- It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide
races that were decided last night, but I think it's fair to say that the
results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates
won--in New Jersey's case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent--that
the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing
to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the
progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort back in the 2008 campaign
put Obama in office.
-
- Exit polls showed that many Obama voters sat out this
election in New Jersey and Virginia, with turnout low in both races. In
part that was because of local conditions, of course. In Virginia, Democrat
R. Creigh Deeds ran as a conservative, and was attacked by the Republican
candidate, former state attorney general Robert McDonnell, as a tax-happy
liberal. With liberal voters in Virginia unenthusiastic about Deeds, and
Republicans revved up, the loss was a foregone conclusion, even with Obama
making two visits to campaign for Deeds, and with the national Democratic
Party pumping in $6 million in campaign funding.
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- In New Jersey, incumbent Democrat John Corzine was wildly
unpopular for raising taxes, so that even with Democrats holding an almost
2:1 registration advantage in the state (half of all voters are unaffiliated),
he too had no enthusiastic backing from his former base. No amount of money
poured in by the former Goldman Sachs chief executive could overcome the
negative views of his record as governor.
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- But despite the lackluster candidates in both Virginia
and New Jersey, I think it's safe to say that there was also clear evidence
that the losses, and the margins of the losses-huge in Virginia's case,
and significant in normally safely Democratic New Jersey-provide evidence
that the Obama presidency, and the prevailing Democratic strategy of minimalist
legislative initiatives on health care reform, global warming etc., expanded
and unending war in Afghanistan, support for Wall Street and neglect of
the one-in-five Americans who are unemployed or underemployed, are a political
disaster in the making for Democrats in general and Obama in particular...
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- For the rest of this article, please go to:
- http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
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