Posted on 11/13/2014 11:00:55 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Clinton?
Gradually it is sinking in to Official Washington that the 2014 election could very well do to Democrats what the 1930 election did to Republicans: make them irrelevant for at least a generation.
In 1930, the first election after the Stock Market Crash saw Republicans go from a 270-164 majority in the House to a minority, albeit by one seat. In the next three elections, Republicans would continue to lose until there were only 88 Republicans in the House after the 1936 election. The Depression wiped out two-thirds of the House Republicans in just eight years and it would be another decade -- and world war -- before Republicans got control once more. And then only for two years and then two years after Eisenhower's election. Democrats controlled the House for 60 of the 64 years from the 1930 election to the 1994 election.
Talk about your climate change. The effects on the nation were devastating but only in retrospective. Incremental socialism cam in the guise of helping people and solving problems, even as it grew the government into Godzilla proportion.
In 1930, state legislatures flipped Democratic overnight as well. The damage was long term. It would be 84 years until Republicans controlled the West Virginia House of Delegates again. West Virginia fared well in the 1920s -- far better than most of the 11 Southern states. Today it is the second-poorest state in the nation.
Now then, I am not saying that the 31 states where Republicans control the legislature will definitely go Republican in the 2016 presidential race. But if they do, that's 314 Electoral College votes. You need only 270 to win.
The good news for Republicans and the bad news for Democrats is that scenario seems plausible, because people may be looking for political stability.
So far in this century, we have seen political turmoil that began with a historically close presidential election in 2000 that in its aftermath saw the control of the Senate flip three times. Republicans fared slightly better in 2002 and, but Democrats slammed the door in the 2006 congressional election and in 2008. Republicans roared back in 2010, but the re-election of President Obama gave Democrats a temporary reprieve. This year's election was decisive. Republicans have not done this well in nearly a century.
The carnage this year should demoralize Democrats, particularly Hillary Clinton, who has the misfortune of being the Democratic front runner for 2016. George McGovern and Fritz Mondale feel her pain.
Hillary Clinton was about as effective as Pat Nixon on the campaign trail. Her candidates lost 12 of the 13 tight Senate races she campaigned in. Even the Jacksonville Jaguars have a better winning record this year. She's old and it shows. Her ideas have atrophied. She has been a fixture in Washington for 22 years, always caught in some controversy, always blaming others, always cackling. One reason Democratic Party bosses backed her opponent in the 2008 nomination process was that he was No Drama Obama.
She's 67 and has had only one executive position in her life. And she blew that gig in Benghazi.
Of course, she heads a bench of balsa wood. Behind her is "young Hillary" -- Elizabeth Warren, 65. Then there is the "conservative Democrat," Martin O'Malley, 51, governor of Maryland. He doesn't want the government's boot on your throat; he wants to put its ballet slipper there. He pushed for cheap college tuition for illegal aliens. Democrats are about to learn that "immigration reform" is as big a loser as gun control and global warming.
Andrew Cuomo, 56, may be the most intriguing in the Democratic bunch. He cut a deal with Republicans to get re-elected in exchange for Republicans taking control of the state Senate. After Obama, Democrats may go for a guy who cuts deals, no matter how far below the table they go. Oh and you political virgins out there need to understand, Republicans got the better end of the deal.
But like his father before him, Cuomo doesn't need the presidency. He has all he needs in Albany.
Besides, who needs the noise?
The bottom line is no matter who the Democrats nominate, he or she faces an Electoral College map that is stacked against Democrats. The Solid South now stretches to Wisconsin. If Pennsylvania is in play, Democrats are doomed because the last Democrat to win the presidency without Pennsylvania was Harry Truman in 1948. There's a reason they call it the Keystone State.
Democrats need a complete overhaul. Don't expect one. Nancy Pelosi, 74; Steny Hoyer, 75; and James Clyburn, 74, run House Democrats and see no reason to step aside for new leadership:
House Democrats ended Election Day controlling fewer seats than they have in nearly 80 years, but Nancy Pelosi isn’t conceding anything.
“I do not believe what happened the other night is a wave,” Pelosi said in her first sit-down interview since Democrats lost a dozen House seats to Republicans on Nov. 4.
“There was no wave of approval for the Republicans. I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave of approval for anybody. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.”
As for whether she would consider stepping down as minority leader, Pelosi said she’s needed now more than ever.
“Quite frankly, if we would have won, I would have thought about leaving,” Pelosi declared, a remark that will likely surprise both admirers and detractors.
Pelosi’s take on the midterms is this: It wasn’t a Republican wave, her party’s message is fine and while President Barack Obama thinks Democrats need to play better politics, she believes Democrats just need to better engage voters. Maybe she wants to break Bob Michel's record for years as minority leader.
Everything is going fine for her. She has all the perks of being a congressional leader with none of the responsibilities. President Obama has to fight the Republicans, not her. Now be a darling and fetch the valet to bring her Escalade around.
As for Obama, he's president. Sure, he has nothing left in his legislative quiver but meaningless gestures. His pact with China on nocturnal emissions (or whatever they are) won't make it out of committee in the Senate. He will spend the next two years working on his golf game and shredding records. E-mail? What's e-mail? My dog, Bo, ate my e-mail.
But the rest of their party is on the brink of political oblivion for a long, long time. The biggest loser is Hillary Clinton, the feminist who rode her husband's coattails to power. Frankly, that's the best thing about the election: It likely killed her career.
We have two years to go Scott Walker on them and defund the left at the state level.
It all means nothing if Barky the Dogeater manages to get his 5-40 million illegal alien invaders successfully into this country, overrunning the system and giving Democrats majorities for the next 200 years.
“She has been a fixture in Washington for 22 years, always caught in some controversy, always blaming others, always cackling.”
Baggage, baggage, baggage. Look at the recent successful Dem candidates:
* Carter - Washington outsider, governor of a Southern state, not too well known nationally prior to the campaign.
* Clinton - Washington outsider, governor of a Southern state, not too well known nationally prior to the campaign.
* Obama - State senator from a Dem stronghold in a midwestern state, who only achieved national prominence a few years before the election, then snagged a Senate seat in a “gimme” race just in time to pad his resume for the Presidential campaign.
One thing they all had in common was that they didn’t have a lot of baggage for voters, at least at the national level. People didn’t see them and immediately remember whatever scandals, gaffes, and controversies they were involved in for the last few decades. Hillary can’t rely on that effect to help her.
The Republicans had the House, the Senate, and the White House for several years under Bush.
Did they remove abortion from the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court? (Which they can do with a simple majority vote.)
No.
"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”
-George S. Patton Jr.
I’ll affirm this map as true, the morning AFTER the 2016 elections.
Zackly! Anyone who seriously expects the Republicans to do the right thing hasn't been paying attention for the last 50 years.
I’ll be busy getting a tuxedo ready for the Cruz inaugural ball and ordering miniature medals for my lapel. Friends of mine from Iowa went to the 1989 Bush inauguration and they said many people wore their medals. She now runs the education program at the Bush Library & Museum in College Station.
I’m sick of the voting crap.... I need at least a 12 month recovery.
Of course it was intentional. How better to perpetuate a socialist agenda by bringing in 5M voters who favor it. Stupid GOP.
Yes. If the Republicans can’t govern this time (again), the base will stay home (again) and Shrillary or some “moment in history” empty chair will win (again).
The next president’s first act should be to only show up to inaugural bar-b-ques, not red-carpeted balls. Humility.
In a one party dictatorship, such as we have now, elections are only to perpetuate the system while giving the masses their “bread and circuses”.
What to expect from the dictatorship? Nothing. They will hold hearings; officials will lie; and life will go on. The next selection will come and go; the same people will remain until death; and the game goes on.
Elections have consequences; selections do not.
Whites voted 75/25 Republican in Texas and are pushing 80/20 in Louisiana. Same elsewhere in the South. Even though both Texas and Louisiana has boatloads of minorities (at least 30% of the voters in each), both states are now scoring 15 to 20 Republican victories, at the state level. In 2016, there won’t even be any presidential campaign down here.
Now go up to Michigan and Wisconsin, for example. They have less than 20% minorities (in fact, only about 10% in Wisconsin). All the Republicans have to do is take some of those numbers from WHITE VOTERS in Texas and Louisiana and apply them up there...and in some other states starting with Ohio.
For those that say it can’t be done, I ask why? Most white Texans are actually from out of state, yet they still vote correctly. The BIGGEST PROBLEM with adding to the white block vote is Republicans have a HUGE ISSUE with drawing distinctions between themselves and Democrats. Perhaps we act CONSERVATIVE, for once, as (just about) every Republican candidate in the South does? Maybe give the whites up there a reason to vote for us?
This out-of-control President is making life VERY EASY for us, if we choose to push ahead...and there is time. Let’s start flipping some states that we should own in the first place!
This could certainly be the case, but does ANYONE really believe that the voters won't become just as disgusted with the shenanigans of Boehner, McConnell and the GOP-e by 2016 that the dems won't come back as strong as ever?
I don’t know how widely read Mr. Surber’s blog might be, but, it’s a shame that this article could not be submitted to the major “printed news” outlets, and/or every major newspaper in the nation, to be run as a “Guest Editorial”. This is really good. (Unless you’re a DemocRAT.)
Media are orgasmic at the thought of a Clinton-Bush race.
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I agree with the author of this article. I think Hillary is yesterday’s news. Her brand of politics is passé. I do NOT think she will get the Dem nomination. Anyone disagree with that? Agree?
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