiny gain we make in this country towards justice will inevitably be accompanied by a backlash from the privileged. So be it. We always win in the long run.
Just Some Fuckhead
On the bright side, that’s two less AIPAC tools in Congress.
Just Some Fuckhead
@El Cid:
The blue dog in my district got killed too. Know who didn’t show up to vote? All the young folks and people of color that formed a line halfway around the building in 2008.
People who are inclined to vote Democratic aren’t inclined to vote too often. It’s not any more idealogical than that.
Church Lady
Alan Grayson lost because he is a bugfuck crazy asshole. End of story.
jinxtigr
Vermont is more or less alongside Massachusetts as the ‘keep the light on’ place. You’ve got to remember we don’t have one country and it’s stupid to behave as if we do.
Rand Paul needs to be hung around the neck of the Republican Party like a flaming gas-filled tire. He’s going to be the biggest gift to Democrats ever.
A lot of these guys can ONLY win in places like Kentucky, the other country- their bullshit will turn off even Republicans in other parts of the country like New England.
And the bumpy ride, the damage that will be done- these people have better control over their HOME states. We in Vermont know how to take care of our own and we’re stubborn that way. Think locally, and if you’re in a budding Somalia of wingnutistan, maybe you might consider getting the hell out before you get curb stomped?
And we’ll see whose fucking states seem like a nice place to live. I am damn well prepared to help other Vermonters get through all this, and we might not have quite got rid of Dubie but our guys are working on battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst.
Sasha
Although it blows that most of the crucial elections in Florida are going against Dems, it looks like Amendments 5 & 6 (anti-gerrymandering) will pass, so that’s something.
NR
@…now I try to be amused:
Take away the “good deed” part and you may be right. (Unless you’re talking about the big insurance companies. It was very good for them.)
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Martin Gifford:
.
Mr. Gifford FOR THE WIN!
Also too, Church Lady is a bugfuck crazy asshole. End of story.
.
scarshapedstar
Let’s not forget Blanche Lincoln. All that whoring really paid off for her, right? I mean, I guess it would have been bad form for her to actually help the party before losing her seat anyway.
On the other hand, it would have jeopardized future opportunities lobbying for HMOs, so her sticking one of the many daggers into the public option was totally rad.
Daniel X
Ain’t no such thing as the death of crazification. When Rand Paul wins by being a complete nutcase, the next wingnut who comes down the pike running for office will think “See? If I’m even more of a whack job, I’ll win by a bigger margin than that elitist doctor!” Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, he makes Dan Coats (new senator from my fair state) look positively statesman-like, which is no small feat. Oh well….at least Coats is your normal garden variety corrupt-asshole-lobbyist-type Republican – hey, I can deal with that. True believers like Paul, on the other hand, will get you killed. Good thing the Repug…er….Repud….dammit….Republican establishment is already planning how to co-opt the teabaggers. Poor teabag folks….they haven’t figured out that the Republicans don’t really give a shit about anything but the bucks. But then I have to hold my nose and nausea to vote for Dems these days too…..Robert Rubin, anyone?
Christin
:-) My guys that I worked my butt off for in Jersey won, so I’m happy. Very very happy. That would be Pallone and Holt. Wheeeeee!!!!!
I guess the JaneHampsher groupies and Daily Kossers lead by Markos are in head exploding territory. Feingold and Grayson, the Obama bashing Progressives went down really really hard. But I’m sure their tired old sad meme will be TURN HARD LEFT.
And yes, red districts went back to red. The same idiots that voted for Bush the 2nd time showed up. The same stupid Progressive whined and cried and moaned and groaned and didn’t vote. And now they get the government they so deserve.
I am not upset. I can’t do this anymore. Just can’t. The progressive whiners were killing me. Let me taste true bile now. They got their way, right? Oh wait, now they’re crying even harder? And you wonder why I laugh?
amk
For all the yelling from the sidelines, I would like to see how the ‘progressives’ finally stack up in today’s total dem losses.
Buggy Ding Dong
Yes, because one liberal went down in a red district, that definitively shows the Third Way is the only way.
Meanwhile, scads of Rahm’s blue dogs went down while campaigning as damn near Republicans. But that’s different.
At some point Democrats are going to figure out that it doesn’t matter how they vote, they are all going to be campaigned against as if they are Wavy Gravy. Ralph Hall was excoriated as a liberal back when he was a Democrat. Now he is one of the more conservative members of the GOP caucus. His votes didn’t change, of course.
Lastly, this is about the economy. Everyone can bloviate about “what it means” until they are orange in the face, but the economy killed us. Of course, it was those nasty, evil liberals arguing that we had to go bigger on the stimulus because what was being proposed was way too small.
But liberals are stoopid and should just shut up.
Joe Buck
Grayson’s getting killed, and the first-term Democrat one district over is being killed. Grayson ran as a leftist, and his neighbor ran as the most conservative of Blue Dogs. They both lost.
At least Grayson went down fighting instead of cowering.