Howard Dean: The Bet's Off on Incumbency

American Thinker ^ | April 10, 2010 | David Pietrusza

[neverdem]

Liberal propagandists are very good at changing the subject, their task made all the more easy thanks to their firm grasp on both the channel and volume controls of the mainstream media remote control device.

>p>Take for very good example, the current election cycle.

Democrats are in trouble. Big trouble. We know that. They know that.

But it is also very handy to provide excuses, excuses that will disguise the real reason for rising voter discontent.

So the story becomes not that the public is outraged with Democrats or liberals or those who rammed the stimulus or the health care/student loan nationalization bill through the Congress. It becomes that the public is dissatisfied with incumbents.

Now, that might explain Jon Corzine's loss in New Jersey, but it does not explain earth-shaking Democratic setbacks in Virginia and Massachusetts. In fact, incumbent Corzine scored a higher percentage than failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds in Virginia.

Yet, the meme continues. It's not Democrats who are in trouble. It's incumbents.

As the Gallup poll recently reported: "A record-low percentage of U.S. voters -- 28% -- say most members of Congress deserve to be re-elected. The previous low was 29% in October 1992. . . .  Additionally, 65% of registered voters -- the highest in Gallup history, and by far the highest in any recent midterm year -- now say most members of Congress do not deserve re-election."

Yup, it's incumbents. That's the problem. No, it's not -- and even folks who say that they believe that really don't.

Case in point.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and former Bush Administration guru Karl Rove have recently taken an act out on the road, debating and joshing each other at stops along the college campus route, as did G. Gordon Liddy and Timothy Leary years ago.

The results have been illuminating but never more so than in Albany, New York on April 8, when Dean, while conceding that Democrats would indeed lose seats in the fall, went on to alibi that the problem was incumbency rather than ideology.

Some further background. For his part, Rove has recently noted that the sample congressional generic polling now favors the GOP at a much higher rate than in did in the watershed year of 1994. The GOP is now ahead by three percent. In April 1994 it still lagged by behind Democrats.

And the congressional anti-incumbency of April 2010 actually breaks down rather interestingly. Democrats, oddly enough, are not all that anti-incumbent. In fact, they're not anti-incumbent at all. They favor incumbents by a 46 percent-41 percent margin. And, again, not surprisingly, Republicans now really loathe incumbents. They want them out by an 83 percent-13 percent avalanche. But the real number of interest -- as always -- involves independents. They align themselves with Republican thinking, hankering to throw the rascals out by a huge 72 percent-25 percent factor. Look to them to be nearly as selective as Republicans in regard to which incumbents they choose to toss into the ash heap of history.

Now, back to Mr. Rove and Governor Dean.

Rove is no Pollyanna on matters electoral. He studiously refuses to yet predict a GOP majority in either house in 2011. The highest he is willing to go in Senate, at this point in time, is 49 Republican seats, with, perhaps a majority. if the party wins two out of four seats in Washington (Murray), California (Boxer), Wisconsin (Feingold), and New York (Gillibrand). He predicts, again at this point in time, only a thirty-five pick-up in the House, a figure insufficient to separate septuagenarian Nancy Pelosi from her speaker's gavel.

Yet, onstage at Albany, listening to Howard Dean's incumbency shtick, Rove finally had enough.

Before an audience of 2,500, he called Dean out on his assertion regarding congressional incumbency, daring him to put his money where his mouth is -- challenging him to a $1,000 bet (the proceeds to go to a University at Albany scholarship fund) that there would be three times as many Democratic incumbents defeated as current GOP officeholders.

Dean looked ill. His smile broadened artificially. His brow furrowed genuinely.

He wouldn't bite.

A frustrated, but still confident, Rove raised the ante.

Make it four -- four times as many, he challenged.

Still no response, beyond Dean's pasted-on grin and a waggle of his eyebrows meant to convey something or other.

"I know you're a cheapskate Howard," Rove goaded the former Vermont governor.

"Democrats are always much more careful about their money," Dean responded, merely providing Rove an opportunity to skewer him and his co-religionists.

"It's other people's money they're free with," said Rove.

Dean kept his silence because there is other people's money and there is your money -- and other people's incumbent's and your incumbents.

David Pietrusza is author of a forthcoming book on the 1948 election, is also the author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

It is now about incumbents. It is about the economy. The economy will have been a mess for 2 years upon the next elections. The Democrats have the Executive and Legislative. The people will blame them for not fixing the economy.

The smart ones who pay attention will see Obama’s communist power grab and destruction of American values and vote against him.

The dumb, lazy and apathetic will vote in knee-jerk manner against the Democrats.

I don’t care. I just want to stop the communist onslaught. I don’t care how we achieve that result. We need to make Obama a lame duck before he can do much more damage.

[hinckley buzzard]

Chairman Howard Dean and former Bush Administration guru Karl Rove have recently taken an act out on the road, debating and joshing each other at stops along the college campus route

I hate when Washington republicans suck up to democrat enemies and pal around and generally act like geek adolescents on their first date. I hate when Bush does it(either one) and I hate when Rove does it. I hate when Gingrich does it, or that dipshit from S Carolina. Why the GD hell don't they see the harm they do by giving these enemies of the people legitimacy?

[Canedawg]

What you say is dead-on.

Even IF we take back majorities in both houses in 2010, AND win the WH in 2012, we will STILL have to contend with the 35% of the population who are committed leftist morons, plotting and waiting for their next opportunity to stage a coup.

At any rate, it will be difficult to recover from this lurch to the left, but whatever damage control we can manage will be worthwhile. But the leftists will continue to do damage to our society and our Constitution any way they can.

[WashingtonSource]

We must wage an unrelenting and merciless war against leftists, liberals, socialists and communists and leftist ideology in the coming years until we drive them from every perch they have occupied — or we destroy or make irrelevant any institution where we can’t drive them out. This is an all-out hundred years war that must be fought with every fibre in our bodies. We must have a conservative march through the institutions, one by one, till we are victorious. Marxism must be killed and a stake driven through its heart and regularly vilified forever and ever more.

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, for the information.
and they're running / whistling past the graveyard, too....
where even the dead voters can't help them.