Tuesday's Results: Some Thoughts

In Pennsylvania, the Democrat beat the Republican in a congressional race, the Democrat beat the Democrat who was really a Republican in the Senate primary and, down in Arkansas, neither Democrat could beat the other Democrat in another Senate primary.

That makes the Democrats look almost…unbeatable.

highwayscribery lacks the time, funding, and staff to check up on such things, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow does, and she said the congressional pickup represents the seventh consecutive special election victory for the Democrats since 2008.

These results jibe exactly with what we’ve been saying over the past few days and months: that anti-incumbent sentiment cuts both ways and that the GOP isn’t ready to govern just because their opposite numbers have made some tough choices about the country's needs.

The “New York Times,” which doesn’t openly admit to reading this blog, was forced to finally soften its dyed-in-the-wool narrative of a coming Democratic debacle in November:

“For Republicans,” wrote Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny, “the failure to take an open seat that they made great efforts to capture was interpreted as a warning to curtail talk of how many seats they will win in November.”

They should have included themselves in the chastened grouping, but heck, it’s the “New York Times”!

The pundits are still talking about a scared, freaked-out electorate, because otherwise they’d have to admit how wrong their recent prognostications have been.

An occupational hazard.

But Tuesday’s elections remind us that local issues are more important to such contests than those trying to read the nation’s tea leaves in them dare admit.

Straining to divine national implications in Sen. Arlen Spector’s (D-Penn.) defeat at the hands of Joe Sestak (pictured), the media geniuses may be missing a simple reality: Sometimes you gotta go. Especially if you’ve held a seat for 30 years, beaten cancer twice, and are up against a younger, more energetic fellow who deserves a chance.

Just a thought.

In the Pennsylvania Congressional 12th contest, a working class, non-latte drinking crowd went with the last guy’s chief-of-staff, which makes the electorate seem not as angry, scared, or rabid about incumbents as we’re still being told it is.

Meanwhile, an Indiana Republican, Rep. Mark Souder, resigned his seat thanks to his affair with a married staffer.

We’ve never heard of him, but “The Times” assures us Souder is “known for his push for stronger drug penalties and abstinence-only sex education for teenagers…”

Which only goes to show that even the people who advocate such policies don’t truly believe in them.

Such paper-thin righteousness is hardly the stuff a party might expect to ride a national wave to power upon.

And good riddance.

Boilerplate Bunk

Unsurprisingly, nobody listens to highwayscribery.

On May 14 the “New York Times,” once again, peddled the “death of the Democratic majority” narrative in a prominently placed piece.

This time, it was written by Katharine Seelye, and uncovered the strong “shift of ground” in a Massachusetts congressional district currently represented by Niki Tsongas, a Democrat.

With no poll numbers to boost its contention the incumbent is in trouble, the story sticks, after the Republican/conservative fashion, to the unscientific and anecdotal; mostly impressed with the fact Ms. Tsongas is watching eight Republicans of zero stature savage one another for the right to oppose her.

You’ve read this piece before and will continue to read it for months to come as the conventional wisdom slowly petrifies into the institutional kind nobody dares challenge.

(exceptin’ us!)

Particular to all these stories is what highwayscribery calls the “boilerplate” paragraph.

Seelye uses it, as all the reporters to do, to explain the over-ballyhooed “anti-incumbent fever” which, she claims, “is rooted in anger over the federal economic stimulus package, the new health care law, and the succession of bailouts, as well as a desire by voters to feel empowered.”

That last one is a phenomenon of her own invention and not part of the classic boilerplate paragraph.

The bailout was bipartisan and accrues to the debit side of every incumbent’s account, Republican or Democrat, although it is not often presented in those terms

The rest is pap about the stimulus package and health care reform being the stuff of Democratic debacles

We are told a majority thought the stimulus unnecessary. Like numbers feel health care reform is something that, as Republicans repeated ad nauseum in their ill-fated effort to Kill-The-Bill, “was shoved down the throats of the American people.”

Rarely, if ever, is there an article focused on the millions of folks, bit-players in the current governing coalition, who fought for health care reform.
Nobody wanted it you see. Representatives and senators did what they damn well pleased because they don’t listen to or need votes.

There is a dearth of articles interviewing happy teachers who kept their jobs, parents whose kids’ schools stayed open, or construction workers relieved to be laboring on infrastructure projects funded with stimulus money.

highwayscribery does not believe this is because such stories don’t exist.

Similarly, few are the stories about where, and on what, the stimulus package is being applied.

The overall impression is that health care reform will cost Americans much, but offer them nothing while the stimulus money was poured down some black hole of unaccountability when, actually, the opposite is true.

Certainly, a goodly portion of Americans opposed these measures, but the coverage we’re talking about here renders them a majority, which is to regurgitate a Republican talking report rather than practice sound journalism.

The oft-predicted Republican resurgence set for November occurs on the commentariat’s chessboard where all things remain equal and the opposition party holds its own in spite of a pathetic performance over the course of the Obama reign.

But there are telling exceptions.

In Sunday’s “New York Times,” an interview with the former chairman of Bear Stearns,
Alan C. Greenberg confessed that, “I was a Republican for years. After the way the Republican leadership acted when the health care bill was passed, I changed my affiliation to Democrat.”

Election-year coverage, to date, suggests he is utterly alone in these sentiments.

We doubt it.

Reform This!

Three filibusters and out.

That was fast. The "New York Times," reported that the Republicans had "relented" in the face of considerable pressure the likes Goldman Sacks be brought to heel. This means the party is very NOT relentless and Mr. Peebles, otherwise knows as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, just the opposite.

You can't judge a nerd by his glasses.

The Republicans' was a great performance in legislative self-gratification and another example of the neutered Republicans' over-reliance on the filibuster.

As "Times" reporters David Herszenhorn and Edward Wyatt, or one of them anyway, pointed out, "While the Republicans can still filibuster, they are at a disadvantage during the floor debate given the Democrats' 59 to 41 majority. And the decision to allow floor debate appeared to be a significant retreat by the minority, reflecting a calculation that further delay was politically untenable."

You can say that again!

"And the decision to allow floor debate appeared to be a significant retreat by the minority, reflecting a calculation that further delay was politically untenable."

Hurts so good.

The Republicans don't want President Obama to succeed at anything regardless of what that thing means to the country. It's a clumsy posture forcing the GOP into uncomfortable, pretzel-like political positions:

"Among the challenges for Republicans, "The Times" writers write, "was explaining how they could participate in an oversight hearing on Tuesday criticizing Goldman Sachs executives and proclaiming the need to tighten regulation of Wall Street, but then go to the Senate chamber and vote to block debate of the financial regulatory bill."

"Salon" has a problem with some of the ensuing coverage, which grants the President's party a victory without being sure of what has been won. But it's "Salon's" self-appointed to be whine about Democrats in between election seasons and support them when the line outside the polling place starts taking shape.

Speaking of polling, that same outlet's Joe Conason parses an upturn in Democratic support out of a new sampling of voters from the "Washington Post."

It's a question of whether you believe in polls or not. highwayscribery does, like all of us, when they confirm his beliefs.

Conason quotes the survey which concluded, "The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health legislation."

There's more. President Obama's numbers are up and, despite all the "anti-incumbent" sentiment we are told is out there, the Republicans come off much worse in the poll.

Proof of highwayscribery's hard-earned lesson that you must be more than AGAINST something to win an election.

we told you so four months ago, and four days (or so) ago as well.

Same goes for our prediction that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist would leave the Republican Party and run as an independent, thereby increasing the Democrats' chances of taking that Senate seat.

Tea anyone?

Naturally you are wondering, "How can highwayscribery be getting it so right?" But we must confess that has not always been thus. In fact, back when the scribe's belief in the minimum wage left him "outside the mainstream of American politics," he confused his anger with that of everybody else's in the country, much the way Tea Party people do now.

But the presidential election of 2004 fixed THAT.

Now, the scribe is a piece of particulate matter in the same political class around which the President has built his core support, demographically, intellectually...by many measurements.

So much so, that he was offered to apply for a job with Organizing for America, the Obama crowd's grassroots storm-troop group.

the highway scribe declined.

Our support is contingent upon specific policies we are, for the most part, getting from Barack Obama. Plus, we don't do propaganda. If the Obama administration wants to subpoena a reporter over his resources, for example, we observe how the policy runs counter to the First Amendment and our hallowed free press traditions.

And besides, the job requires relocating to D.C., where there are no waves for surfing.

Ahead of the Curve

You read it here first. Or at least before you read it on "Politico."

In his April 21 post, "Democrats Banking on Reform," the highway scribe called the Tea Party movement, "the biggest white elephant in American politics."

The post noted that you might be distracted from the divining the true tenor of our country's politics by "an endless barrage of mentions" about that particular group. This was followed-up there by a few details about how damaging the Tea Party might actually be to the efforts of those hoping to topple President Obama.

Well, the next day, while highwayscribery's entry was traversing the global system of flows, an infinitely more potent outfit, "Politico," published, "The Tea Party's Exaggerated Importance."

The online powerhouse concluded that nothing succeeds like excess and the media has succumbed to this formula in its Tea Party coverage, noting that, "In fact, there is a word for what poll after poll depicts as a group of largely white, middle-class, middle-aged voters who are aggrieved: 'Republicans'."

highwayscribery's riposte said: "Essentially Republican voters, the only thing that would make this 18 percent segment of the population newsworthy is if they actually turned on the GOP and helped consolidate Democratic control."

The point?

highwayscribery is special!

"Politico" noted that the Tea Party has "failed to make a dent so far in Republican primaries."

In "The WikiLeaks Massacre," this blogger observed that in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, he marched with "crowds much larger than anything the Tea Party ever cooked up. Unlike that self-centered bunch of hysterics, we were confronted by police sent out to bash heads, because of our opposition to exactly this kind of horror."

Or as "Politico" authors Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith put it: "And just a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to rally against the Iraq war. Now, veterans of those protests -- covered largely as spot news and spectacle -- wonder why they didn't get the weighty, anthropological treatment assigned to the tea parties."

(They forgot the part about police knocking the snot out of the anti-war crowd).

The "Politico" piece notes that the group's Tax Day crowds [promoted by Fox News as they were] "were not representative of a force that is purportedly shaping the country's politics. About a thousand people showed up in state capitals like Des Moines, Montgomery, and Baton Rouge, and even fewer in large cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Milwaukee."

Their reward? The article enumerates a blogger "The Washington Post" hired to cover the "movement," CNN crews that joined the Tea Party Express bus tours, polls in the "New York Times," addressing their importance, and "CNN" (again), and their own outfit.

Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism noted that the Tea Party competed for attention with the Iceland volcano and beat out health care in terms of coverage garnered.

The upshot, the reporters say, is that, like Sarah Palin, who couldn't wait to glom onto the Tea Party poopers, they are symbols "that outweigh their actual impact."

Exactly our point (again).