Category Archives: 2010 Election

Obama Forgot Politics 101–Forgot His Base

All the evidence you need to dismiss self-serving Democratic “centrist” gas bags saying Massachusetts means Ds have to abandon the “left,” is this poll in Daily Kos. It shows that 45 percent of Democrat voters do not now expect that they’ll bother to vote in the November congressional elections. Forty-five percent!

Move closer to the Republicans–as Lieberman, Bayh and Baucus want to do? Oh, sure! The same poll–which documents disillusionment with congressional Ds (40% approve; 55% disapprove) also shows that they loathe congressional Rs (16% approve, 66% disapprove).

The first thing they teach you in practical politics is to remember your base. Flirt with the other side, and they’ll abandon you. Politics 101. Reagan understood. I fought him all the way, but his strength was he meant what he said and said what he meant. As Tip O’Neill used to say, politics ain’t bean bag. So stop already wooing Republican senators and congressmen. They want to destroy you and your party, Mr. President. Time to be the man and party that inspired the nation just a year ago but, incredibly, are now turning off that nation.

Pennsylvania Seventeen Hundred–what did you learn Tuesday?


Update On the Massacre in Massachuttes

Update: 1/20/09, 7:25 pm: The Mahablog says health care is probably dead, an observation with which I can’t disagree, especially since Obama has declared that Ds won’t work on health car until Republican Brown is seated and will not “jam” (jam!?) a bill through Congress. Just as importantly, the blog punctures the conservative hot air balloons who (predictably) are claim the “Left” is to blame for Massachusetts and that Ds must now move to the “center.” Excuse me? If “centrists” like Baucus and Nelson hadn’t ground the bandwagon to a stop and emasculated the bill, “doofus Democrats” would not have been the subject of the Massachusetts referendum.

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When I blogged that the Democratic defeats in this year’s New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections were an omen boding ill for the Ds, most Blue Oregon.com readers ridiculed me. They pointed to a blue pick-up in a historic Republican congressional district in upstate New York.

All I’ll say about the unfolding massacre in Massachusetts is, “Can you hear me now?”

Why Obama ever thought he could stop being the candidate for change after he was elected, I’ll leave to historians. Or a two-bit shrink.

(If you believe in prayer, say one for your country tonight. Hell, say one even if you don’t …)


Open Letter To Harry Reid

Dear  Leader,

Hey, did you see the Pew Research Center poll? The one just out? Showing voter rage at congressional incumbents stronger than the majority-changing years of 1994 and 2006?

Now think back to when I ran for the Senate, also in an anti-incumbent year (’92). Remember the funny thing that happened to me along the way? Where the guy who’d never been dogcatcherthat was his proud credential–came within 330 votes of me in the Democratic primary and doomed my general election candidacy right there? It didn’t matter that I was “influential” [1] or had a bunch of accomplishments. Voters despised an out-of-touch Congress so much they voted for “outsiders.”

Yeah, I do have some bona-fides to be frank here. So allow me to say this: you and your Senate Ds are in deep shit! Continue reading


I’ll Say It Again: It’s About Jobs, Stupid!*

Article in Mother Jones says what I’ve been saying (and–considering Krugman, Reich and others, I certainly haven’t been alone): Democrats will either make a serious dent on joblessness or bite it in 2010. Official unemployment rate — out today: 10 percent. Overall rate (factoring in discouraged workers left out of official rate, 17.5 percent–highest since the Great Depression.

*(Not that Ds can afford to fail on health care reform)


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