The Complete Collapse of Barack Obama
It is amusing to see the chirping of Republicans, having saved the two party system on Election Day 2009. In terms of politics as sports, it is pontificating on the success or failure of a third down pass for three yards for first down. As well the “Sour Grapes”, in the true Aesopean meaning of the phrase as rationalizing negative news, in reaction to the NY House seat. And I wonder what Gary Bauer has to say about these matters.:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Former Presidential Candidate Gary Bauer on the eve of mid-term elections Monday said that the electorate seems poised to make “change Conservatives can believe in.” Bauer is available for election analysis and commentary as one who played key roles in the races receiving significant attention.
Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, was one of the first conservatives to endorse Doug Hoffman in his bid to take the New York house seat. Bauer’s Campaign for Working Families committed tens of thousands of dollars in contributions and independent expenditures in Virginia and New York to promote conservative candidates and mobilize conservative voters. The Campaign is one of the largest pro-family, pro-life political action committees in America.
Bauer said, “Whatever happens tomorrow, Virginia seems to be headed back to the Republican column, and Democratic state New Jersey has an incumbent Democratic governor who clearly will not get 50 percent of the vote even with Barack Obama’s help. And in New York‘s 23rd House Race, a grassroots rebellion threatens to put a Conservative Party candidate into the Congress. It’s definitely going to be must see TV tomorrow, and as one who has been very active in the races, I do believe that change is coming.”
Something I need to do: check to see what media appearances this press release netted for Mr. Bauer.
Probably the most disconcerting problem spot for Obama on “Eletion Day 2009” — into next year’s midterm elections and into his re-election bid — is the Virginia outcome. New Jersey is fine: one unpopular Democratic incumbent ousted by an unpopular Republican challenger in a state where the Republican Party was due for a victory, and the only reason it was close at all was the presence of Obama. Move along, nothing to see there.
But Virginia? Virginia sort of resembles the outcome of Georgia’s Senate run-off election in 2008. The Democratic candidate there had tacked to Obama’s relatively impressive state margins, forcing the Republican just below 50 percent and into a run-off. And in that run-off, he was — quite predictably — trounced. Obama’s electoral coalition collapsed completely sans Obama in something of an “Emerging Market”, and everyone knew it was about to happen — hence Obama stayed away from it. Creigh Deeds knew the electorate would look different than 2008, and proceeded to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, in important ways McDonnell probably ran less against Obama than Deed did.
The irony of McDonnell’s smashing victory is that it follows two essentially successful Democratic gubernatorial terms. Virginia’s one-term process offers a procession of quarterly “clean slate” choices where the election does not necessarily become a referendum on the last guy. I guess it’s sort of set up for that purpose — that system has its small “d” democratic virtues.
The good news for Obama, running against his problems of unreliable base motivation, is that election outcomes in the blue parts of North Carolina — the Obama state with the lowest margin of victory and a ripe target for the Collapsed Electoral Coalition problem (I gather sort of most visible in the southern states) — trended ever more blue. The other factoid moving forward to 2010: if the micro-level economy is not tangibly better, the Democrats need to brace themselves for losses with a capital “l”. Never mind I saw in the supermarket check-out aisle a magazine commenerating his Nobel Prize — strange tidings.