Senate Races Tightening

“The Republicans made several of these races much closer than they should have been, offering incompetent, extreme and inexperienced Tea Party candidates in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, West Virginia and a Club for Growth ideologue in Pennsylvania. More responsible Republican candidates might have had easier races. Which is one reason why, win or lose, Democrats have some hard thinking to do before they face the public again in 2012.”

The flip side to that coin is that incompetent, extreme and inexperienced Tea Party winners are going to have two years to raise hell in DC and show the country how they handle the pressures of being in charge. The voters will get to decide if they have buyers remorse in 2012. The republicans will have some hard choices to make too. If a significant part of the electorate decides that the bright new shiny object has lost it’s luster, does the republican party draw a line in the sand?

Another thing to think about is that the republicans are motivated this time. If the Tea Baggers offer us a glimpse of what they intend to do it might just scare the progressives who are sitting out this election to come back into the fold and make the moderates and independents change course again. It could very well come down to voting for someone you feel betrayed by rather than letting someone that scares the sh!t out of you get elected.

“Which is one reason why, win or lose, Democrats have some hard thinking to do before they face the public again in 2012.”
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Gotta love this statement. It says so much. Thinking is hard for Democrats. Democrats won’t be accountable to the public again until 2012.
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Well, I hope that they don’t strain their little brains thinking too hard. Maybe they should act like the public, you know, “We the People,” and the Constitution matter more than their theories, leftist ideologies, and social program spending wish list. And then they might actually think about jobs. Private sector jobs. They are going to need them to pay for all those government union jobs that receive twice as much in pay and compensation as those hard to find and hard working tax paying jobs.
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A government worker is a tax taker, not a tax payer. Sure they have withholding deducted, but the funds to pay their salaries, pensions, health care, vacations, etc. come from taxes collected from the private sector. If you don’t understand that, then thinking is too hard for you and you should not try it. We don’t want any injuries here.
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LOL, I love it. Joe Klein has given up and moving toward 2012. Good job, Joe.
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But, of course as usual he is shilling the latest polls which do show somewhat of a “tightening” of the various races, but the big unknown is how powerful is the anger out in America. You just can’t poll those numbers at all. There just isn’t a recent reference to do that.
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Anti-incumbency today is the highest since polling was ever started. Democrats who have been in TOTAL control for the past 2 years, and total control of Congress for the past 4 years is considered to be the big evil and bad government now in the average voter’s mind.
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How do you poll that, Joe Klein? You or the rest of the Beltway nitwits don’t have the slightest clue.

So police officers, fire fighters, military personnel, highway workers, people who advance our interest internationally just to name a few are all takers.

Good grief what a completely idiotic thing to say let alone think.

For the commenters who are confident “their side” is going to win they sure are getting progressively more manic.
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It’s curious.

It could be that they’re afraid that they’ll win the battle but lose the war. The Tea Baggers are going from being on the outside to being on the inside. Whether they change Washington or Washington changes them has yet to be seen. The spotlight will be on what they do, not what they say after they’re seated. If they don’t produce, they’re toast.

Yes. Face reality. I said tax takers. Once again, if this is just too difficult for you, you should go watch Keith Olberman.
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I am sick of your demonization tactics. Your tactics have failed and your are the idiot that is still at it.
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This society cannot afford the obscenely high pensions and early retirement at 55 for government workers. I am talking about the bureaucrats the cubicle workers the agencies. The porkers at the top. Like these fine folks:
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Audit: Calif. city misspent affordable house money
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The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 20, 2010; 4:29 PM

LOS ANGELES — The California controller’s office says officials in the scandal-plagued city of Bell took more than $1 million in money earmarked for affordable housing and street repair and used it to give themselves excessive salaries and other generous perks.

State Controller John Chiang said Wednesday at least $1.2 million was wrongly diverted into what he called a “self-indulgent slush fund.”

Chiang’s office launched an audit of Bell’s books three months ago, after the Los Angeles Times disclosed that several city officials were paying themselves exorbitant salaries.

He has reported previously that Bell officials mismanaged more than $50 million in bond money and levied millions of dollars in illegal taxes.

Eight current and former city officials have been charged with looting city funds.

“The Republicans made several of these races much closer than they should have been, offering incompetent, extreme and inexperienced Tea Party candidates….”

Why is that, Joe?

“More responsible Republican candidates might have had easier races. Which is one reason why, win or lose, Democrats have some hard thinking to do before they face the public again in 2012.”

What manner of reflection/reinvention should dems practice, Joe? You’re the columnist. What conclusions should they draw from an electorate that rapidly soured on their (again, fleeting) governance?

I’d also be interested to hear your answers to these questions, Joe Klein.

SZ, did you see/follow Avedon’s link to Daisy Deadhead?
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http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2010/10/yes-boys-and-girls-thats-our-discussion.html

Incompetent, extreme and inexperienced…
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Sound familiar anyone?

I’ve noticed that the term “Teabaggers” is usually used by effeminate men.

I didn’t, JC, thanks for that link.
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Very, very interesting.
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There’s a lot to agree with, there.
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It’s completely at odds with a majority of the liberal blogosphere, exemplified by Digby’s explanation of the popular right in terms of pure revanchist racism and nativism.
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It’s completely at odds with the almost universal narrative of moral inferiority and mass psychosis adopted by partisan Democrats.
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It’s interesting how the sort of explanation in that piece doesn’t seem to exist in either of those two populations, almost as if that category of analysis were a metaphorical movement liberal who never got invited to a Meet The Press round-table…

Part 2 was also provocative, though I’m not entirely sold. She certainly has a perspective the “liberal blogosphere” should be heeding. Well, at least if they envision their role as being more than cheerleaders for Team D. But that 84% at Netroots Nation…
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At present, the liberal narrative is horizontal and incestuous–we talk knowingly about these people less fortunate than ourselves, but we don’t talk to them.
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Per Thomas Frank, the dems’ abandonment of labor and the language of class has left the GOP (and now the Teaparties) to take up the mantle of populism. Mind you, with economics (the haves vs. the have nots) wholly supplanted beneath wedge-issues and the culture wars.

“They attempt to get hired, and find that jobs have evaporated. Where did they go?–asks the worker.”
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Again, the jobs and pie is going to government union workers. Why does a government worker need a union?
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It is truly tragic that the American worker has no place in this “Global Economy.” His chance for prosperity has been either naively or through a sinister plot been farmed out by global economic theorists that don’t give a damn about him/her.
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Once again Larry Summers, the architect of our failed economy, was also an architect of NAFTA. I want you to comment on his reasoning particularly the second paragraph:

LAWRENCE SUMMERS: I think the decision to support NAFTA was a crucial one because it was really a watershed as to whether America was going to stand for larger markets, was going to stand for forward defense of our interests by trying to have a more integrated global economy [in] which countries were growing. So [a] watershed in our relations with Mexico and establishing a real partnership with a country with whom we had a 2,000-mile border.
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I think it resulted in a profound change in the internal political dynamics in Mexico in favor of the progressive forces that believed in the market and friendship with the United States as opposed to the forces that believed more in socialism and opposition to the United States. And NAFTA didn’t cost the United States a penny. It contributed to the strength of our economy both because of more exports and because imports helped to reduce inflation. It didn’t cost the budget anything. It was a very worthwhile investment for our country.
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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/int_lawrencesummers.html#2
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This guy was still in charge of the economy until last month. Now his minions carry on for him.
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The only thing that the American worker has received from the global economy is a global screwin.’ Nine years after Larry bragged about how much we helped Mexico, that country is worse off than before. Mexico needs to take care of Mexico’s problems: corruption, a non existent educational system, and corruption.
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The reality is, in modern day America, the worker looks at the “picture” of our government and realizes that Big corrupt government, with its elitist ideologies that look down their nose at those workers has replaced the boss of 1922. In modern America, not many find themselves doing manual labor all day. Not that there is anything wrong with working hard, I’ve done it. Twenty years ago you could train and find a better job. The modern problem is no longer the boss. The problem is the government that has through many and various “we know better” agreements, regulations, deals and agencies, yanked the rug of opportunity out from under the American worker.

You know, I could go on and on (stop laughing, fellow commenters!) about the treacherous incompetence of Larry Summers, the evil of NAFTA, the ideological folly of Third Way globalism, and so on. That Barack Obama put Larry Summers, the architect of the repeal of Glass-Steagal, anywhere near our beloved country’s economy condemns him. It’s like putting Rumsfeld in charge of another war. It’s indicative of how grotesquely out of touch the Administration is, how incompetent and addicted to establishment authority they truly are.
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But I really shouldn’t, because something else is more important to mention right now about what you wrote.
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Aren’t you leaving a big something out, liberal?
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Isn’t there somebody else in that bed with “Big corrupt government?”
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The reality is, in modern day America, the worker looks at the “picture” of our government in bed with big finance and big industry, and realizes that “Big corrupt government,” with its partnership arrangement with the market’s biggest players –the banks, the insurers, the credit card companies, the “defense” industry, the energy industry, the health care profiteers, the telecoms, and (lest we forget) the media– isn’t in the business of protecting them from those rapacious, powerful interests any more.
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That the bosses are still the bosses, the banks are still the banks, and the local cable monopoly is still able to screw you with impunity –these things ordinary working Americans understand much better than you apparently know.
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The difference between the boss, or the fixed-market telephone carrier, or the claims-denying insurer, or the collections company that “invested” in your $200 debt to the blood test diagnostics center (and turned it into $700 including late fees, interest and penalties, thus ruining your credit), or the bank that took your tax-payer money, but wouldn’t work out an arrangement to lower your payments until your income picked up, and the government is that folks can fire the government.
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That’s why working people (like me and you) are angry at the government. It’s because the state isn’t standing up against big interests on behalf of the people who elected them, and because getting angry actually has a (painfully inadequate, but existent) outlet –voting the bastards out.
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The problem is the “we know better” agreements, regulations (regulatory capture), deals (PhRMA) and agencies (HHS) that exist between big finance and industry and the state, the entities that together are pulling the rug of opportunity out from under working Americans.
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Ordinary folks know that it takes money to corrupt, but movement conservatives keep forgetting that it takes two to do that tango.
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That’s why, once movement liberals start to pull their heads out of our asses, stop trusting establishment Democrats to protect them against scary rightists like you, and start worrying about establishment Democrats’ unwillingness to protect them against the biggest players, we will ultimately be far, far more persuasive to normal folks going about their daily lives than you guys.
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We’re not in denial about the vast, freedom-crushing power of monopolistic, rent-seeking corporations, like the popular right. We’re not living in an Ayn Rand novel. We can see that Glenn Beck is a carnival-barking phony and a fraud, unlike you people he treats like his marks. We’re the reality-based community. We’re not racing to the trough for “faith-based initiative” government handouts to put up creation museums, while talking a big game about “earmarks.”
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People don’t like your church-ladies telling them how to live, they don’t like your comic-convention Objectivists telling them they should privatize the fire-department, and they know that the other side of the liberty-killing coin is big finance and big industry.
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The only thing the popular right has going for it is the venality, tribalism, stupidity, cravenness and ideological lunacy of the partisan Democrats who make up the hydra that is the centrist Democratic establishment in Washington. They’re proving to be enormous f*ck-ups and ideologues, and the ones who aren’t stupid in those ways are corrupt or profiteers.
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Once we get rid of those kind of Democrats, liberal, once we can finally speak for ourselves….
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We’ll see what happens when the Democratic Party is ours again, won’t we? We’ll see what happens when our side is once again run by people who know not only how to actually do their jobs without destroying the country, but know how to stand up and fight the grifters who are pushing your buttons.
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The American people just want one thing: they want people who they can trust to take the fight to the moneyed interests out to overwhelm them, and win. They want small businesses given the opportunity to compete for their hard-earned dollars, not big industry with government-protected profits. They want George Bailey’s Savings and Loan, not Potter’s CitiGroup. They want the federal government turning its power against the other big players, not cooperating to spy on little people for our “protection,” or nation-building abroad with the eager help of profiteer contractors. They want government in their interests, first and foremost.
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We movement liberals know that, which is why those interests are so dedicated to keeping Democrats in power who are so dedicated to keeping us out.
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You just wait, liberal. You just wait until we have the Democratic Party back. Then we’ll see how well the American worker gets along with you folks on the right.
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Let’s see how you guys do when there’s actually a positive choice in front of the American people once again, shall we, liberal?

I’m sorry, LOL, @lovely_bride was interrupting me about our New Zealand trip while I was typing that, it should be “once movement liberals start to pull our heads out of our asses.”
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I’ll try harder not to get heads and asses mixed up in the future.

No, I wasn’t sold on Part 2 either, JC.
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I think that this person is informed by their surroundings, though. It’s different where she lives, you know?
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“At present, the liberal narrative is horizontal and incestuous–we talk knowingly about these people less fortunate than ourselves, but we don’t talk to them.”
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That’s largely accurate, unfortunately.
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As you must know, I’m aiming to correct that, Oregon JC.
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So should you.

Have the Democrats, from anywhere and for any office, nominated a normal human being (aka a member of the pro-America community) or have the Democrats continued the same 45-year pattern of nominating only those from the Democrat party base, to wit: the pagans, the atheists, the marxists, the socialists, the tree huggers, the earth worshippers, the flag burners, the draft dodgers, the race baiters, the race hustlers, the feminists (hahahahahahaha!), the al Qaeda lovers, the America haters, the Consitution haters, the loathers of the U.S. military, the Democrat party’s useful idiots/dupes/shills (i.e., the Washington/New York/American press corps) and the fundamentalist homosexualists?

We are in the process of firing the government right now. I’m not waiting for you.
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Have a nice trip to NZ. It’s an amazing country.

You comments are amusing. Particularly when you whine about church ladies telling people how to live. Those progressive liberals are all over the legislature in California. They do nothing for people. They do have a long laundry list of things that they DON’T want people to do: buy a black car, smoke a cigarette (oh my, oh my, even the church lady smokes), use a water softener, turn on their AC (the government spent millions on ads telling people to turn their lights off), not wear a seat belt (I feel so much safer with nanny looking after me), purchase a mylar balloon, drink a soda, and on and on. That’s ALL they want to do is control behavior, and they fine people or jail them for the behavior they just won’t tolerate, like smoking. You can be fined $500 for smoking a freakin’ cigarette? And you whine about the church lady.

And, if it wasn’t for corrupt big government with their hands out accepting all that cash, those mean old corporations wouldn’t have the voice they do. Your party, the Democrats is the one that is always claiming to be the savior, and yet things become progressively worse when you are in control.
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I think we agree on small businesses. I fear the government that does the backrooms deals, while selling people BS about how great their newest agency or agreement is. Government is out of control. I want it out of my life, my wallet, and stop trying to tell me or force me to conform to your PC nanny state. Makes me want to smoke a cigarette.

I just picture Jim DeMint and the elected TPers marching on Washington as Boehner and McConnell flee. They will raise the flag of stupid and reactionary and bring down the Republican party.
Best of all, Sarah Palin will be emboldened to run for President.

liberal: I would hardly call Stuart’s post whining. Why do you have to characterize before addressing the content.
As far as CA legislators, the dems are as venal as the reps. We have govt that sold out to mostly corporate interests years ago. Term limits just has them leaping from state position to state position and sometimes on to federal positions. Meanwhile, the corporate interests do most of their work with the legislative and administrative staffs.
Plutocracy rules my state.

Yeah Joe

They are sure getting tight and so is the noose around his neck. Hi there sacredh.

The difference between the boss…or the bank that took your tax-payer money, but wouldn’t work out an arrangement to lower your payments until your income picked up, and the government is that folks can fire the government.
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I was in a heated discussion with a Teabagger last week, and I was trying to explain this to him:
That if you get rid of all the government, the thing that will fill the void is big business.
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And while we have some measure of control over government (or used to), we have no control over multinational corporations.
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He pulled out his wallet, held it up like a Holy Bible, and declared that he had a vote in Boeing’s affairs.
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I laughed at him. What else could I do? He works the same job as me, which means he can make a car payment but he won’t be affecting Monsanto’s actions anytime soon.
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What can you do with that sort of delusion?
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On an unrelated note, he feels that there’s no proven connection between smoking and cancer. That surprised the hell out of me, I didn’t even know that was up for discussion anymore.

you need a brain transplant

Yeah, Sarah Palin

I watched the debate between Pa. candidates Toomey and Sestak last night. Toomey was pathetic. Same old accusations with no backup. Sestak was coherent, calm, dignified and knew what he was talking about.

You make feminism and environmentalism sound like a bad thing. Maybe you ought to live in a place where those things are disregarded. Perhaps a toxic waste swamp or maybe Afganistan? You can buy yourself a mutilated wife and watch your children play in pools of industrial waste.

Any luck at the truck stops last night Mary?

Well, that does it. Sestak is finished.

Thanks, liberal, I’ll try to make the most of the trip.

Hi there back Ike. The weather took a cold turn the other night. It dropped down to 34. I cut the grass yesterday. By that I mean I ran over about a million leaves and turned them into mulch. It was just getting dark when I put the tractor away. The MIL had left her car windows down so I went inside and told her that she needed to get her keys and go put them up because it might rain. I went downstairs, went out through the basement door and hid in the back seat of her car with a blanket thrown over me.
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She came out about 5 minutes later and got in. I started moaning and she started screaming. She jumped out and ran screaming into the house. I jumped out and ran back in through the basement door. I ran up the steps and asked what all the screaming was about. Good fun.