It was about President Obama, Speaker of the House Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and more importantly the agenda and behavior that they have been foisting off on the U.S.

jeanie on November 5, 2009 at 12:54 PM

jeanie,

I often wonder if, (when Obama and Pelosi get through bankrupting this nation), that this fiscal issue will become a metamorphosis of a morally social issue. Keep in mind, that the planned nationalization of our health care system, will not only cost individuals fiscally, but by the directives written in this bill, our private life choices where we make personal decisions about our health, will be determined by the government policies inacted. To me, that is a moral social issue wrapped in fiscal insanity.

It’s always dangerous to read national sentiments in local election results, especially when the balloting is as scattered and sparse as it was yesterday. But a few things seem obvious. Negative campaigning lost its punch. And George Bush’s political capital turned into a deficit.

The election of Jon Corzine as governor of New Jersey was no surprise, but the size of his victory was impressive, considering the battering Mr. Corzine had taken in a campaign that by the end seemed to revolve around the senator’s failed marriage. Either the New Jersey electorate, which has been through way more than its share of sexual drama in recent years, is simply numb, or it was turned off by the negativity of the campaign.

And in Virginia, the Republican, Jerry Kilgore, failed to gain traction with ads in which the father of a murder victim claimed that the Democrat, Timothy Kaine, would have opposed the death penalty for Hitler.

President Bush made a much-publicized last-minute campaign stop in Virginia to stump for Mr. Kilgore, but the effort backfired, or at least failed to make a dent. Everyone from political consultants to leaders of nations in the remote corners of Asia and Africa will be reading bad omens for the Republicans in what happened after Mr. Bush left.

…

Democrats tried to tie their opponents to the White House, and the only place where that seemed to fail to have a negative impact was New York City. When Republican success is limited to as thin a party reed as Michael Bloomberg, the Bush administration has a lot to worry about.

New York Times. Nov 9, 2005. pg. A.26

It certainly was not a referendum on Republican orthodoxy, since Mr. Christie did not run as a social conservative.

A message to their readers to “please, please don’t even consider voting Republican.” They know well that a lot of the young, freedom-loving supporters of the Democratic party would find their more natural home with the Republican party, minus the social issues.

I think if we could just get the American public to realize that abortion is not a “social issue,” but an issue about the right-to-life, then I wouldn’t mind an abandonment of the “social issues” in exchange for a revitalized Republican party that can actually successfully shrink government and increase freedom.

New York Times Editorial—This Election Was Not About Obama

If they had to out of their way to say that, then they believe it was.

If the Democrats had won big, this election would have been about Obama.

Heh.

Mew

It’s always interesting to note that these editorialists who are so often quoted, enjoined in debate, are taken so seriously. When was the last time anyone asked a lumber mill operator in Louisiana, a steel fabricator in Des Moines, what they thought? No, you’re probably not going to have a conversation sprinkled with 50-cent words if you ask them, but you will more likely get an answer relevant to someone more closely linked with the daily grind of decision making rather than a diatribe more closely linked with speculation.

No matter how much New Yorkers of all stripes were turned off by Bloomberg’s huge spending and his gutting of term limits to remain in office, and no matter how liberal the average New Yorker is or the 5-to-1 Democratic registration advantage, voters are still scared enough of the Democrats to vote Mayor Mike back in, so that by the next election in 2013 it will have been 20 years since anyone running on the Democratic Party line has won the race for mayor. Bill Thompson came close, but enough New Yorkers were afraid he’d be another David Dinkins that they just didn’t turn out to vote.

And Dinkins was elected over Ed Koch (think Hillary) in the 1989 primaries and Giuliani (think McCain) in the general election because enough guilty white liberal voters in the city — including the editorial writers of The New York Times — wanted to believe that just the mere election of the city’s first African-American mayor would turn New York into Heaven on the Hudson.

Dinkins was older than Obama, but had many of the same assest (non-threatening personality, good speaking ability) and the same liabilities (fear of challenging his core supporters, dithering on critical issues and a seeming greater interest in making sure LaGuardia jets didn’t fly over the U.S. Open while he was there than the 5-6 murders a day crime rate the city was enduring). That resulted in a situation so screwed up that, even though the Times endorsed Dinkins again in 1993, when 1997 came around, even the editorial board had to admit how much things had changed for the better and held their collective noses to endorse Rudy for re-election.

Obama’s trending in the exact same direction, though if the congressional Dems crater in 2010, he does have the option of trying to follow the Clinton-Morris triangulation policy. That’s if his ego will let him work with Republicans where their ideas are actually given a seat at the table. If not, 2012 could be like New York in 1993, though my guess is even if voters do elect a conservative to turn things around like Reagan did after Carter, the Times isn’t going to be endorsing them for re-election in 2016.