The Off-Year Elections and What They Mean

Tea Party nemesis Republican Chris Christie won a second term as New Jersey governor by a wide margin - more than 20 points - over the Democratic challenger.  Across the river in New York, progressive Bill de Blasio won in a landslide, 73-24, over his Republican opponent, thereby becoming the first Democratic mayor of New York in two decades.  In Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the governorship by 2.5% over Tea Party favorite Ken Cuccinelli.

So what is the significance of these off-year election results and what do they  mean for 2014 and 2016?

Bi-partisanship works in a blue state.  Democrats generally believe that government can help people and will work with a Republican who is not too extreme.

• Christie is a popular governor who has made much of his ability to work with Democrats.  His handling of the damage wreaked by Superstorm Sandy was universally praised.  Christie had the support of several state Democratic leaders and politicians and he was endorsed by most of the state's newspapers, including the Newark Star-Ledger. 
• According to exit polls, Christie won majorities of women and Hispanics and increased his vote among African-Americans and union households.  Still, his percentage of the vote (60%) was less than the 1985 victory of Republican Tom Kean (69%).   
• New Jersey Democrats retained control of the legislature in spite of Christie's landslide win.

The Tea Party is down but not out.  They are still passionate about their causes and vote in droves when they are.

• Tea Party extremism is not as popular in New Jersey as in many other states.  Christie's victory there says nothing about his ability to win the Republican Presidential primary should he choose to run in 2016. 
• Even after the government shutdown, Republicans almost managed to win the governorship in Virginia.  Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli made "Obamacare" the issue in the weeks after the shutdown and almost pulled off a victory. 
• Six per cent of the vote in Virginia went to the Libertarian candidate.  This was double the margin of McAuliffe's victory.  Though no one can say how this Libertarian vote would have split, I think it's fair to say that McAuliffe owed his victory almost as much to this as Bill Clinton did to the Ross Perot vote in 1992 and George Bush to the Florida Ralph Nader vote in 2000.  (Okay, hanging chads and the Supreme Court had more to do with Bush's victory than the Nader vote.  Still Nader's 97,000 votes dwarfed the 537 vote margin by which Bush won Florida and thus the Presidency.)

Money and voter turnout (still) win elections. 

• McAuliffe had a big edge over Cuccinelli in money spent as did Democrats in the New Jersey legislative races.
• Thank God for the Democrats of (especially) northern Virginia.  As they did in the Presidential elections of 2008 and 2012, voters in the northern counties turned out in enough numbers to counteract the majority Republican vote in other parts of the state.
• Obama's Presidential victories in 2008 and 2012 were the result of the same dynamics.  He outspent his opponents and voter turnout was key. 
• Citizens United will bring essentially unlimited money into the 2014 and 2016 elections, primarily on the Republican side. Democrats had better begin planning now on how they will energize their base to a) not lose the Senate in 2014, b) pickup at least a few seats in the gerry-mandered House districts, and c) win the 2016 Presidential election. 

New York City is (still) overwhelmingly Democratic, progressive and ethnic.

• In electing progressive Bill de Blasio by nearly 50 points, New Yorkers returned to their roots.  The most liberal of the candidates in the Democratic field, de Blasio campaigned on a program to lessen New York's gap between the rich and the poor - provide universal pre-K, end stop-and-frisk, build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing.
• He is the fourth Italian-American to serve as mayor of the city.  He joins fellow Italian-American New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in running one of the most progressive cities in one of the most progressive states in the country.  De Blasio's  maternal grandparents were Italian immigrants.  He is married to an African-American woman and his inter-racial family was at the center of his campaign. 
• At 6' 5", he is 15" taller than the first Italian-American mayor of New York, Fiorello LaGuardia.  Let's hope height is not inversely proportional to ability.  Fiorello LaGuardia, a progressive, reformist "New Deal Republican", is widely regarded as one of the 2 or 3 greatest mayors in US history.

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The photo of Governor Christie and President Obama is from The Governor's Office/Tim Larsen.

Ten Good Things

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   Quote of the Day

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

- Walt Whitman

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Before the do-nothing, filibuster-mongering 113th Congress returns from its recess and before the democracy-challenged Supreme Court gets back in session, I thought it would be timely to present another list of Ten Good Things that happened in the past few months.

1. This has been the "Summer of Saturn." Starting in May and continuing through the end of this month, the ringed planet has been clearly visible in the night sky. Even with a small telescope you can see the rings (which are just 328 feet thick!) and maybe a few of the planet's moons. Because of the relative positions of Earth and Saturn in their orbits, the rings are currently at an angle. What a phenomenal reminder of the beauty of the universe!
 

[Photo is from skyscrapers.org website]

Link to Viewing Saturn webpage on NASA website

2. Was there a more memorable moment in the Major League Baseball's 2013 All-Star Game (or any All-Star game for that matter) than when Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera took the field in the bottom of the eighth inning? As the greatest closer of all time jogged in from the bullpen in what will be his last All-Star Game, his American League teammates honored him by staying off the field. There he was - alone on the pitcher's mound with everyone in New York's Citi Field on their feet and cheering, American and National League players on the dugout steps cheering and snapping pictures with their cell phones.  Jim Leyland, the manager of the American League All-Stars, showed real class by bringing him in for the bottom of the eighth, thereby ensuring that Mariano would receive the adulation of the crowd - had the National League bats erupted in the eighth, there would be no bottom of the ninth and no appearance by Mariano Rivera. And as happened so many times in the past, three batters came up to face him and three batters went down.

Links to videos:
YouTube "Mariano Rivera Entrance 2013 All-Star Game"
MLB website "Rivera's tribute latest, and greatest, of its kind"

 

3. The Hero of Cleveland - Charles Ramsey rescued three women who had been held captive for a decade. "He was eating a Big Mac at his home in Cleveland, Ohio when Charles Ramsey heard yelling from across the street, grabbed his hamburger and knocked his neighbor's front door down rescuing [the] three Ohio women." McDonald's and 14 local Cleveland restaurants have offered him free hamburgers for life. [examiner.com website]
[Photo of Charles Ramsey is from AP]

4. Democratic Governor Steve Beshear of "red state" Kentucky (also the home of Mr. Filibuster Mitch McConnell), is enthusiastically implementing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). "Calling it 'the single-most important decision in our lifetime for improving the health of Kentuckians,' Gov. Steve Beshear today announced the inclusion of 308,000 more Kentuckians in the federal Medicaid health insurance program. The expansion, together with the creation of the Health Benefit Exchange, will ensure that every Kentuckian will have access to affordable health insurance." [News release posted on WFPL(Louisville) website]

5. Half a Loaf is Better, etc. - Republican Governor Chris Christie of "blue state" New Jersey signed off on ten new gun-control laws. Okay, most of these were non-controversial (who's going to argue with keeping potential terrorists from "obtaining firearms identification cards or permits to purchase handguns"?). Five more "controversial" bills are still on his desk - including one calling for "background checks for all private gun sales and require all prospective gun owners to attend a gun safety training class" and another that "would ban a model of .50 caliber rifle, the most powerful rifle available to civilians." Still, it's a step in the right direction by a Republican governor who is looking over his shoulder at the NRA and at a potential run for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016. [Washington Free Beacon website]

See below for a Mayor Against Illegal Guns graphic showing individual states' progress towards gun-control.

 

6. Narita's "Song of the Seashore" was written in 1916 but I only came across it recently. Gentle, wistful and haunting, the song tells of memories engendered by a walk along the seashore. Links to a couple of excellent versions on YouTube:

Arranged for Flute Quartet - the version I first found

Arranged for Singer and Piano - a particularly beautiful vocal rendition

7. John Kerry has gotten the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and begin talking peace. After three years of not even talking to each other, at least the two sides are sitting down at the same table. Whether anything finally comes of Kerry's initiative, only time will tell.

8. US National Soccer Team reaches the top 20. "Team USA's flawless execution at the CONCACAF Gold Cup paid dividends in two ways. First, they won the Gold Cup by defeating Panama 1-0 in the final at Soldier Field; second they moved back into the world's top twenty teams in the latest ranking released by FIFA on Thursday." [examiner.com website] This is the first time since 2010 that the national team has been ranked this high. 

9. The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill on immigration reform that includes a path to citizenry for undocumented immigrants.

10. When Daft Punk, the French electronic music duo, had to cancel from Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show because of contractual obligations to MTV, Colbert showed us how to make lemonade out of lemons in this absolutely hilarious segment from the show. There are dozens of videos out there - here's the one from the Colbert Nation website.

Colbert Nation video of Colbert's Daft Punk dance


Other Stuff

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Graphic

 

The Fiscal Cliff (and other) Follies

The markets reacted positively yesterday (Dow up 300 points) when the so-called fiscal cliff was finally averted. The dreaded fiscal cliff was and continues to be a self-imposed crisis. It's closely related to last year's Republican-manufactured “debt ceiling crisis” that briefly threw the markets into a downward spin. The centrists who control the Democratic Party today have apparently swallowed the Republican nonsense that the most important problem facing America is the national debt. It's not. The most important economic problem facing America today is the continuing high unemployment and underemployment.

The fiscal compromise was finally approved by the Republican-controlled House. The Senate shamed them into it by overwhelmingly approving it. The compromise raises revenues by discontinuing the income tax break for people earning more than $450k/yr (almost double Obama's going in position). It basically kicks the can down the road two months – when additional battles on the sequestering of funds will take place. If the Republican foot dragging on the compromise is any indication, you can bet the military-industrial-political complex will fight the defense cuts that are in play. And if the lack of cooperation in the fiscal cliff negotiations shown by Republicans is any indication, you can bet that the debt ceiling will again become another ridiculous fiasco at about the same time. Geithner's special steps on the debt run out about then. In any case, we'll get an early indication of how much the Republicans intend to obstruct progress on things beneficial to the average American when Biden's task force on gun violence presents its recommendations to Congress. It will be particularly interesting to see what they do on the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. 

It took Republican Governor Christie of New Jersey to call out House Republicans, and in particular John Boehner for failing to call for a vote on the $60 billion relief bill for Sandy victims already approved by the Senate. As ABC reported, "Do your job and come through for the people of this country," Christie pointedly said about Boehner. The bill "could not overcome the toxic internal politics of the House majority," Christie said. It had the desired effect – Republicans scrambled to reassure voters that they would vote on $9 billion within days and consider the remaining $51 billion by mid January.

President Obama also has a lot to answer for. As reported in the Huffington Post: “President Barack Obama signed the [$633 billion] National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp....Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. “ There was no way Congress would have overridden his veto. They would have revoted on the ridiculously overbloated military budget without those provisions. Maybe Obama was just worn down by the fiscal cliff negotiations but this does not bode well for his second term.

Finally just a word about what may be one of the bigger threats to our democracy – gerrymandering (aka redistricting) of House Congressional districts. Talk about the will of the people. With a Congressional approval rating barely registering in double digits for much of 2012, 94% of House incumbents were reelected to office in the 2012 elections – and Republicans, because they are now better at gerrymandering  than Democrats, retained firm control of the House.  From  the Think Progress website: “Based on current tallies, Democrats now lead Republicans 59,343,447 to 58,178,393 in total votes cast for their House candidates — meaning that the American people preferred Democrats over Republicans by nearly a full percentage point of the total vote. Yet, despite clearly losing the popular vote, Republicans will control nearly 54 percent of the seats in the House in the 113th Congress.”  The scary thing is that there is no end in sight to Republican control of the House and their "safe" districts.  Unless the average Republican voter wakes up to what is happening (or more accurately not happening) because of this, we are in for more of the same until the next census in 2020.