Jim Cramer claimed that the Scott Brown victory drove markets up on Tuesday, but the markets closed before the polls did, but stocks actually fell when they got the news, on Wednesday.
Scroll forward to about 7:50 for complete pwn463 (ownage), or hell, just watch the whole thing, it’s Jon Stewart:
H/t Calculated Risk
Absent a major scandal, Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown will be the Vice Presidential pick for the Republican party.
In the aftermath of the Massachusetts debacle, a lot of people are wondering what the hell happened.
The talking heads inside the Beltway are sure that it’s because Obama is too Librul™, of course, but I think that Josh Marshall talked about the core problem in August of 2004.
He was talking about the Bush-Kerry campaign, and he characterized it as follows:
Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.
It goes something like this.
………
Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.
………
One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.
………
Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person’s supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who’s receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.
………
Only now, it isn’t the Republicans bitch slapping anyone. It’s the Democrats who bitch slap themselves.
Or as Zaid Jilani’s southern ConservaDem friend says:
And can I say this? F*ck the Democrats. They couldn’t get s%$# done with 60 seats, why the hell would I care if they have 59? F%$# them seriously we deserve to lose Congress this year. And don’t bitch and whine about it either how much has changed since we took over in 2006? Ain’t s%$# as far as I can tell. We capitulated to Bush, then capitulated to Republicans and now are just capitulating to ourselves.
F%$# it dude, I mean Republicans get whatever the f%$# they want with 50 seats and we can’t do f%$# all we deserve to lose
(“%$#” mine, “*” original)
Fundamentally, when we look at what is going on in DC, it looks like no one in the Senate or the White House is even trying to make substantive change. (Pelosi, at least, creates the appearance that she is trying to do something)
What’s more, among the DC Dems, there has been near constant bitch slapping of the Party Base, whether it’s the capitulation on the public option, the labor union insurance surtax, or the constant drum beat of how “the left” hates the Democratic Party because they want to primary DINOs (Democrat In Name Only) who have safe seats.
The central campaign platform of the Republican Party is that government can’t do anything. The Democratic Party seems to try very hard to prove them right.
The Boston Globe calls it for Scott Brown, so he will be the 41st Republican in the Senate.
I was right with my prediction, and that sucks. Normally I’m wrong.
For the optimists, refer to my earlier take on potential positives of Coakley losing, (the bullet points toward the end of the post) but for me, this just sucks.
Two words: Budget Reconciliation.
Jon Stewart captures the essence of what is wrong with both candidate Coakley (first 5½ minutes), and the Democratic Party (after).
That’s why he’s going to be campaigning for Martha Coakley in the US Senate special election this Sunday:
President Barack Obama will campaign Sunday in Massachusetts for the Democratic candidate in a close race to fill the seat held by the late Senator Edward Kennedy.
State Attorney General Martha Coakley is trying to hold off a surge by Republican state Senator Scott Brown in recent opinion polls before the Jan. 19 vote. The campaign, in a state dominated by Democrats, will affect Obama’s ability to move legislation through the Senate and is becoming an early test of his party’s prospects in November’s congressional elections.
Let me be clear, if Coakly loses in what is one of the three bluest states in the nation it is a disaster, and her failure will rest firmly on the head of “no gutsdrama Obama”.
Barack Obama has, for reasons that appear unclear to me, decided that the way to govern with the largest legislative majorities in something like 30 years, is to campaign against his base, and try to make nice with the VisigothsRepublicans, who are having none of it.
Fundamentally, the problem is that he campaigned on “change”, and he is remarkably supportive of the status quo, and it’s pissing off Republicans and demoralizing Democrats.
I think that she is going to lose, though my prognostic abilities have been shown to be lacking.
That’s not a good thing, though, off the top of my head, but if you want to look at silver linings there are a few:
I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I am right about the election.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
New York Governor David Paterson says that he has $3 million in cash on hand for his reelection bid.
When I say, “not enough money,” I don’t mean that that $3 million dollars at this point in the election cycle is not impressive, and sufficient for a state wide election in New York.
Under most circumstances, this would be an impressive haul, but the problem is that there isn’t enough money in the world for him to get reelected.
If Andrew Cuomo runs against him in the primary, he loses the primary.
If Andrew Cuomo doesn’t run against him in the primary, he loses the general election, whether his opponent is Rick Lazio, Rudy Giuliani, indicted former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, or Biff the Wonder Dog,* he loses the election.†
The electorate find him incompetent, ineffectual, and they don’t like him personally, and it’s not going to change in the next 11 months.
*A virtual kewpie doll to whoever gets the geek reference toward said dog.
†OK, if the Republicans nominate Sarah Palin to run against him, I give him a 60% chance of winning, but that dog will kick his ass.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and perhaps the stupidest man in England, has come out against the proposal:
Boris Johnson threw down the gauntlet to shadow chancellor George Osborne today, urging him to rule out extending the supertax on bonuses.
The Mayor is seeking reassurances that Gordon Brown’s tax would not be imposed by a Tory government. The showdown comes after Mr Johnson claimed that up to 9,000 bankers could leave London to escape paying.
Mr Osborne has said he does not oppose the tax, and the Conservatives have not ruled out imposing it again if they win the general election.
If the Tories come out against the tax, they may very well snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
On a more utilitarian note, when a rich banker leaves for Switzerland (only Switzerland does not want them either) it means that that 2500 square foot penthouse flat in London becomes 4, or 5 more modest flats, increasing the supplies of housing, and drives down rents, making London a better place for the Londoners.
The rich bankers, and the expat tax dodgers who live in London in very large numbers, don’t make London better, they make it worse: They push out the middle class, and productive industry.
The normal part is a Boston Globe poll that has Democratic candidate Martha Coakley holding a solid 15 point lead over Republican Scott Brown, which is unsurprising in this solidly blue state, but Public Policy Polling shows Brown with a 1 point lead, indicating that the real issue here is whether or not the Democrats can mobilize a thoroughly demoralized base.
The difference here has to be the criteria for likely voters.
That’s a bit odd, but the fact that Scott Brown Posed Nude in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1982. (Pics are at the link, I don’t post Republican pron.)
It will be a bad thing of Coakley loses, though it would be a good wake up call the people who are busy sucking up to bankers and insurance companies.
Harry Reid has hit a new low in the latest Las Vegas Review-Journal poll, with a 52% having an unfavorable view of him, and 33% having a favorable view of him.
As an incumbent, polling below 50% in terms of how people vote is a near death sentence, when your unfavorable rating is over 1½ times your favorable rating, you are in Dick Cheney territory.
The problem is not what he has done, but what he hasn’t done.
Notwithstanding the arcane rules of the Senate, his constituents expect him to kick ass and get things done, and he hasn’t. He’s been a wimp, though I think that this was largely at the request of the Obama administration, which wanted insurance company and pharma support for something called healthcare.
So, now he’s screwed, and won’t be a Senator in February of 1011, just like Chris Dodd, who got shafted by Obama and His Evil Minions™ in almost exactly the same way.
If the poll numbers weren’t bad enough, the merry band of at Politico have released a book, Game Change, in which they have the following quote from Harry Reid:
He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.
(emphasis mine)
So now we have a quote, an accurate one since Reid has apologized for it, where he sounds like a country club racist.
Reid needs to announce his retirement, tomorrow.
Harold Ford, of the deeply corrupt Ford political clan in Tennesee is being groomed to challenge Kristen Gillibrand in the New York State Democratic Senate primary:
Encouraged by a group of influential New York Democrats, Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee, is weighing a bid to unseat Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary, according to three people who have spoken with him.
Mr. Ford, 39, who moved to New York three years ago, has told friends that he will decide whether to run in the next 45 days. The discussions between Mr. Ford and top Democratic donors reflect the dissatisfaction of some prominent party members with Ms. Gillibrand, who has yet to win over key constituencies, especially in New York City.
Let’s be clear what they mean when they say, “especially in New York City”: they mean that they think that they might have a chance because Harold Ford is black.
Since losing his race for the Senate in 2006, Ford has been a mouthpiece for the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) what is going on here is that the powers that be in New York, well, the DINO ones, have been “disappointed” in Gillibrand, because, as she has moved from a very conservative congressional district to a rather liberal state as her constituency, her positions have changed:
Some of the donors who have urged Mr. Ford to consider a run expressed alarm as Ms. Gillibrand, who as a congresswoman represented a conservative upstate district, has abandoned some of her previous positions on issues like gun control and immigration as she prepares to run statewide. Several executives interested in a Ford candidacy said that Ms. Gillibrand’s positions echoed Mr. Schumer’s and that the state needed a second independent voice in the Senate.
What they are saying here is that they don’t want a real Democrat here, they want a corporate whore, and that is what Harold Ford is.
Most of the opposition to Gillibrand in the New York Democratic party comes from people who think that she is too conservative for the party and for the state, but the people mentioned here, like “Financier Steven Rattner,” who ran the auto bailout until an influence buying scandal forced him out.
I’m not a fan of Gillibrand, but Harold Ford? What they hell are they thinking?
It’s a pity, he’s a good man, and he has now announced that he won’t be running for reelection.
He’s leaving because he believes that it’s an uphill fight for him to win the election:
Polling in Connecticut suggested that Mr. Dodd had been hurt both by his association with Countrywide and by criticism for his role in legislation that appeared to clear the way for bonuses to be paid to executives of American International Group, the insurance firm that received a government bailout. (Last month, Kenneth R. Feinberg, who is charged with monitoring pay at companies that received taxpayer bailout funds, imposed pay limits for A.I.G.’s top executives.)
Republicans had viewed the Countrywide loans and the A.I.G. bonuses as potentially powerful weapons in the campaign.…………”
His spending a year in Iowa to run for President, and the Countrywide loan deal, which he was personally unaware of, hurt him, but what really hurt him was the AIG bonus scandal, where the Obama and His Evil Minions™, most notably Timothy Geithner, strong armed him into including a section in the relevant bill to allow the obscene bonuses, and then refused to admit the truth for weeks, leaving Dodd twisting in the wind. (See here, here, and here…………Note that the first link has my prediction that, “Geithner will be gone by June,” so much for my powers of prediction)
[on edit]I forgot to note that Connecticut Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal (D) has announced that he will run, and is now the presumptive favorite in the heavily blue Nutmeg State.
Dorgan has something like a 65% favorable rating among his constituents, but with him out, this is very likely a Republican pick-up.
The state went for McCain over Obama by 53% to 45% which places it in solidly red category.
Republican Congressional Candidate Allen Quist has just said that it’s more important to fight Democrats than it is to fight terrorism:
“It’s because I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is — every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom. This is our fight. And this is our time. This is it. Terrorism, yes — but that’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren’t liberals, they’re radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz — they’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country. And people all over are figuring that out.”
Well, it’s nice that at least one of them is telling the truth, that they find the quest for power is more important than the well-being of the nation.
Here is the video, you can see that statement at about the 3 minute mark:
What’s interesting here is that 14 ‘Phants have retired as vs. 9 Dems so far, which implies to me that, notwithstanding what the leadership says, the House Republican rank and file does not believe that it can take back the house.
The 2010 Defense Authorization Bill was signed into law by Barack Obama about 2 weeks ago, and the bill included Al Franken’s prohibition on defense contractors using binding arbitration to keep things like the rape of their employees by their employees out of court.
Since it’s attached to an appropriations bill, it only runs for a year, so I would suggest a stand alone bill, timed to hit the floor in the June-July time frame to permanently close the loophole.
We’ll see how many ‘Phants want to vote pro-rape a few months prior to elections, particularly given the outrage over the pro-rape Republicans over Franken Amendment in the first place.
Marcy Winograd, who is running against Blue Dog Jane Harman in CA-36. I got an email from them, which means that they are hitting the “Q-list” blogs, which is a low cost high reward strategy.
After all, if you want someone’s support, sending an email is a virtually free way of asking them for it.
It should be noted she ran against Harman in 2006, and scored a respectable 37.5% of the vote, and Harman has actually improved as a result of that challenge.
It should be noted though that Harman ran in the 1998 Gubernatorial primary as being, “the best Republican in the Democratic Party,” so improvement is not difficult to achieve.
She is, and remains, a Blue Dog puke.
In any case, she is now on my Act Blue page, as well as having a direct donation page her web site.
Dear Friends,If you’re like me, one of your hopes for 2010 is that our government accomplishes a great deal more than it did in 2009.
Frustration has become the norm. Yet as we close out the year, you have a very specific choice to make: Do you allow that frustration to become apathy or action?Will you support the status quo or those that believe better decisions can and should be made in 2010?
Please help me end 2009, literally and figuratively, by donating to my June 2010 campaign against Blue Dog Democrat Jane Harman in CD 36.I have been a community activist for decades, fighting for education funding, affordable access to health care, worker and consumer protections, and the environment.
Nothing, however, is more pressing than the issue of jobs. We can and must reinvest in America – converting an economy currently based on making war overseas into one that makes better schools, roads, bridges, railways, and new Green Industries at home.
As we come to the end of the year – you can take action right where you’re sitting by making a decision to end Jane Harman’s 12 year effort to become the Lieberman of the House, largely serving the interests of large corporations and military contractors.
As I campaign up and down the 36th congressional district (West LA to San Pedro), I hear the same question over and over: “How are you going create jobs?”
I tell people we must fight for a Green New Deal, modeled after the New Deal of the Great Depression.
There is 200-billion left over from TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) that we can use not to bail out corrupt banks – but for common good: the creation of a sustainable economy.
While some banks may be reticent to accept the TARP funds, the aerospace industry is not. Its association has explicitly asked for 6-billion in TARP to create new jobs.
We can immediately contract with regional aerospace companies, not to build more bombs, but to create jobs in the New Green Economy. We need their engineering know-how and skilled workforce to build rapid transit and develop solar and wind resources that will make us strong and energy independent.
Jane Harman has spent too many years lobbying for weapons contracts, failing to expand the reach of aerospace beyond a permanent war economy.
We have only until Thursday at midnight to show people sitting on the fence that 2010 can be very different.
With great thanks for your support,
Marcy Winograd
To donate, please click here.
To get updates, please click here.
Forward to a Friend
Rudolph “I made a Mobbed Up Corrupt Cop My Police Chief” Giuliani has decided against running for Senate.
I think that he realizes that under the stress of a campaign, the real Rudy, as opposed to the one who existed for about 18 hours on 9/11/01, comes out, and that the voters hate the real Rudy.
*From the Hebrew. Literally it means “foreigner” of “alien”, but it is generally used to mean non-Jew.
So, little Timmy Geithner has decided to extend the TARP program from December 31 of this year until the end of next October, which, oddly enough, is just 2 days before the elections.
It’s a neat political move, but it would have been better to not screw the pooch so badly to begin with.
Dump Geithner and Summers, for a start.
Representative Michael Capuano (D-MD-8) just finished a losing primary against Martha Coakley, and he when asked to share his experience on the campaign trail, ye was blunt:
You’re screwed
Capuano took to the microphone, looked out at his colleagues and condensed what he’d learned into two words. “You’re screwed,” he told his friends in the House, according to one attendee. The room’s silence was broken only by soft, nervous laughter.
Capuano confirmed the gist of the message — “I’m not sure of the exact wording,” he told HuffPost, chuckling — and said that he doubted his wisdom was anything they didn’t already know.
“I think I was just confirming stuff they already knew,” he said. “I focused on two things: the war in Afghanistan and jobs.”
Everywhere Capuano went in his state, he said, he was bombarded with demands that the government do more to create jobs. He was also greeted by deep skepticism about Obama’s escalation of the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.
Capuano said he told the caucus that opponents of the war need to be given a chance to vote against funding for it on the House floor.
“If we do anything [on the war], we need to have a separate vote on it. People who can vote for it, can vote for it. But those of us who want to vote against it, [should] be given that opportunity, too,” he said. “But I focused mostly on jobs. People are tired of the promises of jobs. They need them now.”
There are some very real issues here.
The first is that Barack Obama’s “Wall Street before Main Street” policies just aren’t selling.
The second is that Afghanistan is unpopular.
What makes it worse is that the stimulus package will be tied to the Afghan war funding:
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, told reporters Tuesday that short-term extensions of unemployment and COBRA will be attached to the defense bill.
In effect, that requires members of Congress to back a war they oppose in order to get funding for jobs, a bargain many are loath to make, but one they’ve made over and over since Democrats rook control of Congress following the 2006 midterm elections — which were decided largely by voters fed up with the war in Iraq.
Steny Hoyer is optimistic, because, well, he’s a pro-war, pro-bank bailout squish, and he wants the rest of the caucus voting with him.
We are seeing a disaster unwind in slow motion, and the only person who might make it better, Barack Obama, is spending too much time kissing the asses corporate interests that created the NAFTA driven political firestorm in 1994.
Well, it looks like everyone’s corporate whores, Melissa Bean and Walt Minnick getting deals that are likely to scuttle any and all state consumer protection of financial companies and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, respectively.
What makes it worse is that Bean’s primary challenger has been bounced from the ballot, so the choice of the voters in IL-8 is the Bean, the Green, or the Crazy Mean.* (Republican)
*No, I’m not saying how long it took me to make up that bit of doggerel.
