National

Sweep, Republican Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General..

McDonnell wins Virginia governorship for GOP

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/top/all/6701640.html

Might be a new trend. Hope they're not fake republicans....I'm a populist myself. People are getting tired of the Big O.....

It isn't the Republican vote that has Democrats worried...it is the independents. They favored the GOP candidate by 2:1.

McDonnell, from what I have seen, is not a RINO.

Yes We Will!

Photog, I so agree with you. I am changing my registration tomorrow from Rep. to Independant because I think they don't listen to their base, and if Bush is an example of the party I want nothing to do with it.

The Republican party is on probation in my mind. They need to be Republicans, not Democrats in everything but their name. We shall see.

Everything You Need To Know About Tonight's Election Spin

Jonathan Chait

..I don't usually re-publish emails straight from political parties, but this collection of quotes following the 2001 elections is pretty telling.


NRCC Talking Point: “The 2001 Off-Year Elections Have No Bearing On Next Year’s Mid-Term Elections. These Races Revolved Around Local Issues And Local Candidates. There Were No Discernable National Trends.”

RNC Comm. Director: “It’s Laughable To Suggest That This Has Any National Implications.” [Chicago Tribune, 11/7/01]

“A Bush Political Adviser Says The Current Campaigns [For Governor In Virginia And New Jersey] Turn On Local Issues, [Wall Street Journal, 11/2/01]

Republican Pollster: “Giver How Sour The Economy Is And Given How Sour Some Of The Leading Economic Indicators Have Gone…I Think It Speaks To The President’s Strengths That His Approval Ratings Are Still Up There.” [Gannett, 8/31/01]

Republicans “Downplayed Any Larger Symbolism In The Races, Insisting They Represented ‘Personal Triumphs,”…But Were Not a Repudiation Of Bush Or Republican Policies.” [CQ, 11/7/01]

Cynthia Crowley: “On Both Sides Of The Aisle, They’re Saying Anybody That Tries To Predict What This Means For Next Year Is Nuts.” CNN’s Cynthia Crowley said, “I think what you're going to see tomorrow is what you might expect, which is, Democrats -- who have some good wins here, let's not take it away from them" [CNN NewsNight, 11/6/01]

Washington Times' Lambro: It’s “Difficult If Not Impossible To Find Any Political Significance In The Off-Year Elections That Involve Only A Couple Of Governorships, Dozens Of Mayoralty Races, And State Legislative Races.”[Washington Times, 11/7/01]

Of course, the hypocrisy goes both ways -- no doubt Democrats were proclaiming doom for the GOP. It seems pretty clear that new Jersey and Virginia vote for the out-of-power party every four years now. Yes, there's a lot more energy on the right, but no, this election (the outcome of which I don't yet know, except Virginia) isn't evidence of it.

I think basically everybody in politics understands this. I also think the political news media will tend to treat the elections as important, because the media has a bias toward reading importance into every new thing that happens. If you're going to have a discussion on cable news about what the elections mean, the producer isn't going to be very pleased if everybody says it doesn't mean anything.

I am moving this post to today for the benefit of Trojanron.

Thanks.....

Umgawa, Thanks for your thought. I agree with Obama it is the independents that the democrats should worry about, maybe they are going to far to the left? I mean Sabro not Obama, Geez

No prob. I'm not trying to take anything away from those that won their seats. I'm just pointing out WE ALL try to read too much into local elections. Give the voters a little credit for voting for the person they hope will represent them best.

Divide and Conquer.

Be a donkey or an elephant. If you want neither, then we don't care about you. Forget your oath of office. Forget the people who put you in office. Sell your votes to the highest bidder. Take your millions and be happy.

Isn't this what politics has degenerated into?

Makes me proud.

How about you?

We have the best politicians money can buy.

A year from now, the pundits will be telling us that there really is no message in the fact that many incumbents lost. It is just that the winners spent more mony.

People are PO'd. Incumbents are the problem. Vote against them at any opportunity.

It sure couldn't be much worse than where we are now.

The "System" is the problem. As long as politicians and their parties can take money from lobbyist things will not change. Newly elected politicians, with the best of intentions, soon find how the system works. It is all about the lobbyist and their money.

Democrats should be worried about voter disaffection, not the right wing.

E.J. Dionne Jr.
November 5, 2009 | 12:00 am

.EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- Tuesday's elections were a rebuke to the right wing and a warning to Democrats.

They were also a timely reminder that President Obama needs to tune up his celebrated political organization and find a way to make Americans feel hopeful again.

The night's biggest loser was the national conservative political machine--the wealthy tax-cutters at the Club for Growth and the Palin-Limbaugh-Beck complex. The Beltway Right shoved aside local Republicans in an upstate New York congressional race, imposed their own candidate who didn't even live in the district, and went down in a heap.

To understand the importance of the defeat of third-party Conservative Doug Hoffman by Democrat Bill Owens in New York's 23rd District, consider the narrative that would have been woven if Hoffman had won.

Combined with Republican victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races, a Hoffman triumph would have been heralded as the beginning of a new conservative revolution, a reproach to Republican moderates as well as Obama Democrats, and a sign that "big government," including the Democrats' health care plan, was on the run.

Instead, voters in the district (parts of which have been Republican since Abraham Lincoln) staged a different kind of rebellion. Furious that big conservative money and national personalities such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck had forced out Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava--the official, moderate, locally chosen Republican candidate--they turned to Owens.

The Democrat was the perfect candidate for a middle-of-the road protest. He had only recently been a political independent and presented himself as having no ideological edges. The spurned Scozzafava backed him, creating a moderate united front. June O'Neill of the New York Democratic state committee called Owens' victory a "backlash" against "the way they treated our friend and neighbor." We know who "they" are.

The Owens win puts the victories of Republicans Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia in a different light. Both won governorships by focusing on the need to win voters smack in the middle of the electorate: moderates, independents and suburbanites. David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, engaged in a bit of self-serving hyperbole when he said in an interview that McDonnell ran "not as a Sarah Palin Republican, but more as a Barack Obama centrist," yet his point was right: McDonnell knew where the votes were.

So did Christie, who capitalized on a deep, personal disaffection with incumbent New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Christie, like McDonnell, managed in reverse the excite-the-base, win-the-middle strategy Democrats pursued so effectively in 2006 and 2008. Christie ran up huge margins in Republican counties, but also won over previously Democratic voters who were angry but not ideological.

Democrats will highlight Obama's continued strong approval ratings in New Jersey as part of their larger argument that these contests were local in character. But the disaffection in both Virginia and New Jersey--and the unexpected narrowness of New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's re-election margin, despite his record-breaking campaign spending -- should worry all incumbents, particularly governors seeking re-election next year. And after their strong showings in the last two national elections, Democrats happen to constitute a large share of the pool of incumbents.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, as he made his way to Corzine's concession speech at a hotel here, said he sees an electorate in a dark mood. "There are two things happening," the New Jersey Democrat noted. "One is fear. The other is punishment. Voters fear for themselves and their families, and they want to punish anyone who got them into this condition."

What Lautenberg underscored is a spirit far different than the buoyant confidence Barack Obama inspired a year ago. And the Obama change-agents, particularly the young, were notably absent from the voting booths this week. In Virginia, a state Obama carried comfortably last year, a majority of those who showed up to vote on Tuesday said they had backed John McCain. This much more Republican electorate produced a GOP landslide all the way down the Virginia ballot.

That is the fact from this week that Democrats would be fools to ignore. It's not a resurgent right wing that should trouble Obama's party. Indeed, the stronger the right's role in shaping the Republican message, the harder it will be for middle-of-the-road voters to use the Republicans to express their discontent. But for the moment, the thrill is gone from politics, and that is very dangerous for the mainstream progressive movement that Obama promised to build.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.