Gail Collins, writing in the New York Times, has words of hope for Democrats regarding the changes that are in the wind. Her message, in a nutshell: it’s not as bad as it looks.
Though much of her optimism amounts to whistling past the graveyard (she importunes Democrats in North Dakota to scour the countryside for a replacement for the outgoing Byron Dorgan, adding manically that “there’s got to be a potential junior senator somewhere in your 641,000 fine residents”), she is correct on one point. The likely replacement for Chris Dodd in Connecticut will be the state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal. Not only is Blumenthal a known quantity among Nutmeg State residents, but he is popular. According to one poll, he leads his Republican challengers for the soon-to-be-vacant seat, Rob Simmons, Linda McMahon, and Peter Schiff by margins of 59-28, 60-28, and 63-23 respectively.
But even those healthy leads are not carved in stone. No one expected the field to shift this much in a single year of the Obama presidency. Then again, no one—at least on the Democrat side—anticipated what a singularly dreadful and divisive president Obama would turn out to be.
So, is the news as good for Republicans as it seems overall? Not hardly. While aggregate polling at Real Clear Politics has Republicans overtaking Democrats by a 43.3 percent to 40.5 percent margin in a generic congressional vote, those numbers aren’t exactly cause for dancing in the street. What they reveal is that Americans are sick and tired of both major parties, the Dems slightly more so at this point.
Part of the problem is that Republicans still lack a message and leadership. And you can’t exactly point to the Republicans’ far more palatable options for health care reform as an example of a message, because they did nothing to fix the broken health care system in six years of congressional leadership and eight in control of the executive branch. Republicans are also sorely in need of a leader, a role that I am not convinced Sarah Palin will be able to fill in three years.
But there are things we can all do to widen the path for the more palatable of the two major parties. These include:
- Continued pressure on our elected officials. If you haven’t been making phone calls or writing letters to your local congressmen, what’s keeping you? They deliberately forced the health care vote through the Senate before Christmas so senators could avoid the flak they were sure to get from their constituents during the holiday break. Even so, Ben Nelson is apparently feeling some pangs of conscience or pressure from his voter base, judging from reports that he now feels the whole health fiasco was a mistake when the economy continues to founder.
- Becoming a vocal opponent of Obama and other haughty Democrats. The Tea Party movement has done much to alert the American public to what is at stake if Barack Obama’s power continues to go unchecked. These protesters have helped shape public opinion and precipitated the drop in Obama’s poll numbers. But there is still much more to be done. Frankly, the health care fiasco should never have gotten as far as it has. The next major Tea Party event is scheduled for April 15 of this year, tax day. If you can make it, join the march on Washington. Don’t be deterred by the mainstream media (a pox on them), which attempted to dismiss last year’s tax day event as a blip or an aberration. Let’s make our voices loud enough to reach across the White House lawn directly to the Oval Office and to its current and—God willing—soon-to-be-former occupant.
Comments 35
I wouldn’t count that PPP poll so quickly, it has a more lopsided sample than the exit poll in 2008. But he is kind of like Lieberman, so he’ll more formidable than Dodd would have been. Then again, what is the great tide that will be lifting the Democrat’s sails, certainly not health care,
the stimulus will suddenly kick in?
January 7th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Whether or not healthcare passes is no longer of consequence as to the misfortunes headed the liberals way come November.
Bailouts,corporate take-overs, stimulus(li), high unemployment, gas prices, omnibus(s),bribery, earmarks/pork-barrel, non-transparency, out-and-out lies and just plain ignoring the American people for a full year and continuing is more than sufficient reason for their demise.
January 7th, 2010 at 10:37 am
The only question that we are trying to answer right now,and with the caveat that in politics things can change in a moment’s notice, is will the GOP take over either or both chambers of congress. There is zero good news for Democrats anywhere. RINOs, or more likely DIABLOs, will be run out of the House in the GOP primaries by the Palin brigades. They are really motivated, and pissed off. The seniors are not going to forgive a democrat whose health care reform vote is going to reduce their medicare coverage as well as their access to services (the Mayo announcement in Arizona is the tip of the iceberg, Medicare itself is in real trouble which is a real problem that both parties will absolutely run away from but which the democrats have managed to make worse! dumb!). The Connecticut news is perhaps a sliver of good news, but I think is really just the absence of more bad news as Dodd was toast; the initial leads will evaporate and the GOP will be within striking distance there before the primaries occur. Collins is an idiot. She is of the same elitist bent that is absolutely blind to what is happening.
Obama’s security lieutentants looked absolutely stupid over the Christmas terrorist incident. I mean this is the perfect storm. I don’t care which party you back, when you ask the government to do too much, incompetence takes over. They can only hope that the bad news stops so that people think they are doing better and so are less angry. But man, the April 15 tea parties are really going to freak out Washington.
January 7th, 2010 at 11:27 am
@ JEM:
I agree with a lot of what you say, JEM, but the bigger question is whether the political economic and security background slows the wave or turns it into a tsuper-tsunami. The next time you feel the need to declare a Palinized future impossible, remember your own caveat.
In a way, we’ve fallen under the spell of our Reagan hagiography. We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking his presidency proved that one effective leader in the top job can fix everything – as though his two terms in office really did “fix everything” rather than leave the institutional resistance to conservative governance in some ways even stronger, even if the ideological underpinnings of liberalism/progressivism were weakened. We seem to have missed the message that the permanent government has nearly destroyed the ability of any president – least of all a president whose “qualifications” equate with the standards of the institutional elite – to overturn its dominance.
Palin can be elected, but as a final puzzle piece in a picture of authentic epochal change, not as the puzzle-master. Whether it can happen is in the lap of the gods, not up to, at most dimly discernable to mere mortals like you and me.
January 7th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Well how much can you chalk that up to Reagan, and the left’s almost dialectical tenacity to undermine his programs, through the Congress, through the legal machinery, but more importantly the media and academia. They were progressively more successful with his two successors, and I had thought their adoration of Clinton reached a new low, but the treatment to Obama plumbed new heights or depths as it were.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I accept your caveat wholeheartedly. We can do nothing more than guess.
My concern is that the ability to put 55 senators in office who accept the premise of what Palin is really against, against an out of touch political class that enriches themselves and protects friendly industries while enriching themselves further. In Alaska she went after the GOP, which is what all the media elites ignored, proving they are not elite and in fact as dumb as any group in the US. Or perhaps I was correct in an earlier post on another thread, where I suggest they went after her because they feared her and with good cause. In either case – that is quite an uphill battle.
There is too much inertia in Washington DC I fear. The number of mindnumbed legislative aids in every congressional staff office is amazingly high. They have done nothing in life in most cases, though not all, than graduate from law school. Some of them really think they know best. They know nothing. If you were ever going to have a revolution again, it would have to be at what we commonly call the MSM, or what Rush calls the state controlled media (which as brazen and over the top that sounds is the most accurate description I think I have heard) and wipe them out. They provide the brain-dead news that people just accept. Then you need to destroy the teacher’s unions and take back the local schools. The NEA doesn’t care about your kid, and neither do the teachers who belong to it.
That is why I cannot see the Palin electibility. I would be happy to be wrong.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
So ‘what is to be done’ you know George might be more right about this 60s thing. Do we think Pawlenty or Romney are really going to do anything substantial if they get it, Huckabee ‘fageta about it’ Yes all those other roots have to be cauterized as well, but that’s not going
to happen in three years either. It is more what she stands for, than it is strictly about her. Maybe Michelle Bachman, another often demonized figure will carry the torch
January 7th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
The democrats really let their guard down because they misread the mind of the electorate. I mean Obama in essence denying American Exceptionalism was the height of stupid. That attitude is all over the democrats and most middle of the road Americans still feel pride in being an American. As I have said before, Obama does not respect or admire most of what America has been, and certainly doesn’t see her as exceptional in any way but arrogance. That’s a first, though Carter came close and we know what happened to him. You can’t govern that way, so 2010 and 2012 are going to big GOP pickups. But then the nerve goes away and the GOP act just like the dems, just kind of dem-lite, so after their hubris gets the best of them, we elect the other party. Until we educate our population to understand that government doesn’t have their best interest at heart, and they don’t, we will only nibble around the edges. The documents put in place by the founders over about a 15 year period are amazingly enlightened, and while we can get caught up in them too mystically perhaps, it is amazing that as a political class we have been remarkably short on matching their wisdom since that time. Washington DC today is everything they warned us about.
January 7th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
My mind has been boggled by stock market resiliency, during a time when I and many other conservatives fear that all is lost. Could it be that the market is telling us that America herself is truly resilient and that Obama could be a watershed, a time during which we are forced to return to our roots? Inspite of our experience and disappointments with corrupt, big spending Republicans, we have the very hopeful signs that things are indeed changing. A new group of politicians is emerging who may be able to replace the Mc Cain-Snowe-Collins-Graham-Schwartzenegger wing of the Republican Party with men and women like Peter Ryan and Meg Whitman who actually believe in the Founders’ vision. We also see the wholesale flowering of new media stars such as Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck, and the leftists have nothing but their closed ranks to counter them.
All of this rests and relies on our citizens’ belief in freedom and their dreams of prosperity. We should not loose heart and we should spread the word as best we can.
January 7th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
@ scientific socialist:
Another explanation of the stock market bounce is expectation of inflation, fear of which makes bonds seem risky.
Where you gonna run? You already own your house (with a mortgage) which is a hard asset, and you’ve got some gold which you’re scared to keep in the house and which the government might call in at a nominal price if it’s market value goes up a lot, and you’ve got some stocks and some bonds.
Last year you panicked and sold stocks as the market declined; but then you started to realize that those bonds and money market funds where you put the proceeds from the stock are themselves vulnerable unless the Fed pulls off a well nigh unbelievably refined call in of the money they poured out there all this year. Inflation hurts companies; but at least they own producive assets.
And, the America is resilient factor is not to be minimized. Until March of last year there seemed a real possibility President Obama might actually convert the country to a Euro style social welfare state in one go. By March it became clear that Cap and Trade and Health Care Reform were not going to be passed in “strong” form.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Back to the primary subject; we are going to live through some interesting political times this year, especially if the health care bill is passed and signed despite the growing backlash about transparency.
My wife and I will be going to Washington with signs on April 15th. I have to do some thinking on the content of the signs.
January 7th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
Six Republican Senators are retiring. Kit Bond’s seat from Missouri will be hard to renew;what about the other five?
January 7th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
Most expert observers expect the Rs to gain a few seats overall. If it’s a wave election, then everything viewed as “lean Democratic” last year turns into tossup at worst this year, and anything is possible.
Now back to the game.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
@ Sully:
Hmmm. So ZC will have a correspondent in the field. Cool. Maybe I should come down, too, for the first Zombie “staff meeting.” Czar, you have a longer ways to go, but is it a possibility? Could you pick up J.E. on the way?
January 7th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I’ll probably be up there as well on April 15th, that will be my second time in Washington, first was CPAC in February
January 7th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Sully wrote:
http://www.laughitoff.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/im-with-stupid-final.jpg
January 7th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
@ Howard Portnoy:
Vanishingly small possibility, in my estimation. I could try hitch hiking, I guess, but, if I also have to pick up JE, I doubt my back will hold out to Nevada.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
You Sire, are a dirty, dirty monkey.
I’ll not have you speak of country matters in regard to Ms. Dyer.
Her virtue is not to be taken lightly.
I’ve half a horse to mindwhip you for your sauciness.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
We need a Mister Peanut sign, folks. Howard, it would make us famous! You’d be on Oprah, dude! What about a sign with Mister Peanut on one side and Putin on the Ritz on the other?
Now, there’s a way to show them folks in Washington we’re not a bunch of David Brooks bozos. We’d show all those smug elitists we’ve got our mojos working.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Zoltan Newberry wrote:
…the grounds of Camp X-Ray, wishing you still had access to butter.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
@Fuster
Camp X ray detainees leave there at least 15 pounds heavier than they come in, they don’t stint on the butter, or the ‘confy chair’
January 7th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
@ narciso:
It’s all water weight.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Are you saying you are the only Californian over 16 years old who doesn’t own a Hummer or a Lexus?
And, why would you think you would pick up J.E. in Oklahoma and carry her to Nevada on the way to DC?
If you had gone to Catholic school the nuns woulda beaten better geography into ya.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:59 pm
@ Sully:
The beloved Ms Dyer spreads her optimism in California these days.
January 7th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Czar, isn’t there money in the ZC coffers for airfare for you and J.E.? It really would be swell if we could arrange a get-together–if not in DC somewhere.
@ Zoltan Newberry:
Zolt, that’s a fabulous idea. If I can manage to go, consider it a done deal.
@ narciso:
narciso: One of the funniest rejoinders I’ve seen on this site. Even Mr. fuster has to agree that’s funny, though I liked his comment, too, though he might have personalized it a little bit more by saying “access to foie gras.”
January 7th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
@ Howard Portnoy:
I liked it, but liked my last rejoinder more.
January 7th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
It was weak Michigan J, maybe if they gained more weight it would be harder for them to rejoin the jihad, most of these tapes of returnees
they do seem quite plump, David Hicks, the Wallabee Taliban, being the most obvious
January 7th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Howard Portnoy wrote:
Snort.
January 7th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
@ narciso:
I don’t watch enough tv, I guess, or I wouldn’t have had to look up the Michigan J.
That one is weak. You’re better than that. Fresh frog insult is called for.
I glad that you haven’t had to learn the reality of why these guys gain the weight, narc.
January 7th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Snort, eh? So that’s what’s in the ZC coffers!
January 8th, 2010 at 7:26 am
@ fuster:
Yum, love fresh frog, though I haven’t had it since my martini days.
January 8th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Frogs in martinis tend to impart more of a yellowish coloration than is usually considered desirable.
January 8th, 2010 at 7:41 am
@ fuster:
Mebbe so, but they sure is yummy.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:07 am
@ fuster:
Frogs in martinis do tend to make them too piquant. But I understand there have been philosophers for whom that sort of bite was a categorical imperative.
January 8th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
He must have reasoned the need for impurity.
(that’s the best I can do to help that groaner of yours)
January 8th, 2010 at 4:17 pm