Posted on 11/07/2014 4:38:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Some observations on the election:
(1) This was a wave, folks. It will be a benchmark for judging waves, for either party, for years.
(2) In seriously contested races, Republican candidates were generally younger, more vigorous, more sunny and optimistic than Democrats. The contrast was sharpest in Colorado and Iowa, which voted twice for President Obama. Cory Gardner and Joni Ernst seemed to be looking forward to the future. Their opponents grimly championed the stale causes of feminists and trial lawyers of the past.
Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.
Democratic leading lights have been around a long time. The party's two congressional leaders are in their 70s. The governors of the two largest Democratic states are sons of former governors who won their first statewide elections in 1950 and 1978.
This has implications for 2016. Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee, worked in her first campaign in 1970. She has been a national figure since 1991. The Clintons' theme song, "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," was released in 1977. That will be 39 years ago in 2016.
(3) The combination of Obama's low job approval and Harry Reid's virtual shutdown of the Senate insured a Republican Senate majority. Reid prevented amendments -- Mark Begich of Alaska never got to introduce one -- that could have helped them in campaigns.
Votes were blocked on issues with clear Senate majorities -- such as the Keystone XL pipeline, medical device tax repeal and the bipartisan patent reform bill backed by Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
That left Democrats running for re-election stuck with 95-plus percent Obama voting records. It left them with no independent votes or initiatives to point to. Reid kept Democratic candidates well-stocked with money. But not with winning issues.
(4) Democratic territory has been reduced to the bastions of two core groups -- black voters and gentry liberals. Democrats win New York City and the San Francisco Bay area by overwhelming margins, but are outvoted in almost all the territory in between -- including, this year, Obama's Illinois. Gov. Jerry Brown ran well behind in California's Central Valley, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo lost most of upstate New York.
Democratic margins have shrunk among Hispanics and, almost to the vanishing point, among young voters. Liberal Democrats raised money to "turn Texas blue." But it voted Republican by wider than usual margins this year.
Under Obama, the Democratic base has shrunk numerically and demographically. With superior organization, he was able to stitch together a 51 percent majority in 2012. But like other Democratic majority coalitions -- Woodrow Wilson's, Lyndon Johnson's, even Franklin Roosevelt's -- it has proved to be fragile and subject to fragmentation.
(5) In many states -- including many carried twice by Obama -- Republicans have been governing successfully, at least in the estimation of their voters. Gov. Scott Walker has won his third victory in four years in Wisconsin against the frantic efforts of public employee unions.
Gov. John Kasich won a landslide victory against a flawed opponent in Ohio, and Gov. Rick Snyder won solidly in Michigan after signing a right-to-work law hated by private sector unions. In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott's second consecutive one-point victory means that Republicans will be in control for 20 years in what is now the nation's third-largest state.
Democratic governance, in contrast, was rebuked by the voters in Massachusetts, in Maryland (with the nation's fourth highest black population in percentage terms) and in Obama's home state of Illinois.
(6) The Obama Democrats labor under the illusion that a beleaguered people hunger for an ever-bigger government. The polls and the election results suggest, not so gently, otherwise.
The fiasco of healthcare.gov, the misdeeds of the IRS, the improvisatory warnings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- all undermine confidence in the capacity of big government. Looking back over the last half-century, the highest levels of trust in government came, interestingly, during the administration of Ronald Reagan.
(7) This election was a repudiation of the big government policies of the Obama Democrats. It was not so much an endorsement of Republicans as it was an invitation to them to come up with better alternative policies.
In the states, some Republicans have. At the national level, they are just getting started. We'll see how they do.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott's second consecutive one-point victory means that Republicans will be in control for 20 years in what is now the nation's third-largest state.
This creates the sense that the GOP in FL has been monolithic for a generation. Don't forget, however, that eight of those years were Jeb Bush, who was a good manager but in terms of ideology was Bob-Graham-lite, a switch from center-left to center-right. Then the next four years were...Charlie Crist, who made Jeb Bush look like Jesse Helms, and who wanted to jump from governor to Senator (to President, but I digress) so fervently that he dumped his party to try to beat Marco Rubio in the Senate, and then somehow convinced the Democrats to let him be their standard-bearer this year. And then there's Rick Scott, who is also a good manager but no Scott Walker, much less a Ted Cruz or Sarah Palin. I will thank God every day of the next four years that my governor is Scott rather than Crist, but there are no Cruz-conservatives in the FL GOP pipeline that I can see: I can live with someone like Adam Putnam or Pam Bondi, maybe even Charles Canady, as the next governor, but the ideological inspiration will have to come from elsewhere.
No George Castanza “shrinkage” posts yet? :-)
Who is George Castanza?
Yeah, I went and found several, and was about to post one. Then I said to myself, "who cares."
Florida's sanity challenged political purple is an anomaly that's become normal thanks to fleeing NE Yankees bringing their industrial disease South.
Lest anyone get too happy about Scott's slim margin of victory, remember that Alan Grayson and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz were re-elected.
Now that's crazy!
...and why I chose to not post an image.
btw, I like your brother Dan’s band.
Will have to send this to Obama to read.
Point #3 is a good one, and one I hadn’t thought of. Obviously Senator Reid hadn’t thought about it either, or he would have done something different.
Talk about irony.
“Democrats see themselves as the party of the future. But their policies are antique. The federal minimum wage dates to 1938, equal pay for women to 1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. Raising these issues now is campaign gimmickry, not serious policymaking.
Democratic leading lights have been around a long time. The party’s two congressional leaders are in their 70s. The governors of the two largest Democratic states are sons of former governors who won their first statewide elections in 1950 and 1978.”
The rats are ruled and controlled by some very ugly and rapidly aging old goats like: Reid, Pelosi, the Clintoons, Californicator’s very old hags, Boxer/Finestein and Governor Moonbeam, Madam SOS/ Kerry. These anti America old goats gained their reputations and power in the anti America movement of the 1960’s/70’s.
They never have anything to offer besides bs like so called racism, the war on women and how evil Republicans are.
They have mortgaged the future of the sons and daughters of their voters by increasing the national debt to pay for their voters like expensive War on Poverty.
Their hopeful young leaders are abortion barbies with zero morality and intelligence and their neutered Ken Dolls. They mouth the virtue of abortion and free birth control and whine about the non war on women and the phoney racism.
The two biggest black racist thugs today, Jackson and Sharpton are rapidly aging and growing more irrelevant each day.
We have many young and good Senators and congress women/men in both houses. Each day they will make their aging anti American ugly hippies in Congress look and act more irrelevant each day.
Look at the Republican young governors and legislators in so many states. They are young, smart and can lead instead of intimidating like their left wing counterparts, who are caught in their mythical worlds of the 1950/70’s.
Hopefully, the DNC/ABCNNBCBS will continue to show America the aging losers like the Clintoons, Reid, Pelosi, Boxer, Finestein and their abortion Barbies and their neutered Ken Dolls as their leaders.
In the meantime, their big voting blocks of anti America aging hippies are checking into big rat retirement homes which are really like the old Roach Hotel ads. The old hippies check in and don’t check out. Good voter ID laws and procedures like in Ohio will keep them from voting after they leave this orb.
Obama and Reid worked together to keep the GOP under the bus. They wanted nothing to do with compromise. They didn’t want to share credit with the GOP on anything, even if they knew it would be good policy. They didn’t want to give the GOP any legislative successes to tout, believing that if the GOP just went negative against Obama, voters would turn on the GOP. The joke’s on Reid/Obama.
FReegards!
The joke is on them, and we are all enjoying it.
“The governors of the two largest Democratic states are sons of former governors who won their first statewide elections in 1950 and 1978. “
Moonbeam won his first term as Governor in 1974. I was a senior in high school at the time.
maybe blacks have had it with the RATS and are ready to switch parties...why dont the GOp reach out to them instead of going along with amnesty in hopes of picking up any crumbs that the RATS miss.
He sure looks like Nosferatu to me!
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