A Good Day for Democrats?

First, I want to thank everyone for the response to the fund raiser. I only rattle the tin cup once a year, but it makes a huge difference.





I realize a lot of people are in precarious shape now, so please don’t apologize or feel bad if you can’t give a donation or can afford only a couple of bucks. Believe me, I understand.

I’m not sure if this is 100 percent of the vote, but the Ohio Secretary of State currently gives the Issue 2 count as 38.67% yes, 61.33% no, which I’d say is pretty decisive. And I see Mississippi nixed the “personhood” amendment, by a respectable margin. I’d say if it can’t pass in Mississippi, it can’t pass anywhere. Try again, fetusonistas.

Arizona’s right-wing Senate president, who calls himself the “Tea Party President,” was recalled. I’m not sure if anyone saw that coming.

Steve Kornacki writes that the GOP has a “brand problem.”

The most recent national survey from the Quinnipiac Polling Institute suggests a serious image problem for the Republican Party, with just 28 percent of voters saying they have a favorable view of the GOP and 57 percent saying they have an unfavorable one. Tuesday night offered a demonstration of why this is, with voters in several states siding against some of the most prominent faces and ideas of the Tea Party-era Republican Party.

Today’s word, boys and girls, is “overreach.”

The year started with a new Republican governor taking office and a new Republican majority in the Legislature, both results of the GOP’s 2010 midterm landslide. But once in power, the Republicans overreached, with SB 5 inciting a fierce and sustained backlash and angering many of the swing voters who were crucial to the GOP’s ’10 success. Kasich’s poll numbers crashed early in the year and have yet to recover much. A week before the election, his approval rating stood at 36 percent.

Dems have their own branding problem, of course. I’m not sure that yesterday was as much a good day for Democrats as it was a bad day for Republicans. However, I will say that the Dems aren’t quite as much the “me, too” party as it was a few years ago. At least a portion of it is less afraid to draw a strong distinction between themselves and the Right, and I hope yesterday’s elections will bolster their couragte.

12 thoughts on “A Good Day for Democrats?

  1. It would be nice if the results bolstered the Democrat’s resolve.
    I just wouldn’t bet the house.
    I can see the Democratic political advisors (aka – Republicans in Democrat’s clothing) telling the Democrats that this is the perfect time to move to the right to seize the right-center-middle and the independent voters.

    And also, the MSM still has a year to right the coverage to give advantages back. The Koch Brothers, Luntz, and Rove are, I’m sure, working to correct that as we speak.
    Expect record spending by Republicans in 2012 to take advantage of ‘Citizens United.’

  2. When the policies of a political party directly, that’s the key word, affect/threaten a person’s very survival (job loss etc.) people will rise up in revolt. Platforms, rhetoric, (think Ryan’s potentially devastating health care system reform) don’t usually ‘move’ people to the streets. (If Dems were half way clever they would find ways for the policies of Repubs to end up hanging them on their own petard – that is, get them to do what Kasich did in Ohio.)

  3. Today’s word, boys and girls, is “overreach.”

    I am 47 years old and I have never heard one of Our Media Stars describe the GOP as overreaching, or being punished for overreaching, or in danger of overreaching, or anything of the sort.

    Not once. Ever.

  4. Also, under the radar, voters in the Wake County, Raleigh, NC area voted out a school board that wanted to go back to the days before “Brown vs. Board of Education.’

    http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/11/09/1629974/democrats-again-control-wake-school.html

    I represented my company at some Wake board meetings and awards ceremonies back around 2000-2003, and couldn’t believe what I’d seen happen to that district in recent years. It went from one of the most progressive in NC, to one of the most regressive.

    I’m safely back in NY State again, but I’m glad that Wake Co, NC, came back to its senses. That’s some more good news!

  5. I am hoping that the pushback by labor/middle class will show the Dems that if they were grow a spine and stand up for policies that help the middle and lower class, that voters will reward them by electing them to office.

    However, I could be wrong.

  6. Recall Walker, Recall Walker, Recall Walker. Next on the dais, Pseudo-Gov Scooter Walker of WI. Lets keep the ball rolling.

  7. “I can see the Democratic political advisors (aka – Republicans in Democrat’s clothing) telling the Democrats that this is the perfect time to move to the right to seize the right-center-middle and the independent voters.”

    Democrats outnumber Republican. Most Democratic POLICIES are WAY, WAY more people-friendly than the GOP’s. They just need to COMMUNICATE more clearly and more often. People are already mad as heck.

    BTW: The weaselly DINO’s in MS who supported the anti-woman amendment should make an EXTRA effort to decide which side they are on and how to communicate that.

  8. Rick- I would have to agree with you that the MSM has not used the word ‘overreach’ in describing! GOP/TP power grabs. Until yesterday. I saw the word in two mainstream articles/editorials. I want to see this as the popular perception. All journalists think independently, but they swim like a school of fish, their independent opinions perfectly synchronized. I don’t see any conspiracy – just classic groupthink. But its a word we should use – because the pros are starting to.

  9. “All journalists think independently, but they swim like a school of fish, their independent opinions perfectly synchronized. ”

    Could be. MBA’s behave similarly.

  10. Something clicked in my head a few days ago about the proposed and defeated ‘personhood’ amendment, which I have below. This isn’t the last we’ve seen of this, and IMO, is a deliberate & covert move to block access to contraception – not just abortion.

    “Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”

    OK. Stay with me. ‘Moment of fertilization’. The following is from Wikipedia. The pill is intended to prevent ovation – no egg, no pregnancy- but if that fails, the pill prevents pregnancy POST-FERTILIZATION by inhibiting the implantation of an embryo in the uterus. Never mind that the occurrence is rare, the target of the ‘personhood” agenda is not a ban of abortion – they are aftersex for fun outside marriage. By forcing the prospect of – no, make that the high probability of pregnancy for sexually active single women, the expectation of the fetus people is ‘morality’. The following is a clinical discussion of the pill from Wikipedia. Do you think this escaped the notice of the authors of the amendment?

    “Other possible secondary mechanisms may exist. For instance, the brochure for Bayer’s YAZ mentions changes in the endometrial effects that reduce the likelihood of implantation of an embryo in the uterus. [71] Some pro-life groups consider such a mechanism to be abortifacient, and the existence of postfertilization mechanisms is a controversial topic. Some scientists point out that the possibility of fertilization during COCP use is very small. From this, they conclude that endometrial changes are unlikely to play an important role, if any, in the observed effectiveness of COCPs. [70] Others make morecomplex arguments against the existence of these mechanisms, [72] while yet other scientists argue the existing data supports such mechanisms. [73] “

  11. Thanks, Swami.

    Ovulation is actually what I meant – and it’s what I typed. But my spellchecker is not familiar with that verb, so it automatically switched the closest item in its innards. The only way to override this impertinence is to backspace over the correction and rub the spellchecker’s nose in the spot and scold, “No, no, no – BAD spellchecker”.

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