Posted on 11/11/2008 7:49:50 AM PST by CAluvdubya
From the county by county vote it appears that yes, many McCain voters also voted for Brown. Remember, if all you knew about Charlie Brown was what you heard on the radio or saw in his ads then you would assume that he was an arch-conservative Republican. He literally had ads ending with something like, “Charlie Brown, standing up for conservative family values” (paraphrased, but close). Also, the Democrat’s house campaign committee put a lot of money in to running negative ads against Tom in this campaign. I think they did some damage.
However, I stand by my statement that Nevada County is more liberal than the rest of the 4th, and the numbers there were WAY out of skew with the rest of the district. Someone made a comment about ACORN - my thought was simply this - if you want to look for Shenanigans in the 4th the place to look is Nevada County. I just checked the final numbers - Charlie Brown out polled Mr. Obama by over 2,000 votes out of only 43,000 cast.
Bitter primary losers.
Yup. Precisely my worry. CA could end up looking like NY’s delegation after 2012. We’re now down to a jaw-dropping 3 out of 29 seats. Simply unimaginable. 1 seat on Long Island and 2 upstate. If King on L.I. retires, that seat could fall, and we’ll be at 2. Not since 2000 have we knocked off a Democrat incumbent there (and that was a RINO who had been elected as an “R” in ‘98 and switched parties), and prior to that, not since 1994 (and haven’t won an open Dem seat since 1992). In CA, we haven’t won a Dem held seat (via retirement) since 1998 nor knocked off a Democrat incumbent since 1994, all very disturbing trends.
I’m beginning to think proportional representation isn’t such a bad idea. NY is not a 90% Democrat state. We should have at minimum about 10-12 out of 29 seats. Even Massachusetts, we should have 3 or 4 out of 10 seats. That may be the only way to ensure any representation at all. New England’s 6 states being 100% Democrat in the House is simply unacceptable and absolutely unrepresentative.
And you’d better believe dear Ah-nold is giving covert support to deprive McClintock of victory, too.
I also favor proportional representation, but not at a statewide level (except for states with 5 or fewer EVs).
NY will drop to 27 CDs after the 2010 census. If the state was broken down into nine 3-member districts, with each voter getting a single vote (so a 51% Democrat district can’t elect three Democrats), it would eliminate the possibility of the Democrats winning 20+ seats. Think about it: if Suffolk and most of Nassau Counties comprised a 3-member district, they would elect either two Democrats and one Reoublican or two Republicans and one Democrat, in either case more representative of the area than having three districts that in the late 80s elected 3 Democrats and in the late 90s elected three Republicans.
Having districts electing 3 or 5 members by proportional representation would be an extremely fair system nationwide, but it would be problematic for states with 2, 4 or 7 CDs, since having a multi-member district that elects an even number of members would rarely allow voters to elect a majority of members of the party of their choice. For example, if RI elected its two reps in a 2-member district, the Republicans could run one guy who would be guaranteed election so long as he got at least 1/3 of the vote, so the Democrats would need at least 67% of the vote (split evenly among two candidates) to have a majority in its House delegation; the same is true, with the party roles reversed, for Idaho. Perhaps the solution is to have states with 2 CDs have two single-member districts as always, states with 4 CDs have one single-member district and one 3-member district, and states with 7 CDs have one single-member district and two 3-member districts.
BTW, proportional representation, or some variation thereof, shuld also be considered for the allocation of electoral votes in presidential elections.
It’ll be pretty hard to squeeze 6 more RAT seats out of CA imo.
McCain barley won the OC. 51-47. Pathetic!
Only a handful of rats have ever won it.
I they control redistricting in Illinois which will lose a seat we could be looking at just 4 Republicans down from a high of 10. (assuming Foster and Bean and Halverson (she almost certainly will) survive 2010)
I could get behind proportional representation also. If you made Chicago a 6-member district we’d get 1 seat. Depending on how it’s done overall such a scheme may help the rats because big cities will vote so heavily democrat they could sweep 3-member seats and at least go 3-1 in 4 member seats. Few GOP areas would give a 3-1 edge.
If they can get to nearly 90% of the NY delegation, they can do the same to CA.
About New York, I noticed, to my surprise, that we nearly knocked off Michael Arcuri. He won by just 4,000 votes. That was a surprise. I figured the Gillibrand and Hall seats would be much closer, if not outright pickups. Plus Tim Bishop in NY-1 scored 58%, not exactly a huge win for a seat that we didn’t contest strongly.
Yeah, I heard about the close race of Arcuri vs. Hanna. Hanna should definitely try again in ‘10. I was expecting us to take at least around 5 seats in the Northeast (Hall, Gillibrand, “Che-”Porter in NH, and, of course Kanjorski & Murtha). Interestingly, another close race was in the open ME-1 district. The Republican, Charlie Summers, got 45% (he got 40% against Allen in ‘04) to Chellie Pingree’s 55%. Pingree is a WORLD-class moonbat (she ran against Collins in ‘02 and got 42%) and could be a potential target again in 2010.
I spotted the close loss by Hanna on election night. Everyone called this race “Democrat Favored” and it was not on the radar. Party slept on this one. Hanna didn’t even have money to spend and still nearly won. I don’t know if McCain won the seat, doubtful, but it was a Bush district in 04 and tied in 00.
Ray Meier in ‘06 was a bad candidate. and this year Acuri did not get the Independence party nod, Hanna did, it’s a must the Republican gets that ballot line.
In my final house analysis I was not expecting any gains in New York. I thought Kuhl could hang on, he almost did. Gillibrand’s huge margin against a fairly strong opponent was shocking.
Since Shea-Porter was ahead in the polls her win did not surprise me. I had bad feeling in the back of my mind about Barletta’s chances. Very disappointing. That would have been a real “pickup” not just an take back of an ‘06 loss. Non remap aided pickups for the GOP in recent elections that we still have include KY-04, a heavily conservative seat lost in ‘98, and LA-07, that is all. 2004 would have been a net loss without Texas.
I noticed the close race in ME as well. Pingree is indeed a complete wackjob. The GOP mustn’t fail to challenge her in ‘10. Allen was hard left but didn’t have the rep of being a radical moonbat like Pingree, Maine doesn’t tend to like “extremism”.
This is the oldest dirty trick in the book to evacuate the building where all the ballots are kept for over 2 freakin hours!!! The paper told how they made EVERYBODY, including the Dems and Repubs observing the counting process leave the scene in a dubious scenario to say the least!!!
Thanks for the ping Sierra. I sure don’t like this. Never relax while a dem is in the vicinity! I don’t think the idiots will really succeed in taking this seat away from Tom, but they are dems.....sigh...
You done good! Thanks!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.