Posted on 12/17/2006 5:37:31 PM PST by neverdem
One of the problems inherent in being just one voice in 300 million is that it's easy to believe that individual votes do not matter. Not only do individual votes matter, but the mainstream has noticed that the voices and votes of gamblers may have had a crucial impact in a few key races in the recent mid-term elections.
On Wednesday, Robert Novak of the Evans-Novak Political Report published his morning-after overview of the wave that washed many Republicans out of office. Here's his quick take on the unexpected defeat of Representative Jim Leach, (R-IA), who was the original author of the Congressional legislation that ultimately became the UIGEA:
"Moderate Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) had a gambling problem -- not to say that he gambled, but he was the driving force behind a bill that all but banned gambling over the Internet. He was the victim of the so-called "Green Velvet Revolution," a campaign by the Internet gambling industry and gamblers to defeat those who pushed the measure. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) survived this campaign. Leach had had serious races in the past -- most recently in 2002 -- but he was apparently not ready for college professor Dave Loebsack (D)."
More specifically, Loebsack defeated Leach by barely 5,700 votes in a race that was not on the endangered list from the Republican perspective before Tuesday's results were in. Novak rightly identified that that online gamblers in Leach's gamblers were extraordinarily motivated to show up and remove Leach from his Representative post.
While Arizona Sen. John Kyl did survive a late attack from pro-gambling forces, gamblers' impact was also felt elsewhere. Assuming that a significant majority of voters newly energized by the UIGEA broke for the Democratic side, then it becomes clear that in the two most highly contested Senate races, Montana and Virginia, the votes of online gamblers were of crucial importance.
Pending recounts and adjustments due to provisional ballots, the races in both states came down to a fraction of a single percentage point. The latest tally from Montana shows the victorious Democratic challenger, Jon Tester, with a margin of less than 2,850 votes over the incumbent, Conrad Burns. Whether this margin represents 2,850 new votes for the Democratic side, or a shift of some 1,400 already existing votes away from Burns' count, the point is clear --- gamblers breaking to the Democratic side made the difference. The same held true in Virginia, where Democratic challenger James Webb notched a provisional triumph of barely 7,000 votes, over Republican incumbent George Allen, Jr., in a race where more than 2.36 million votes were cast. Given that some 23 million Americans report having gambled online, it's a mathematical surety that rather more than 7,000 of them live in Virginia and found themselves energized to vote anti-Republican by the undemocratic manner in which the UIGEA was passed.
No less a poker authority than WSOP Media Director Nolan Dalla was quoted elsewhere, before the election, as follows:
"Oddly enough, this bill might be worth 2-3 percentage points to Democratic candidates and could be a decisive issue which determines the outcome of the mid-term elections. Wouldn't that be justice if the Republicans were to be punished by poker players for their misdeeds?"
Dalla's words were prophetic. Based on the numbers themselves, at least the two Senate races in Montana and Virginia swung Democratic due to the anger of online gamblers. The Democrats had to win both of these races to achieve the narrowest of margins, 51-49, allowing them control of the Senate, and win both they did. Technically, the new Senate is 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans and two independents, but both of the independents --- Connecticut's Joe Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders --- will caucus with the Democrats, allowing the Democrats to chair all Senate committees. The change offers hope that no more Frist-style shenanigans will occur on gambling-related matters.
Come January, the United States Senate will have a new Democratic majority, directly due to the punitive votes of enraged online gamblers. It's not a "maybe," it's not a "possibly;" it has happened. The voice of online gamblers has changed America's government.
Ping
Given that the sex deviates vote for Democrats, can we blame the outcome on the faggots and dykes, as Novak's analysis has done for "gamblers"?
The fact that Republicans have nearly ALL abandoned traditional conservative values, it's not difficult to see how they lost.....
I believe in expanding liberties, not legislating them out of existence.
The GOP needs to re-earn my loyalty in the future.
For the next two years, I'll be looking for signs of the Elephants being something other than Democrat Lite.
i dont know how many votes this cost the gop but i do know alot people (myself included) who were seriously angry at this bill and totally blamed it on the republicans. there are so many internet poker players that could have had some impact. the gop is on the complete wrong side of the fence here.
They will make it easy to get the money in, but I'm betting (no pun intended) that getting anything out will be much more difficult. The harder it is to get your money out, the more likely that you won't without either a large win or a large loss.
YOU are comparing apples and oranges.
If congress had passed a sexual deviate bill, there would have been press conferences with all of them telling how they were winning the war on sexual deviancy.
Instead, in the dead of night, they attached the gambling law to the port security bill and passed it, hoping that the gamblers would not notice. Well, the gamblers did.
I know someone that changed his voters registration from Republican to Independent because of this new anti gambling law. The GOP can sometimes be as dumb as dirt when it comes to winning elections. Why do this just before a Mid Term election?
What I do not get is why these Republicans CARE about gambling, internet or not?
What is the ISSUE for them, that they feel the need to legislate here?
The Vice Vote. Sheesh. Probably pornos, too.
Why are the pubbies called the stupid party? Partly because they bought the myth from the 2004 election that they could win if they just appealled to the "values voters."
They're hooked, man. Probably in ways we can't understand. Democrats had lots of support from Vice in South Carolina, for instance. The head of the DNC was the lawyer for the gambling lobby. And gambling is more respectable to admit to than porn.
The repubs where dumb on this. After this happened I called Frists office to express my displeasure. Then I called the White House line and both my Senators.
The term "dumb as rocks... " comes to mind.
I even got a letter back from one of my senators and you can tell he doesn't get it....
Oh well, Party Poker shut out US money players so now I'm losing money on Full Tilt. And use Neteller to easily transfer funds. Stupid law.
What is the ISSUE for them, that they feel the need to legislate here?
It's all about the corruption.
Pretty much all of the big internet poker sites are located offshore, so the politicians weren't getting their usual pound of flesh in the form of bribes and kickbacks from the industry.
That's why you can still bet on horse racing over the internet, and why Indian casinos have sprung up across America like weeds (everyone knows who Jack Abramoff is after all).
The GOP has moved away from the idea of less government. I don't want the government to lay down laws to limit on line gambling when the State of Florida and most States have a Lottery of some kind every day. I hope they remember the sting of defeat.
This new law did absolutely nothing to stop online gambling. I didn't miss a single day of playing, but I did have to switch to a different site. All it did was piss alot of people off.
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