I for one welcome our insect overlords.
Whee
Coming in from dialup at home so posting will be sparse. That said, let me extend a purple middle finger to the next former Senator from Pennsylvania. If it wasn’t Social Security it was Terry Schiavo and if it wasn’t theocratic idiocy it was the K street project. We won’t miss you, Rick.
***Update***
At least he gave a gracious concession speech.
***Update 2***
Looks like John got there first. Go comment on his thread while I fetch another beer.
Election RunDown and an Open Thread
Santorum’s career in the Senate is done, and I want to be one of the first to say that is a good thing. I will post more big developments as they happen.
*** Update ***
The House sorostitute, Katherine Harris, has been defeated, surprising no one. Looks like my money is safe.
Predictions
I forgot. My predictions:
Democrats pick up 36 in the House and 3 in the Senate. Tomorrow, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Chuck Schumer come over to my house, and, at taser-point, I am forced to give all my money, have an abortion, and promise I will never ever enjoy gun violence on TV. Afterwards, they hand me the new National Anthem- in Spanish. Then we are we are all forced to attend a mandatory rally for the Democrats and Al-Qaeda, because, after all- the terrorists have won.
Tom’s Prediction:
I say the Dem’s get 20 in the House. They’ll get 5 more in the Senate,it breaks down the middle, and we all get to watch Lieberman and Cheney decide our fate for the next two years.
Tim’s Prediction:
I think that Dems will win enough House seats to eke out a majority but not much more, say 16-18 pickups. In the Senate I predict a Dem pickup of 4 to 5 seats. If we win 5 and Lieberman stays on then his last middle finger to the Democratic party will be to accept the Defense Secretary post and let Jodi Rell name a Republican replacement. Bush may value Rumsfeld but he values a friendly Senate even more.
Robocalls – Upping The Ante
In Nebraska they’re using the actual voice of the Democratic candidate. The GOP is not being kind to people who want to go on thinking that the scam is innocuous.
***Update***
In case anybody wondered whether dishonest phone harrassment works.
“Our own Alec Oveis, who sadly left the Prospect few months ago, calls in from Connecticut, where he’s volunteering on behalf of Chris Murphy (one of Tom’s “Dropkick Murphys” positioned to defeat GOP incumbents this year). He reports that voter fury over robocalls is amazing and palpable at the polling site he’s near. Several people have gone out of their way to tell him and other Murphy people that they’re voting for Republican incumbent Nancy Johnson strictly out of anger at the harassing phone calls they’ve been receiving from the Murphy campaign. Alec and other’s explanations that those calls are actually paid for by Republicans have generally been falling on deaf ears (they are, after all, holding Murphy signs while offering these explanations).”
***Update 2***
This is more sad than outrageous. You almost feel sorry for the Republicans. But then I read the quote above and – poof – that feeling goes away fast.
Well, That Is Done
And with the push of a touch-screen, my unblemished record of consistently voting against Alan Mollohan has ended. I had to really work to push the button for Byrd, but I managed to get it done with minimal internal discomfort. As for the voting itself, it was rather easy- no line, the voting machine was easy to use, and it provided a paper trail. I would prefer a paper ballot, but I guess a paper trail is better than nothing at all.
And so it is done. I hope I am not the only one to stick the knife into my party’s back, because they really have to go, although the Baseball Crank does make a good case:
Even here and now, on Election Day, you can still hear the grumbling of disaffected Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians who will tell you that our elected representatives in Washington, and their leaders, deserve to lose this election. Many of us have felt the same way at some point or another over the past two years.
***The question you have to ask yourself, or ask of anyone you know who still feels that way, isn’t what the politicians deserve. It’s what we deserve. Why should we and our posterity be punished for their mistakes with the kind of folly that a Speaker Pelosi and a Majority Leader Reid would visit upon us?
Any other year, I might agree. But the Republicans really are that bad, and if some higher taxes are the price I have to pay to clean out these sewer trout, so be it. Also on the front page of Red State is this piece by Ben, titled “In Your Heart, You Know They’re Nuts” :
Make no mistake: The Democrats will win in spite of their message, not because of it. They will win because they are not Republicans, not because they embody principled reform. A morally corrupt lifetime Congressman like Ben Cardin is not an agent of change; an empty suit like Bob Casey Jr is no champion of the little guy; and a politically crass Washington insider like Harold Ford Jr is no idealistic leader.
They will win because they have successfully convinced voters that they are not the other guys – except on issues like national security, where they’re just like the other guys, don’t you worry. And marriage – they love marriage. And abortion – in Pennsylvania and Colorado at least. And taxes – don’t worry, we’ll only raise them for OTHER people, not you.
***My sister, following an assault by a sign wielding Cindy Sheehan goon at a rally yesterday, said to me: “You know, if people saw that this is what the Democrats are today, this election wouldn’t be close.”
The title of that piece is, of course, a co-mingling of the Goldwater election slogan and it’s counterpart. After 6 years of faith-based legislating, it is not surprising that Red State wants you to go with your heart, as it is simply what the current GOP does- they feel, they believe, they have faith.
But they don’t think.
We currently have a party in power that has rubber-stamped an authoritarian and arrogant administration, has codified torture, has spent us into huge debt, has rejected science in favor of the religious fanatacism du jour, thinks that chanting “Stay thecourse” is an actual strategy/plan, cares more about a brain-dead woman and a blastocyst than the living, and thinks the greatest peril to western society is gay marriage (of course, only when they aren’t flashing pictures of Osama every election cycle). I could go on and on (and have in the past), but you get the point.
“The Democrats are Worse” may have been a successful rallying cry for GOP faithful in years past, but the problem is that the Democrats actually have to be worse in order for that message to resonate. The current GOP and their enablers have made that impossible.
*** Update ***
A humorous aside- I just check the mail and a postcard from Brian Louk, a Republican candidate for the House of Delegates, was in the mail- the front had a picture of him handling a baby and the caption “Standing up for our values.” On the back, Brian let me know he had been endorsed by the West Virginia Family Foundation and West Virginian’s for Life.
What weighty issues did Brian think matter most to the folks of West Virginia? Legal protection for ‘unborn children’ and the “Marriage Protection Act.”
I am feeling better and better about my vote.
Anticlimactic
The clock radio woke me up as usual around half past six. Light traffic being the reward for rising early, I parked my bike at the WQED studios in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood at about seven fifteen and stood in line behind exactly one other person. For the sixth election running the elderly lady complained about my signature but took it anyway and for the sixth time I promised to clean up my handwriting. While I miss the crank-lever dinosaurs that PA once used, the new boxes (Votronic by ESS) at least worked smoothly. However – and this is completely unacceptable going forward – there was no paper trail to verify my vote. We still have a ways to go before we can consider the voting process fixed.
Needless to say voting won’t go smoothly everywhere. I probably won’t have time to document the atrocities so look to Kos and Josh Marshall if you need play-by-play. For example, will Ken Blackwill’s Ohio once again lead the nation in embarrassing electoral screwups? Early signs point to yes.
***Update***
It looks like my positive experience wasn’t even representative of my own county. Eesh. What the hell do we pay Secretaries of State for anyway?