Wednesday, November 9

Oh. Thanks For Clearing That Up.

Karen Tumulty, "Virginia elections may be a warning sign for Obama". November 8

Katherine Q. "It's Not Fair Steno Sue Is Alliterative" Seelye, "Anti-Abortion Initiative 26 Defeated in Mississippi". November 8

a)
Tuesday’s legislative elections in Virginia appeared likely to add more evidence — as if national Democrats needed it — that the terrain of the political map will be significantly more rugged for President Obama next year.

It is difficult to draw a bright trend line from an election in which fewer than one-third of those registered voted. When turnout is as light as it was on Tuesday, those who do show up tend to be the most dogged partisans.

But analysts and political strategists of both parties said the expected Republican gains — even if less than was expected — underscored the need for the president to reinvigorate his supporters and close what is becoming known as the “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties.

and, b)
Taken together, Tuesday’s results could breathe new life into President Obama’s hopes for his re-election a year from now. But the day was not a wholesale victory for Democrats. Even as voters in Ohio delivered a blow to Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, and rejected his attempt to weaken collective bargaining for public employees, they approved a symbolic measure to exempt Ohio residents from the individual mandate required in Mr. Obama’s health care law.

FIRST: how many biennial election cycles have these two personally witnessed, many of them as political reporters? What percentage of those offered hope and/or warning to incumbents? Hint: if you answered less than "100" you will need to show your work.

(I know, I know; even the best kitchen has to turn out toast points and coddled eggs on occasion. Doesn't mean they have to crow about it.)

Second, the Great State of Mississippi, which is to personal freedom what Wal*Mart is to fine wines, defeated personhood for blastocytes legislation. Mississippi. This is not a minor electoral blip. It is not, as some halfwits might have it, a "blow" to the "so-called 'personhood' movement", but a death knell.

Not, of course, that those bozos actually go away when they die. Or even fall over.

And this compares to "expected, but not as large as expected" Republican gains in Virginia?

Fer chrissakes, if you couldn't write "2008 May Be Difficult for Obama To Duplicate in 2012" in, uh, 2008 you've got no business voting, let alone writing about politics. Maybe you should write "Lessons of 2011 for Obama: Don't Fuck Up in 2009".

You can, in the right circumstances, be too fucking cracked for Mississippi. This is news. If you want to make some over-arching conclusion about our national politics, try this: Maybe someday it'll be possible to be too fucking cracked for the mass-market media in this country to take you seriously.


5 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Katherine Q. "It's Not Fair Steno Sue Is Alliterative" Seelye

Meet Karen Tumulty at The War Criminal Post. (Link is not to The War Criminal Post.)
~

mds said...

Dear sweet Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Rather more people turned out to repeal SB 5 than voted for Kasich in 2010. In an off-year referendum. Current (grain-of-salt) polling from the firm that was pretty accurate on the SB 5 repeal has Obama thrashing anyone from the Republican field, and that with a net negative approval rating. Yet further purely regional gains in the Virginia state legislature by reactionary fuckwits who think McDonnell-administered beatings haven't been severe enough means President Cainmanntumney is a done deal? I just happen to have an electoral college map right here, and it seems to me that without Ohio, Virginia returning to its pro-Confederate theocratic pigfucker roots with a vengeance doesn't get the job done for Republicans. But then I don't get paid to regurgitate baby pelican food for a major metropolitan newspaper. I'm not going to dignify the articles with clicking through; can someone tell me if either of them points out what good news all this is for John McCain?

Sator Arepo said...

"Second, the Great State of Mississippi, which is to personal freedom what Wal*Mart is to fine wines..."

I am so fucking using that. With attribution, of course.

Daaaamn.


verification word: chneduar

John of Indiana said...

Don't look now, but I bet some Neanderthal in the House of Bubbas is being courted by the "Personhood" zealots to introduce a like measure into The World's Worst Legislature next year.
Maybe it''l get lost in the upheaval when Sheila Klinker and the rest of the Democrats flee to Illinois to block next year's "Right to Work(for LESS)" campaign.

Julia Grey said...

Maybe someday it'll be possible to be too fucking cracked for the mass-market media in this country to take you seriously.

Well, they DID can Glenn Beck.