Wake Me When It's Over

I think I know why the movement to stop the health care bill has faded away... because the news coverage of it has become sooooooooo BORING.

When things were happening fast and furious and we were finding out about all the hidden taxes and regulations and mandates in the House bill, it was exciting. The tea party protests and town hall debates were exciting and provided all the drama one could need to stay interested in what was going on. Now that they're debating the bill in Congress, well, there's no drama. The news media now needs to invent drama, so for the past two months there has been non-stories in the news about "will they get enough votes" or something like that.

The fact is it was a foregone conclusion that they would get enough votes in the House to pass the bill, and it was going to be the exact same bill that drew all the protests over the summer. Nancy Pelosi knew she had the votes all along, because all she needed to do was twist enough arms and threaten enough seats. It's simple: if you're a wavering moderate Democrat and Madame Speaker doesn't have her 218 votes yet, you vote for the bill or you have a liberal challenger next spring, one that will have Pelosi's endorsement and a ton of campaign cash from MoveOn.org and their minions. The Democrats do the same thing they attacked the Republicans for doing when they were in power, only they do it much more secretly now.

And now we get treated to the same manufactured drama in the Senate. It's gotten so bad that we had "drama" over whether or not they'd get the 60 votes needed to open debate. This too was a foregone conclusion. Democrats were not going to sink their own legislation this quickly; it would hurt them BIG at the polls next year. Beyond that, Joe Lieberman is already getting threatened with another big-money liberal challenger if he votes against this (although he did beat the last one). So we'll have our debate, moderates will take umbrage with some provisions but they'll fall in line. If they don't, there have been rumblings since the beginning that Harry Reid will declare "reconciliation" and then he'll only need 51 votes instead of 60. And even if some of the things that many people object to get taken out of this bill in order to pass it, they'll magically reappear after the House-Senate conference committee gets done with it. The same thing happened after the House moderates supposedly watered down the House bill... all the things the House Finance Committee's Blue Dogs objected to suddenly reappeared in the final House bill.

Maybe this is being overly pessimistic, but I've said it since January: the Democrats hold all the cards. They answer any opposition with "we won, get out of our way", and no matter how many protests happen, no matter how many times people are exhorted to call their congressmen or senators, they've only needed their side to fall in line. The only real way we can stop these guys is at the ballot box, and that won't be easy with the Republican Party in such a state of disarray. But I'm sure we can look forward to much more "will they have the votes" from the media for the next couple weeks until the final Senate vote. After all, they do need to keep us watching.

Once Again... All Politics Are STILL Local

Well we've had plenty of time now to digest the results of the elections, and the spin provided by the media and also by Republicans is just plain laughable. The GOP has declared victory and said that this is a sure sign of how things will go in 2010. Actually, I would agree with that last statement, just not in the way Republicans would like to hear.

I'm certainly not a fan of the current president or his agenda (I'll pause while you call me a racist), I couldn't agree more with the White House dismissal of GOP claims that this election was a big poke in the eye at the Obama administration. The two major races that ended with Republican victories were gubernatorial elections. I will admit that the bloom might be off the rose for Obama the campaigner because he campaigned vigorously for Governor Corzine in New Jersey and Corzine lost, but give Chris Christie credit. He ran ads with Obama voters saying they were voting for Christie for the same reason they voted for Obama -- they wanted change. New Jersey is a joke. They have the highest taxes in the nation, corruption out the ying-yang, and Corzine's solution was to raise taxes AGAIN?

Then came word during the last weekend of the race that 3rd-party challenger Chris Daggett, who was viewed as key to a Corzine victory because he was more likely to take votes from Christie, was sending robocalls out to New Jerseyans asking them to vote for him... and the robocalls were paid for by the DEMOCRATS. I wouldn't be surprised if that gave Christie the bump that put him over the top.

The point with this race was that it wasn't about President Obama in New Jersey. It was about Obama's message (hope and change), but it was coming from the mouth of the Republican. It was anti-incumbent, which leads us to the second place where the media has it wrong... that congressional Democrats better beware next year because there is an anti-incumbent mood in the country. This was the only race of note where an incumbent was running and lost. Virginia featured new candidates. NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg breezed to a 3rd term. And the two special congressional elections (in other words, no incumbent running) were both won by Democrats.

Which brings us to NY 23. The seat was vacated by John McHugh being appointed to the Secretary of the Army post by President Obama. McHugh had a pretty moderate voting record. The Republicans nominated Dede Scozzafava, another moderate. Right-wingers went berserk. The Conservative Party selected their own candidate, Doug Hoffman, and the right-wing attack machine started importing all manner of national GOP types to destroy Scozzafava. Sarah Palin endorsed Hoffman. In an article here in the Philadelphia Inquirer, an activist/blogger from Tennessee declared his desire to take the Republican Party back from elitists, and that's why he set about smearing Scozzafava. I seriously doubt this guy from Tennessee even KNOWS anyone in NY 23, let alone knows what the people in this district are like. Newt Gingrich pleaded with his party to stay united, pointing out that the "big tent" is why Republicans win elections. He was ripped apart by bloggers who pretty much wrote off his presidential chances in 2012. What does that tell you when Newt Gingrich is no longer favored by the right?

The weekend before the election, Scozzafava said she'd had enough, dropped out of the election... and endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens. I don't blame her for this. Would you endorse the guy whose minions had been trashing you mercilessly? She called what she was subjected to "hate". End result: NY 23 decided they'd rather elect a Democrat than a right-winger. Congratulations, right-wingers: you managed to lose a seat that had been in Republican hands since the 1850s. How did they respond? Well, the leader of the Republican Party (Rush Limbaugh) declared that this exposed all so-called RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) for what they really were... liberals. In other words, they clearly didn't show contrition and clearly showed they hadn't learned their lesson.

This idea that moderate districts (particularly in New England and New York, where the pockets of red are quickly disappearing in these solid blue states) would rather vote in a Democrat than a right-winger will really come into play next year in the midterm elections if the right insists on continuing to purge all moderates from their party. What will it take for them to learn the error of their ways? A two-thirds majority for the Democrats? That's a very real possibility the way things are going. The fact that the right has ignored the political truth that all politics are local shows once again that they are no different than the left. They are only concerned with power.