Governor Dean's strategy of fighting in every district of every state is number one! Even though the Dems have yet to try it...
Returns starting to come in in California; Secretary of State's election results web site is crashing, but there are others (I am checking the San Francisco Chronicle site). It's not likely to be a clean sweep of state-level offices for the Dems, but augurs to come close. Ditto for several very important propositions.
How Meg Whitman burned up more than $160,000,000 (and contrasts with Jerry Brown):
I treated myself to a bag of popcorn for election results watching. Haven't had any for a long time. Yum!
The Field Poll (which is usually very dependable) estimates that for the first time in a California general election more than half of voters (55%) will vote by mail, but the overall percentage turnout will not be exceptional. Many people who requested mail ballots are expected to turn them in (oops--to HAVE TURNED them in) at polling stations today. Kind of defeats the purpose, but maybe some folks can't let go of the concept of going to the polling station. My bosses voted on Saturday on account of being out of town today, and said the polling station was REALLY crowded.
Real cliff-hanger here in Illinois. With 96% of precincts reporting, Gov. Quinn's lead is down to 6,000 votes (our of more than 3.3 million cast).
Looks like Republican Mark Kirk is going to win a squeeker. He's leading 48% to 46% -- again with 96% of the precincts reporting. If you add the Green votes to Giannoulias, that would put him in the lead -- until you add the Libertarian votes to Kirk.
Looks like we lost Bill Foster in IL-14. As far as I know, that leaves us without a single scientist in Congress.
Looks like it's going to take forever for the last votes to come in, so I'm heading for bed. At the moment Quinn's lead is 10,014 votes. I'll find out the results tomorrow.
Peter Welch got 65% of the vote. Pat Leahy got 64% of the vote. The Governor's race is a cliffhanger, but it looks like Peter Shumlin will squeak out a Dem victory. Our House is now 64% Dem and our Senate is 73% Dem. We might actually get stuff done again!
Yawning and my eyes are watering. Ha! Must sleep! ♥
in California it looks like a Democratic sweep of state offices, although Attorney General is close. Prop 19 (marijuana legalization & taxation--probably the most interesting proposition) is up in smoke. The simple legislative vote to pass a budget won big--that gives the Dems clearcut control of the legislature, something no party has had in decades, and will make it possible to get things done. Extension of the anti-gerrymandering system to US House electoral districts also won big, which is a vote for democracy as I see it, although the changes probably won't be great. Existing air pollution law kept in place. Several votes for stinginess.
I should point out that Gov. Schwartzenegger was one of the principal moving forces in both anti-gerrymandering and anti-pollution movements. Odd note--the only county in the state that voted for continued gerrymandering of House districts was San Francisco. Guess they followed the Democratic Party line.
Republican candidate Brian Dubie concedes to Democrat candidate Peter Shumlin http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101103/NEWS02/101103024/Dubie-concedes-to-Shumlin-in-Vermont-governor-s-race
Republican candidate Brian Dubie concedes to Democratic candidate Peter Shumlin http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101103/NEWS02/101103024/Dubie-concedes-to-Shumlin-in-Vermont-governor-s-race
Wierd. As I was posting a response on Prairie State Blue, Internet Explorer suddenly switched to showing things much, much smaller. Unreadably small unless I crank up the magnification. This affects all sites but only IE and persisted after I restarted the computer.
Election update: With 99% of the vote in, Quinn's lead is slightly over 8,000 votes. We may see a recount (which is unlikely to change anything). Which would be ironic because Brady's primary victory also went to a recount.
Republicans took the two open state offices, but the three Democratic incumbents won big. Not too much of a surprise the Judy Barr Topinka took Comptroller, since she had a big advantage in name recognition -- former State Treasurer and GOP gubernatorial candidate four years ago.
Glad for you, listener. Also glad, that this rePublican revolution did not approach the mess in 1994. Shows *some* good sense on the part of the voters.
Cold, dreary day here. Fits my mood perfectly, lol!
Votes still dribbling in. Quinn's lead is now up to almost 9800. And with probably no more than 30,000 votes left to be counted, Brady would need to take 2/3 to pull ahead. Not to mention that most of the missing votes appear to be from Cook County (Chicago and near suburbs), although what part of Cook County could make a difference. (Many of the suburbs are heavily Democratic, but some are the reverse.)
Figured out the display wierdness in IE. I had had the zoom set to 200%. Somehow it get reset to 100%. Reset to 200% and everything is fine.
Yahoo is still showing the Illinois governor's race as undecided, but with 100% of the votes supposedly in Quinn's lead is more than 16,000. Unlesss a recount somehow changes things, which would be unexpected given how Illinois counts its votes, and barring successful vote challenges of some sort, Quinn is in.
As expected, President Obama plans to build consensus and work only on those areas that everyone agrees on. I fear he still does not realise that the Republicans not only have no interest whatsoever in agreeing with anyone else on anything, they will now dig in their heels on everything because if they can stonewall for 2 more years they might get a new President they can run with (and ruin everything with). =Sigh=
No, he doesn't even begin to get it. It's as if it's just completely beyond his comprehension. Now with many of the pundits telling him this thrashing means he must "move to the middle" he's only going to make things worse.
Some may have called Clinton "the first black President", but Obama is the first "Republican in a Democratic mask President". He's an utter and abject failure and he threw away every advantage our votes gave him in 2008.
The Corporate Republicans swept every statewide office in Ohio, from Governor on down. We've only had two years of "D" rule after 16 years of "R" rule.
Bill, glad you got IE sorted out. From your description, I suspected a problem with the zoom and was preparing to suggest you look at it when I saw that you'd resolved the problem.
My governor and congresscritter won, thank God! Neal is solid and dependable, if unexciting. But, where congresscritters are concerned, I'd rather have solid and dependable than exciting. He usually runs unopposed. I was shocked and rather amused to find there was a Republican running against him this time. It's no skin off my nose if some Republican idiot wants to waste his money running against Richie Neal.
To hear the talk on The News Hour, one would think this was 1994 all over again. Extremely scary.
They are so bloody stupid! Howard got the Democratic Party together, instituted and implemented the Fifty state Strategy and set things back on the right road. So, what do the morons do as soon as he's out of the chairmanship? They go right back to the same slipshod, lackadaisical, uninterested, self-destructive ways that got us Dubya, and then they wonder why they can't win elections. It's almost enough to make a person leave the Democratic Party. If Howard weren't still a member, giving me some faint hope, I'd walk.
My take is that he does realize this. But he has to make the gesture to convince voters it is the Republicans who are responsible for the now inevitable gridlock. After which, like Truman, he can run against the "do-nothing" Congress.
Cat wrote: " I was shocked and rather amused to find there was a Republican running against him this time. It's no skin off my nose if some Republican idiot wants to waste his money running against Richie Neal."
And who was it said, "We have to contest every race?" Applies to the Republicans, too.
I can't speak for the DNC. Didn't hear much from them. But certainly Organizing for America was doing everything possible to get us out there contributing and making phone calls and pounding the pavement to get out Democratic voters.
A few days before the election I got an e-mail from Al Franken talking about donor fatigue and how we needed to step up to fill the gap. Unfortunately, by then, I was quite fatigued myself. I can't begin to count the number of candidates I contributed to at the urging of DFA, OFA, CLW, and others. Before I headed out pounding the pavement with the local party, OFA, and the comvined Illinois campaigns.
I'm sorry, but the descriptioin in your final paragraph simply bears no relationship to the world I live in.
Bill, if you're talking about Cat's final paragraph I have to tell you I agree with her 100%. Yes, *you* did all you could and kudos to you, but Obama and the Democrats did not. And now Obama will give us even more pandering to the right wing, hard as it is to believe he could pander any harder than he already has. His weakness and cowardice, his kowtowing to the right and the banks and the corporations brought us to this pass. He OWNS this failure, and if Rahm the Rat Emanuel hadn't jumped ship before the crash into the iceberg he'd be getting his own richly-deserved share of the blame.
Nope. Not that unhappy with this President. We've got healthcare, after 100 years of trying. We got equal pay for equal work, after 200 years of trying. We've got green initiatives that just about killed Manchin's run. You don't honestly think that the rePublicans would have pulled out the really BIG GUNS that they did for this election if we hadn't been hurting them and their cronies? *THIS* is what lyin Joe Wilson wants:
"The first thing I want to do is work with the new conservative majority to pass the tax cuts," Wilson said. "We must continue the tax cuts so we can create jobs. The whole issue should be working on creating jobs, again supporting the military, but simultaneously my efforts would be to cut taxes, grow jobs, create economic opportunity and begin the process to repeal Obamacare. That's a job killer. It's going to be an indebtedness to the young people of America. It will be bankrupting. So we have got to repeal Obamacare for the young people of our country and for the senior citizens."
I like President Obama in much the same way I liked Jimmy Carter. I think they are both totally decent people who are true statesmen. And I suspect that when Obama's presidency is done he will continue do good things for the world as Carter has done. The one place they differ is that Carter thought he could govern without getting consensus (and he couldn't) and Obama thinks he must have consensus (which he does not always need). Too bad we couldn't shake the two of them up in a bag. Yanno?
I like President Obama in much the same way I liked President Carter. I think they are both totally decent people who are true statesmen. And I suspect that when Obama's presidency is done he will continue do good things for the world as Carter has done. The one place they differ is that Carter thought he could govern without getting consensus (and he couldn't) and Obama thinks he must have consensus (which he does not always need). Too bad we couldn't shake the two of them up in a bag. Yanno?
Governor Dean's strategy of fighting in every district of every state is number one! Even though the Dems have yet to try it...
ReplyDeleteReturns starting to come in in California; Secretary of State's election results web site is crashing, but there are others (I am checking the San Francisco Chronicle site). It's not likely to be a clean sweep of state-level offices for the Dems, but augurs to come close. Ditto for several very important propositions.
How Meg Whitman burned up more than $160,000,000 (and contrasts with Jerry Brown):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=76126&tsp=1
I treated myself to a bag of popcorn for election results watching. Haven't had any for a long time. Yum!
The Field Poll (which is usually very dependable) estimates that for the first time in a California general election more than half of voters (55%) will vote by mail, but the overall percentage turnout will not be exceptional. Many people who requested mail ballots are expected to turn them in (oops--to HAVE TURNED them in) at polling stations today. Kind of defeats the purpose, but maybe some folks can't let go of the concept of going to the polling station. My bosses voted on Saturday on account of being out of town today, and said the polling station was REALLY crowded.
More later...
Real cliff-hanger here in Illinois. With 96% of precincts reporting, Gov. Quinn's lead is down to 6,000 votes (our of more than 3.3 million cast).
ReplyDeleteLooks like Republican Mark Kirk is going to win a squeeker. He's leading 48% to 46% -- again with 96% of the precincts reporting. If you add the Green votes to Giannoulias, that would put him in the lead -- until you add the Libertarian votes to Kirk.
Looks like we lost Bill Foster in IL-14. As far as I know, that leaves us without a single scientist in Congress.
Yahoo has now called the Senate race for Kirk. With 98% of the vote in, that 2 percentage-point lead is insurmountable.
ReplyDeleteQuinn's lead has "ballooned" to 11,000 votes in 97% of the precincts in.
Votes trickling in a few thousand at a time without really affecting Quinn's margin. Still abouit 3% of the precincts out.
ReplyDeleteMa hunny's guy, in VA, won by about 500 votes (out of 220,000). Wouldn't be surprised at a recount.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it's going to take forever for the last votes to come in, so I'm heading for bed. At the moment Quinn's lead is 10,014 votes. I'll find out the results tomorrow.
ReplyDelete'Night all.
US Senate, Boxer vs. Fiorina, has tightened up--but only 24% of votes counted so far.
ReplyDeleteNYT called Nevada for Reid. With about half the votes counted, he's leading by 5%. I'm out of here.
ReplyDeletePeter Welch got 65% of the vote. Pat Leahy got 64% of the vote. The Governor's race is a cliffhanger, but it looks like Peter Shumlin will squeak out a Dem victory. Our House is now 64% Dem and our Senate is 73% Dem. We might actually get stuff done again!
ReplyDeleteYawning and my eyes are watering. Ha! Must sleep! ♥
in California it looks like a Democratic sweep of state offices, although Attorney General is close. Prop 19 (marijuana legalization & taxation--probably the most interesting proposition) is up in smoke. The simple legislative vote to pass a budget won big--that gives the Dems clearcut control of the legislature, something no party has had in decades, and will make it possible to get things done. Extension of the anti-gerrymandering system to US House electoral districts also won big, which is a vote for democracy as I see it, although the changes probably won't be great. Existing air pollution law kept in place. Several votes for stinginess.
ReplyDeleteI should point out that Gov. Schwartzenegger was one of the principal moving forces in both anti-gerrymandering and anti-pollution movements. Odd note--the only county in the state that voted for continued gerrymandering of House districts was San Francisco. Guess they followed the Democratic Party line.
ReplyDeleteRepublican candidate Brian Dubie concedes to Democrat candidate Peter Shumlin
ReplyDeletehttp://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101103/NEWS02/101103024/Dubie-concedes-to-Shumlin-in-Vermont-governor-s-race
Vermont: America's Oasis (you're all invited)
Republican candidate Brian Dubie concedes to Democratic candidate Peter Shumlin
ReplyDeletehttp://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20101103/NEWS02/101103024/Dubie-concedes-to-Shumlin-in-Vermont-governor-s-race
Vermont: America's Oasis (you're all invited)
Wierd. As I was posting a response on Prairie State Blue, Internet Explorer suddenly switched to showing things much, much smaller. Unreadably small unless I crank up the magnification. This affects all sites but only IE and persisted after I restarted the computer.
ReplyDeleteElection update: With 99% of the vote in, Quinn's lead is slightly over 8,000 votes. We may see a recount (which is unlikely to change anything). Which would be ironic because Brady's primary victory also went to a recount.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans took the two open state offices, but the three Democratic incumbents won big. Not too much of a surprise the Judy Barr Topinka took Comptroller, since she had a big advantage in name recognition -- former State Treasurer and GOP gubernatorial candidate four years ago.
Glad for you, listener. Also glad, that this rePublican revolution did not approach the mess in 1994. Shows *some* good sense on the part of the voters.
ReplyDeleteCold, dreary day here. Fits my mood perfectly, lol!
Votes still dribbling in. Quinn's lead is now up to almost 9800. And with probably no more than 30,000 votes left to be counted, Brady would need to take 2/3 to pull ahead. Not to mention that most of the missing votes appear to be from Cook County (Chicago and near suburbs), although what part of Cook County could make a difference. (Many of the suburbs are heavily Democratic, but some are the reverse.)
ReplyDeleteFigured out the display wierdness in IE. I had had the zoom set to 200%. Somehow it get reset to 100%. Reset to 200% and everything is fine.
ReplyDeleteYahoo is still showing the Illinois governor's race as undecided, but with 100% of the votes supposedly in Quinn's lead is more than 16,000. Unlesss a recount somehow changes things, which would be unexpected given how Illinois counts its votes, and barring successful vote challenges of some sort, Quinn is in.
As expected, President Obama plans to build consensus and work only on those areas that everyone agrees on. I fear he still does not realise that the Republicans not only have no interest whatsoever in agreeing with anyone else on anything, they will now dig in their heels on everything because if they can stonewall for 2 more years they might get a new President they can run with (and ruin everything with). =Sigh=
ReplyDeleteNo, he doesn't even begin to get it. It's as if it's just completely beyond his comprehension. Now with many of the pundits telling him this thrashing means he must "move to the middle" he's only going to make things worse.
ReplyDeleteSome may have called Clinton "the first black President", but Obama is the first "Republican in a Democratic mask President". He's an utter and abject failure and he threw away every advantage our votes gave him in 2008.
The Corporate Republicans swept every statewide office in Ohio, from Governor on down. We've only had two years of "D" rule after 16 years of "R" rule.
We are doomed.
Bill, glad you got IE sorted out. From your description, I suspected a problem with the zoom and was preparing to suggest you look at it when I saw that you'd resolved the problem.
ReplyDeletePredicting snow tomorrow. So ends Indian Summer. . . .
ReplyDeleteHelen's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
ReplyDeletehttp://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/
My governor and congresscritter won, thank God! Neal is solid and dependable, if unexciting. But, where congresscritters are concerned, I'd rather have solid and dependable than exciting. He usually runs unopposed. I was shocked and rather amused to find there was a Republican running against him this time. It's no skin off my nose if some Republican idiot wants to waste his money running against Richie Neal.
ReplyDeleteTo hear the talk on The News Hour, one would think this was 1994 all over again. Extremely scary.
They are so bloody stupid! Howard got the Democratic Party together, instituted and implemented the Fifty state Strategy and set things back on the right road. So, what do the morons do as soon as he's out of the chairmanship? They go right back to the same slipshod, lackadaisical, uninterested, self-destructive ways that got us Dubya, and then they wonder why they can't win elections. It's almost enough to make a person leave the Democratic Party. If Howard weren't still a member, giving me some faint hope, I'd walk.
I hope Howard runs in 2012!!!
ReplyDeleteBTW listener, another lovely pic, though I bet that water is COLD! BRRR!!!
ReplyDeleteMy take is that he does realize this. But he has to make the gesture to convince voters it is the Republicans who are responsible for the now inevitable gridlock. After which, like Truman, he can run against the "do-nothing" Congress.
ReplyDeleteCat wrote: " I was shocked and rather amused to find there was a Republican running against him this time. It's no skin off my nose if some Republican idiot wants to waste his money running against Richie Neal."
ReplyDeleteAnd who was it said, "We have to contest every race?" Applies to the Republicans, too.
I can't speak for the DNC. Didn't hear much from them. But certainly Organizing for America was doing everything possible to get us out there contributing and making phone calls and pounding the pavement to get out Democratic voters.
ReplyDeleteA few days before the election I got an e-mail from Al Franken talking about donor fatigue and how we needed to step up to fill the gap. Unfortunately, by then, I was quite fatigued myself. I can't begin to count the number of candidates I contributed to at the urging of DFA, OFA, CLW, and others. Before I headed out pounding the pavement with the local party, OFA, and the comvined Illinois campaigns.
I'm sorry, but the descriptioin in your final paragraph simply bears no relationship to the world I live in.
Bill, if you're talking about Cat's final paragraph I have to tell you I agree with her 100%. Yes, *you* did all you could and kudos to you, but Obama and the Democrats did not. And now Obama will give us even more pandering to the right wing, hard as it is to believe he could pander any harder than he already has. His weakness and cowardice, his kowtowing to the right and the banks and the corporations brought us to this pass. He OWNS this failure, and if Rahm the Rat Emanuel hadn't jumped ship before the crash into the iceberg he'd be getting his own richly-deserved share of the blame.
ReplyDeleteNope. Not that unhappy with this President. We've got healthcare, after 100 years of trying. We got equal pay for equal work, after 200 years of trying. We've got green initiatives that just about killed Manchin's run. You don't honestly think that the rePublicans would have pulled out the really BIG GUNS that they did for this election if we hadn't been hurting them and their cronies? *THIS* is what lyin Joe Wilson wants:
ReplyDelete"The first thing I want to do is work with the new conservative majority to pass the tax cuts," Wilson said. "We must continue the tax cuts so we can create jobs. The whole issue should be working on creating jobs, again supporting the military, but simultaneously my efforts would be to cut taxes, grow jobs, create economic opportunity and begin the process to repeal Obamacare. That's a job killer. It's going to be an indebtedness to the young people of America. It will be bankrupting. So we have got to repeal Obamacare for the young people of our country and for the senior citizens."
http://www.dailygamecock.com/news/joe-wilson-victorious-1.1742660
Everything in Obama's history, dating back to at least Harvard sez *this* is the way he sees life. I'm going to honor that.
Well, I AM that unhappy with this President and I'll never vote for him again.
ReplyDeleteI like President Obama in much the same way I liked Jimmy Carter.
ReplyDeleteI think they are both totally decent people who are true statesmen.
And I suspect that when Obama's presidency is done he will continue do good things for the world as Carter has done.
The one place they differ is that Carter thought he could govern without getting consensus (and he couldn't) and Obama thinks he must have consensus (which he does not always need).
Too bad we couldn't shake the two of them up in a bag. Yanno?
I like President Obama in much the same way I liked President Carter.
ReplyDeleteI think they are both totally decent people who are true statesmen.
And I suspect that when Obama's presidency is done he will continue do good things for the world as Carter has done.
The one place they differ is that Carter thought he could govern without getting consensus (and he couldn't) and Obama thinks he must have consensus (which he does not always need).
Too bad we couldn't shake the two of them up in a bag. Yanno?