Do you Vote Freedom?
Saw a bumpersticker. I guess on an image of a ribbon the words “Vote Freedom”. I’ll be sure to do that. It occurs to me that this is a rather meaningless unspecified marker. Everyone seems to be voting for freedom, with the belief that the other side is voting for Tyranny.
So I don’t know the bumper stickers’ politics. There is another bumper sticker which suggests the car is owned by a cat owner. Other than that, I have nothing.
I have, at this moment in scanning about the web, an irrational desire see election results of one kind or another. I don’t even understand why.  I read, bemused, the comments of partisan charged commenter floating out there, against the easy conventional unconventional conventional wisdom that these elections add up to a few local races with local issues and people with an electorate that looks nothing like any electorate that will face Obama in 3 years.:
(bah. Can’t find it. Website is slow to, I assume, election-result traffic — and in this case it has to be rather localized to the evening as opposed to larger election nights. It was a Typical spiel alleging that the liberal media would paint a Democratic night as significant, and a Republican night as hinging on the local.
Good luck to the residents of Virginia in upholding their pattern in electing Governors the following year of the other party than the president.
One thing that needs to be stated about these 70 Gubernatorial term slots. Going back to the beginning of Virginia’s voting pattern, and the demise of the one party system at the end of the stuffy “Byrd Machine”.: Here’s the first Republican Governor in Virginia since Reconstruction, and the Democrat he replaced who would then be the Republican that replaced him, a quick wikipedia sketch of the mechinitions of political realignment.Â
Abner Linwood Holton, Jr. (born September 21, 1923) was the first Republican Governor of Virginia since Reconstruction. He was governor from 1970 to 1974. Holton was a member of the mountain-valley Republican Party (GOP) that fought the Byrd Organization and was not in favor of welcoming conservative Democrats into the Virginia Republican Party. […]
In 1970, when forced busing was an issue in Virginia, Holton voluntarily placed his children (including future First Lady of Virginia Anne Holton) in the mostly African-American Richmond public schools garnering much publicity.
As governor he pushed hard to field Republican candidates in all statewide races instead of endorsing conservative alternatives. When segregationist Harry F. Byrd, Jr. broke ranks with the increasingly liberal Virginia Democratic party and ran as an independent for the U.S. Senate in 1970, Linwood insisted on running a Republican candidate rather than endorsing an independent. This eventually led to the nomination of Ray Garland.[1] Byrd went on to win the three-way election with an absolute majority. Holton also encouraged a moderate Republican to run in the special election in 1971 to choose a successor for deceased Lieutenant Governor J. Sargeant Reynolds — another election which was won by an independent, this time populist Henry Howell.
The increasingly conservative Republican party turned their back on Holton and supported Mills E. Godwin, Jr. in 1973, the conservative former Democrat who had defeated Holton in the 1965 election. Godwin had turned Republican and supported “massive resistance” to desegregation.[2][3] Holton was not eligible to run in 1973 anyway, as Virginia does not allow governors to serve consecutive terms. […]
After his retirement, Holton had supported moderate Republicans, including John Warner. As the Virginia Republican Party became more conservative, however, he found himself more in line with the state Democratic Party, ultimately endorsing several Democrats for statewide office, including his son-in-law, Governor Tim Kaine. Holton endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential contest.
Virginians voted for and against Freedom between 1965 and 1973.
On that other round-up, I rolled about the am dial. I heard a dash of two hosts. Mark Levine was particularly interesting, alerting us to the one year anniversary of the election of a Marxist Radical to the White House, and the ensuring year long ground-swell that is reaching one key moment in the election of Doug Hoffman in Upstate New York. Obama Never Knew what hit him! A speech prevailed upon atop music from Patton. It’s show business, I suppose.
It is, of course, worth noting the reported surreality from residents of New York District 23. The Enthusiasm Gap between National Observers and National Movement Conservatives holding this out as one giant Stand (note the local spending versus national) and the residents in the district waiting for the media attention to go away, please.
Exit polls are coming out from all the contests. According to the exit polls, 97 percent of voters believe they voted for Freedom. What’s interesting is to see the Gender Gap: where 95 percent of men voted for Freedom, 98 percent of women voted for Freedom, showing a giant gap in terms of attitudes regarding this “Freedom Issue”. Not enough data has come in to look at generational splits.