Spin City

While the GOP attempts to make gubernatorial gains in Virginia and New Jersey a referendum on Barack Obama, the real story was in a tiny northern New York Congressional District.


The spin doctors were all smiles at Fix News this past Tuesday night as Republicans won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey. Shepard Smith was practically beside himself with glee as he read off the election results. At the risk of sounding a bit crude, I thought we were going to witness cable news’ first on-air orgasm. The Obama party is over! Yeah! Break out the champagne. Look out Dems, the GOP is back. 2010 is just around the corner and we’re gonna kick some major political butt.

Well, at the risk of being a party pooper, hold onto your champagne glasses – especially you Shep! - and don’t pop that cork just yet, or anything else for that matter. True losing two states’ governorships – one in a blue, the other in a purple – hurt a bit. But, as any first year political science major will tell you, governor’s races are NOT particularly indicative of mood swings within the national electorate at large; they are far more indicative of conditions within a rather small geographic area. Also, with the country in a recession, voters tend to take their frustrations out on either the incumbent or, as was the case in Virginia, the incumbent’s party. Virginia, in fact, is a case study in that for the last 36 years, the party that wins the White House loses the governorship; only twice – in 1993 and 2005 – has the state election portended anything significant for the mid-terms.

Claims by the GOP that independent voters have suddenly flocked over to the Republican Party and abandoned the President are baseless. For one thing, Obama’s approval numbers continue to be strong in both states (51% in Virgina and 54% in New Jersey). Secondly, it is always a given that no political candidate can win an election without the independent vote. Why should it be a surprise that both Republican candidates did extremely well in this demographic? And lastly, anyone who followed the New Jersey race knew all too well that Democrat Jon Corzine ran a lousy campaign; his attack ads against his opponent Chris Christie gave the 527s a run for their money. His own negatives were way too high for an incumbent and in the end they did him in.

Seriously, does anybody expect this state to turn red in 2012? Even the exit polls in northern Virginia continue to indicate that the state is far more moderate than it is conservative. If the current trend of transplanted northerners migrating southward continues, and all indications are it will, the chances are the middle-Atlantic states will mover farther to the center and away from conservatives. Barring a complete economic meltdown, Barack Obama could still fare well there in 2012 and carry the state again. The only message anyone with a half a brain can take from both these elections is that the electorate was very frustrated at the way things were going and that tends to mean change at the top. If Republicans had held both states, in all likelihood they would’ve gone Democrat and we’d be talking about the continuing Obama revolution.

But the election that the GOP doesn’t seem to want to talk much about today is the one they threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at: New York’s 23rd Congressional District. In a stunning repudiation of the wingnuts that have been driving the Republican bus, voters in that district elected the first Democrat to represent them since 1871. That’s right, you heard correct: 1871, not 1971. More than one hundred thirty years have passed since the last time a Republican did not call this district his home. Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, Fred Thompson, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Mike Savage, and the rest of the stooges who are looking to “take back” the GOP were about as effective at convincing the voters in upstate New York to vote for Doug Hoffman, as a drunk driver at a sobriety checkpoint trying to convince a cop he was dry as a whistle.

For what the results in the New York 23rd should’ve indicated not only to the GOP, but to everybody else who paid close attention, was that the voters rejected ideology over substance. They went for someone who could best represent their local interests, even if it meant voting for a Democrat. Dick Armey may have called Doug Hoffman the “real Republican,” but the simple truth was he didn’t even live in the district, had no idea what the major issues were, and the voters, in the end, saw through the smoke screen. He may have been popular in Sarah Palin’s facebook account, but it wasn’t enough to put him over the finish line.

Attempts by the Right to say that they “saved” the district from a far worse humiliating defeat by ousting liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava are lame at best. Before Hoffman was dragged into the race by the wingnuts, Scozzafava was ahead in virtually every poll. Without their interference, she most likely would’ve been elected by a comfortable margin. And as for the other claim by the Far Right that they sent a clear message to the Republican Party that those who don’t embrace a true conservative message will be challenged and defeated, point taken. Attention all moderates: your services are no longer required by the GOP. To paraphrase a well-known airline commercial, “You are now free to roam the political landscape.”

Sadly the Republican Party doesn’t even understand what happened Tuesday night. They insist that victories in Virginia and New Jersey, along with a few other local areas, as well as the defeat in New York’s 23rd are a repudiation of the President’s policies and indicate a building tide of conservatism that will sweep them into power in 2010 and 2012. And you thought children only suffered this badly from naiveté. The real truth is that the people voted for those candidates that ran to the center and spoke to their needs. In Virginia, Bob McDonnell – a conservative – ran a centrist campaign, avoided much of the controversy swirling around his own Party, “declined” offers from ultra conservatives to speak on his behalf, and offered solutions to the electorate that made sense to many of them. In the end it got him elected. Hmmm, makes you think doesn’t it? When Republicans field candidates who are inclusive, are likeable, and have real solutions to real problems they do well; when they are beholden to useless ideology, engage in divisive discourse, and are perceived only as obstructionists they do poorly. It’s that simple. If there was a repudiation of anything election night, it was stupidity and the GOP had best pay close attention if it expects to pick up seats in both the House and Senate in next year’s mid-terms.

As for the Democrats, a wakeup call was delivered loud and clear that should be heeded. True the Democrats and Obama inherited this economic mess, but they are now the incumbents, which means they are responsible for it going forward. Bush may have torpedoed the ship, but the passengers want to know how the current officers are going to keep it from foundering. Pulling the economy back from the brink was critical, and probably kept the nation from plunging into a depression, but on Main Street, where unemployment remains at, near, or, in some places, above ten percent, people demand answers. Talking about GDP growth when people don’t have jobs and can’t pay their bills shows a lack of empathy for real suffering, and that translates to election losses. While Republican gains may not be indicative of any paradigm shift in the nation’s political mood, they are indicative of a growing angst within the electorate. The public has a short fuse; hence elected officials are on a short leash. The warning to all incumbents – Democrat and Republican alike - could not be clearer: Shape up or ship out! If you can’t cut the mustard, we’ll find someone who can. In the coming years, Party affiliation will continue to mean less and less and voters will be far more interested in results-oriented candidates who can get the job done, be they Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Vulcan! Loyalty isn’t what it used to be. Jon Corzine found that out the hard way, and ideologues on both sides of the political aisle should pay close attention. The American people want solutions, not rhetoric.