It will be weeks, if not months, before the analysis of 2009's off year election results fade from the forefront of political commentary, particularly among conservatives. While the White House spin machine is content with downplaying the results as purely a function of local issues, conservatives have attempted to paint these contests as a referendum on the Obama Administration, or more bizarrely, the next step in "the American people taking back their country". Most seasoned political observers know that off year, special and mid-term elections are characterized by low voter turnout and that party activists play a much greater role in determining the outcome. Viewed through that prism, the 2009 contests fall clearly into the pattern of typical off year elections. Thus, the primary question is this: If the 2009 elections exhibit all of the characteristics of other off year elections, how can they logically be seen as a referendum on the Obama presidency or the opening volley in some great populist uprising. After all, if the American people are so disgusted with the Obama Administration, would the rising chorus of conservative opposition not propel them to action and would we not observe a significant up tick in voter turnout?
Analyzing the Gubernatorial races first, it is impossible to deny that local issues dominated. Democratic strategist Steve McMahon pointed out that property taxes and the increase in insurance rates, both of which are state level issues, are a big part of why Jon Corzine was not re-elected. While not directly involved, scandals played a role in Corzine's demise as well, culminating in last summer's roundup of a cast of characters from politicians to rabbis. Corzine's affiliation with the investment firm Goldman Sachs and his aloof political style did nothing to endear him to the people of New Jersey. As one NPR reporter put it: "Corzine never mastered the art of retail politics." Political columnist A.P. Stoddard pointed on November the 3rd that if Corzine lost it would not be Barack Obama's fault as in New Jersey; Obama had an approval rating in the vicinity of sixty percent in contrast to Corzine's thirty nine percent. In the end, Corzine wound up losing by four percentage points to Chris Christie.
In Virginia, the issues that Republican Bob McDonnell focused on were improving the state's economy, job creation and solving longstanding statewide transportation problems. Of these, only job creation could conceivably be linked back to the Obama Administration. While many voters are skeptical as to just how many jobs the Administration's stimulus has created, most people still believe that Obama inherited a difficult situation, the blame for which cannot be laid at the door of his White House. In contrast to McDonnell, the Democratic challenger, Creigh Deeds was a relative unknown who struggled with name recognition till the very end.
What is notable about both races is that the Republican winners eschewed the currently fashionable conservative think tank groupthink, which prescribes a political philosophy that hews to the hard right. As you will recall, following the defeat in the 2008 election cycle, most of the outspoken conservative commentators and theorists claimed that when the G.O.P. moved to the center it lost elections and that future electoral victory could only come by moving further to the right, the further, the better. Neither of the winners in New Jersey or Virginia dwelled on aspects of the "Culture Wars" nor did they resort to the now hackneyed rant about "a slide toward European Socialism." Moreover, both Christie and McDonnell ran upbeat, politically moderate campaigns, devoid of the shrill histrionics that have come to dominate rightwing talk radio or the "political commentators" currently practicing their craft on Fox News. In contrast both Corzine and Deeds ran very negative campaigns to which the voting public now turns an increasingly deaf ear.
Another big issue that can't be ignored is voter turnout. Political writer Paul Loeb summarizes voter turnout as follows: "In exit polls, Virginia voters under 30 dropped from 21% of the 2008 electorate to 10% this year and from 17% to 9% in New Jersey. Minority voting saw a similar decline. In both states, over half the Obama voters of a year ago simply stayed home, more than a million people in both Virginia and New Jersey. With this collapse of the Democratic base, even relatively modest Republican turnout could carry the day, and did." That said if this off year election is characterized by such low turn out levels, how could conservatives make an argument that there is such a dramatic rejection of the Obama agenda? Were the races in New Jersey and Virginia truly a referendum on Obama? If exit polls are any indication, they apparently were not. Edison Research provided a view as to whether or not Obama was a factor in people's decision to vote by way of these exit poll results:
New Jersey:
Support for Obama - 19%
Oppose Obama - 20%
Obama not a factor - 60%
Virginia:
Support for Obama - 18%
Oppose Obama - 24%
Obama not a factor - 55%
Thus in both races over 70% of those who answered exit polls said that Barack Obama did not play a role in their getting out to vote in what were essentially local elections. So much for the idea that the results of this past election constitute a rejection of Barack Obama, whose approval ratings have only moved up since the August Town Hall Follies. Meanwhile, the G.O.P. is polling its lowest approval rating since polling began and only twenty percent of Americans identify with the Republican Party.
Let's now turn to New York's 23rd Election District, where a Republican has held the Congressional seat since 1871. It is in the 23rd, a district that has all of the demographics that favor Republicans, that the newly energized national Conservative movement chose to show just how effective it can be in both defeating a Democrat, upending a moderate Republican and turning the tide on Barack Obama. Prior to the election the district was besieged with conservatives from all over the country including volunteers from prominent conservative grass roots organizations like, The National Organization for Marriage, FreedomWorks, of Tea Party fame, and the Club For Growth, which spent one million dollars backing the conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. Such conservative luminaries like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Dick Armey, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who predicted a conservative victory, tried in vain to nationalize the election. The cause of Mr. Hoffman was championed by both the Wall Street Journal's editorial board and by the NeoConservative organ, the Weekly Standard. In the face of this unprecedented conservative effort, Bill Owens won by endorsing the Obama Agenda, in an economically depressed region where unemployment has been north of ten percent for some time. This is the second time since the election of Barack Obama, that a Democrat endorsing Obama's agenda has beaten a Republican with national conservative support in a district that demographically favored the G.O.P. The other instance is the special election for Kirsten Gillibrand's vacated Congressional seat earlier this year.
What the outcome of the election in New York's 23rd Congressional District shows is that beyond the world of right wing talk shows, the blogosphere, tea parties and grass roots activism, the appeal of the radical right may be much more limited than had been previously assumed. Could it be that the "August Town Hall Follies" with their tenor of rejection, vitriol and political dramatics have convinced few that conservatives have anything meaningful to offer an electorate that is essentially moderate, but that has been trending to the left over the previous two election cycles? It certainly leaves one to wonder just how effective Sarah Palin can be as a national political figure, seeing as she has yet to have any significant outcome on any race in which she has been involved. After all, isn't she the darling of the base, the one individual that can really turn out a crowd?
Don't get me wrong; there is a wake up call for the Democrats in the results of the 2009 elections and in 2010 there is no guarantee that they won't lose more seats, the incumbent party usually does. If it happened to Ronald Reagan, it can certainly happen to Barack Obama. Obama has clearly lost support among independents and people are rightly concerned about the upward growth in federal spending. At the same time, Americans know that this is no ordinary time and that the situation we currently find ourselves in is not the work of the Obama Administration. But those jumping to the conclusion that 2009 is all that meaningful should heed the words of Purdue University Professor of Political Science, Bert Rockman: "I see no particular harbingers for 2010. While people are deeply unhappy about current conditions, they are also keenly suspicious of Republicans." But the bigger takeaway from all of this is that as far as 2009 is concerned, rumors of Barack Obama's demise have been greatly exaggerated. Based on the facts cited above, claims that a great anti-Obama populist revolution is underway cannot be substantiated. More to the point, the great citizen's revolt to "take back their country" seems only to be alive and well in the delusional fantasyland of tea parties, birthers and far right conservatives who can't seem to abide a climate of much needed political change.
Rather than being an overwhelming sweep, most elections are a mix of good and bad news for each political party and the progressive and conservative movements in our country, and the 2009 off year elections certainly fits into that category.
In the category of the expected, both parties had easy wins: Bob McDonnell won the VA Governor's race in a blowout, while progressive Democrat John Garamendi easily won the Congressional special election to replace Blue Dog Ellen Tauscher.
In the more competitive races, the Republicans won the NJ Gov race, and the Republicans/conservative movement lost the special Congressional election in NY 23rd.
And in the saddest news of the day for progressives, the Maine ballot initiative to strip marriage rights from gays and lesbians narrowly won, although progressives won some other initiative battles like the fight against the highly regressive TABOR initiative in ME.
Republicans, conservative Democrats, and corporate lobbyists are all eagerly lining up to spin the losses in the two Governors' races as evidence that Democrats should become more cautious, go slower with change, pull back on their ambitions. That is the worst possible thing Democrats could do right now. It's a little like conservatives saying that the problem in NY-23 was that Republicans just weren't conservative enough, which you know they will be somehow trying to spin.
Let me try to explain this to the caution captains in my party. There are two reasons we lost those Governors' races yesterday, and they are closely related: voters are in a foul mood, and base Democrats- young folks, unmarried women, minorities- didn't come out.
The new Q-poll has Gov. Corzine down by only four points- a narrowing from 10 points from an earlier poll this month. This combined with the Democracy Corps poll last week (1 point down) is good news. The overall race has been narrowing for awhile:
Chris Christie, who recently said insurance companies should not be forced to cover mammograms for women in their 20s because those who get breast cancer "are an exception", has his worst favorability of the campaign in the poll- 38% favorable, 38% unfavorable. New Jersey law mandates that health insurance companies operating in the state are required to provide a minimum level of care- including covering mammograms- and Chris Christie, facing a right-wing primary challenger earlier this year, proposed letting insurance companies opt out of those.
It reminds me of what Rep. Alan Grayson said on the House floor yesterday, outlining the GOP health care plan- "Don't get sick. And if you do get sick, die quickly!"
If you haven't taken action for Corzine yet, we're in the stretch run on the campaign. You can watch and post this ad on your Facebook and Twitter account, send around to your friends in the state, and sign up to help defeat Christie and insurance company backers here.
The big news in the race is that Gov. Corzinehas taken a one-point lead over Chris Christie. If you don't count the Republican poll taken by the guy who polled for Christie's primary opponent, this is Corzine's first lead of the campaign since January, and first lead since Christie became the nominee. It's still a small lead, and could be an outlier considering the most recent numbers (graph below and Pollster.com's breakout numbers here), but it is good news, and I'm told Monmouth is a trusted and accurate source.
On the break-outs, Corzine is up to 77% among Democrats (from 74% in the Q-poll I wrote about here). The number of independents who are undecided is up 5 points, who could be trending towards Corzine, but that's also within the margin of error. He still has a long way to go (losing 38-42% among labor voters, getting hammered 43-24% on property taxes and losing on many of the rest of the issues voters name as most important), but this is a positive sign, and should help beat back a push for crap like this.
The latest TV ad from the Corzine campaign is out, and it's below. I spent part of the afternoon looking through all of the video the Corzine team has put together so far, and noticed a serious problem, and an opportunity.
Take a look at the ad below.
I think Corzine's handling of the economy is one of his strongest points and messages, but this is just too many words, and really weird music. And "But Chris Christie's soooo partisan..." is just a dumb line.
Now, check out the campaign's previous negative ad, and two negative web videos:
Same problem, right? Weird music (the last one awkwardly flipping to positive music for the Corzine campaign logo, kind of ruining the effect) grainy images, too many words on screen. And generally just the same old classic negative ads.
Some thoughts on these, and a change in approach, in the extended entry.
The news today in New Jersey is that the former top aide to Chris Christie while he was in the U.S. Attorney's office- Michele Brown- resigned amid revelations that she was still paying off a $46,000 personal loan to him. Brown was serving in the U.S. Attorney's office after Christie became a candidate raising questions about whether she owed him favors and would carry out investigations/indictments on his behalf.
On top of it, acting U.S. Attorney, Ralph Marra- who replaced Christie upon his resignation to run for Governor- complained that Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign successfully targeted the office with a Freedom of Information request for Christie's records on no-bid contracts he awarded during his tenure, among other incidents. He's also in some trouble of his own.
Marra, in the e-mail obtained by The Star-Ledger, confirmed he is facing an internal ethics inquiry over public comments he made last month. Justice Department officials are looking into whether Marra's statements during a news conference after a corruption sweep may have helped Christie's campaign for governor.
Maybe it's the original Rove connection, but something about this feels like another version of Fitzmas is coming, and like Joe says, that there's more to this sleazebag Christie coming down the pipe.
Jon Corzine is on the OpenLeft/BlogPAC Better Democrats page. Here's another few shekels to him for pure smarts on the FOIA request. And another couple to keep Christie out of the Governor's mansion.
At Netroots Nation last week, I saw a lot of friends of mine from various progressive circles, and one conversation-starter many of them ask me was "what's going on for you besides health care?" To which I talk about The Progressive Revolution (I manage the press, website and book tour) some other work I'm doing at Progressive Strategies, my boyfriend, etc. Lots of my friends ask what I think about Creigh Deeds' race, to which I kind of give them a funny stare. I think they're wondering because here in DC, I'm 10 minutes from Virginia. But in terms of a major race that I actually care about, it's not VA-Gov, where a conservative Democrat is running. It's NJ-Gov.
So I tell them that I'm concerned about Corzine, that he's way down in the polls, and why I think it's important to re-elect the only other major gubernatorial candidate I can think of in recent years- aside from Eliot Spitzer, my home-state governor, and Deval Patrick- who speaks on the stump about the importance of marriage equality and pledging to sign a bill. Oh, and Spitzer was doing it while he was on his way to winning with 69% of the vote, and Patrick on his way to an easy victory as well.
1) "Ehh, he'll be fine, Democrats always close late in New Jersey. Look at Menendez vs. Kean Jr. in 2006. New Jersey folks flirt with Republicans but always come back to the Democrat."
2) "Ehh, he'll be fine, he'll just dump another $60 million into the race and swamp Christie on TV."
More on why those two assumptions are wrong- and an announcement- in the extended entry.
Amid all the health care reform goings-on in the last few weeks, it has been fun to take a break from that and watch the walls (hopefully) closing in on Karl Rove. Today it's reported in all the major outlets that he was much more deeply involved in the U.S. Attorneys' firings than he said he was, and even Harriet Miers is pointing fingers at him. Whether or not this means Fitzmas or something close to it again, I am unsure, but he may finally be getting what's coming to him, even if it takes many more months.
The more immediate impact is on the NJ-Gov race, where progressive governor Jon Corzine has been trailing Chris Christie recently. There hasn't been much discussion at OpenLeft about the race, but Chris Christie is this supposedly apolitical U.S. Attorney who engineered prosecutions and convictions of many high-profile NJ politicians, Dems and Republicans alike. Well, as Sam Stein reports today, he wasn't really all that apolitical. Rove has been advising Christie on making connections to start his run at the governor's mansion.
In an on-the-record interview with the House Judiciary Committee on July 7, 2009, the former Bush strategist acknowledged that he had held several conversations with current GOP candidate Chris Christie over the course of several years regarding the possibility of running for the governor's chair.
Christie, Rove said, was interested in mounting a bid and "asked me questions about who -- who were good people that knew about running for governor that he could talk to."
This damning news sure as hell raises a lot of Nixonian questions about Christie (per the Corzine camp's ad), including how his gubernatorial strategy was linked to who he decided to prosecute. If even Harriet Miers says Rove called New Mexico Attorney David Iglesias a "serious problem" and that he wanted "something done" about it, what direction did Rove give Christie on who should have been prosecuted in NJ?
(This could help tip one of the biggest off-year elections next November. Don't believe me? Read it and see for yourself. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
If you don't know, there are 2 high profile races in November. The NJ-Governor is one of them, and Jon Corzine is behind in the polls by close to 10 points to Chris Christie. Christie is a Bushie fundraising ethically challenged former US Attorney in NJ, and a story is starting to bubble up now about something that could sink his candidacy. This is also over at Blue Jersey, where there is a whole lot more about Christie's background and cracks in his "ethical armor".
Thanks in advance for reading, and however you can help spread the word, it would be much appreciated. Please help this go viral. Not only will a Corzine victory deal a crushing blow to republicans in the Northeast, but a Christie win will be something that every single republican will point to as "evidence of a republican resurgence"
Within the past few days, democracy with a small d made important, even historic, gains in New York, New Jersey, and Alaska.
An important part of the New York State story covered by Chris Bowers is that the Senate Majority Leader is, in effect, an unelected position. In the nearly 50 years since the Republicans grabbed control of the chamber, governors have come and gone and the Republicans clearly lost much of their popular support. But the position was seen as politically untouchable, certainly by any Democrat or any mere voters. After Elliott Spitzer amassed an incredible 69% of the vote for governor, Bruno basically stuc his thumb out and said so what. And with the backing of the city's tabloids, the Post and the Daily News, derailed the will of the voters and seemed to put Spitzer's career into deep jeopardy by abusing the investigative power of the state senate. It was old Albany saying to Spitzer what entrenched DC said to Bill Clinton in 1993: we don't care who elected you, we run this place and you are a temporary outsider and parvenu.
Spitzer, unlike the previous governors, refused to play the game as Albany dictated it. He realized that concentrating on the Senate one seat at a time coukld change the game and put the voters instead of the bosses in charge. And he did more. By appointing a Republican to a state post he opened up a Democratic leaning district on Long Island and took one huge bite out of the apple. Last night, he surprisingly found another. And all of a sudden the corrupt and corrupting tone that elections don't matter and can be easily overturned by a boss like Bruno suddenly vanishes. (Bruno's swipe at stae driver's licenses was a huge dent in Hillary Clinton's campaign, the swift boat of 2008, so far; he's a national level time bomb).
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