Well, the polls are closed. Now we wait. Here’s a thread where you can talk about it.
Election day jitters
It’s election day and there’s light snow in New England, but certainly not enough to keep the hardy and the motivated citizens of Massachusetts away from the polls.
Just three short weeks ago I didn’t think Scott Brown had a chance to win this thing. Then I started thinking he might, or that he at least might do well enough to put the scare into the Democrats who are pushing the execrable health care reform bill.
Then the polls started to tighten, and I thought it had become—not just a possibility, but a good possibility that he’d be competitive. Maybe, if there wasn’t a lot of cheating, if the protest voter turnout was good, if the stars aligned just right, he could even (gulp) win.
Now most of the polls have shown Brown as ahead, some by a little and some by a lot. But no one really knows who will turn out today; we’re in uncharted waters. And no one really knows how many votes the Democrats could manufacture, and how willing and able they are to do so.
And so I’m nervous. In some paradoxical way, the recent encouraging polls have made me more nervous, not less. Have they been manipulated to help the Coakley turnout and give Brown voters a false sense of confidence? I think Brown voters are tremendously motivated and Coakley voters much less so, but who knows how this all will go down.
All I know is that by tonight we’ll probably know who won, unless it’s really close.
And then, if the winner just happens to be Brown, the real fun would begin. What do I mean by “fun?” Every piece I’ve read indicates that the Democratic leaders have absolutely no intention of pulling back and heeding the message that the public is trying to send them.
No, apparently it will be full speed ahead with the health care bill; the only question is which one of the many convoluted machinations being considered will be the strategy de jour.
This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”
I’m not sure what form that hard fight will take ((see this for a list of possibilities). But the Brown campaign has made me think that there are an awful lot of foot soldiers on our side (which I like to think of as the people’s side—it’s Obama, Pelosi, & Reid v. The People). This is the sort of thing many of us are worried about:
If Obama were a liberal he would be advancing his agenda in terms of “the possible.” He would give and take with the opposition so as to get the maximum of what he wants while still building national consensus. But he is not a liberal at all. He does not recognize the opposition as “the honorable opposition.”
For him there appears to be no middle. And as I often am reminded, Freud said, “Every exaggeration carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.” But is the Scott Brown election going to be the start of a counter movement or is it the last stand of the opposition that is only going to be crushed by the full force of an Obama offensive.
Sadly, I no longer see any limit on the use of every means Obama and his allies are willing to engage in. SEIU thugs, limitless quasi-bribes to Senators, outright voter fraud, court rulings that ignore fairness and the law for the sake of partisan advancement. I suspect that Congress will ignore its precedents or make ad hoc changes in procedural rules to force passage of their agenda. And I have no faith in the Supreme Court to rule in other than partisan ways.
As I said, I will be nervous today, and fervently hoping that Brown will emerge victorious. A great deal is riding on this; perhaps more than has ridden on any other state election in history.
But whatever the outcome, the groundswell for Brown in a place like Massachusetts has shown how powerful this movement could become. Remember, whatever today’s outcome, this is just the beginning of our fight.
[NOTE: I moved this post to keep it at the top of the page.]
Health care reform: union made
Here’s what the unions stand to get—their money’s worth, if seems—if Obama and the Congressional Democrats have their way with the health care “reform” bill. Never was a piece of legislation given such an Orwellian descriptor.
Obama promised to change the way government does business. And he has, he has—he’s made it even more corrupt, and more obviously so.
[NOTE: The title of this post is a pun on the following song:
Comparisons
Brown is the male Sarah Palin—with a law degree.
Coakley is the female John Kerry—without the charm.
Memo to Barney Frank
House member from Massachusetts Barney Frank says that if Brown is elected, “it’ll kill the health bill.”
Memo to Frank: that’s a feature, not a bug.
Why does Massachusetts have so many independents?
All around the blogosphere I’ve seen variations on the following theme: if Massachusetts is such a deep blue state, why so many independents (close to half of the registered voters) there?
I believe the answer may lie in the rules about voting in the primaries:
In our modified closed primary, Massachusetts has chosen to only allow those who meet the following criteria to vote:
1. You must be registered to vote.
2. You must be enrolled as a Democrat or Republican; OR
3. Are listed as Unenrolled (formerly known as ”˜Independent’)That’s it. If you meet the above criteria, you are eligible to vote in the primary.
Caveat: If you are registered Republican or Democrat, you MUST vote in your party’s primary ”“ only those listed as ”˜Unenrolled’ can choose either a Democratic or Republican ballot. This is how Massachusetts is still referred to as a ”˜closed’ primary. There is no inter-party voting because only unenrolled voters can choose which ballot they want.
People like to be free to cross party lines to influence the primaries, and only by being “unenrolled” can they do this in Massachusetts. Those many “independents” we’re hearing about—51% of the voters—are actually “unenrolled.”
Reflections on the Brown phenomenon: we the people against hypocrisy
The Brown phenomenon continues to surprise.
For example, yesterday I went to Firedoglake, a lberal/lefty blog, and saw a post entitled, “Progressives, please help to defeat Coakley.” Once I recovered from my astonishment, and had finished reading the piece and many of the comments there, I think I understood better what’s going on with this group. They feel betrayed.
They are really really really angry at Obama and the Democrats of the 2008 Congress—every bit as angry as most of the commenters on this blog are. And although the reasons for their anger are almost entirely different, they are not completely different.
These people had believed Obama to be a true “progressive,” and he’s disappointed them. Not only that, but the entire Democratic leadership has angered them by being so tight with lobbyists, Wall Street, pharmacy companies, and other entities the commenters thought the Democrats should be fighting against. They think that if Martha Coakley became a senator she would just become part of the gang they would like to disown. And they believe that, if they help to defeat the Democratic Party as they know it (and have come to hate it), the party is likely to implode. Afterward, a new party will rise from the ashes, purged of double-crossers and run by true progressives.
It’s not a goal I share. But do I agree with their outraged perception of the base hypocrisy of those who are in charge right now. That’s one idea on which left and right can unite.
Read the comments to get a flavor of what I’m talking about. Over and over, there are remarks to the effect that the Democratic Party has abandoned its core values, principles, and constituents, and that it desperately needs to be sent a message. These people feel used, and they were. Many of them had an idealistic belief in what the Party intended to do. They had felt ecstatic just one short year ago, when they were on top of the world. Now they’ve come to earth with a crashing thud, and they don’t like it one little bit.
Something is stirring in the land. A goodly part of the motivation on both sides is outrage at the hypocrisy of our elected officials, and the ignoring of the people’s voice and the people’s wishes. Almost no one, whether on left or right, voted for their candidates in order for them to design a bill as bad as the current health care reform legislation now appears to be. It offends both left and right, while satisfying neither.
Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have managed to profoundly betray the majority of the American people in one short year. It’s quite a feat.
How to defy the aging process
How? Be Sophia Loren.
The lady is 75 years old, and she’d be looking good even for fifty. Actually, she’d be looking good even for forty. There’s no super-taut, fake, worked-on look, either.
Here Loren was at last night’s Golden Globe Awards:
And here are a whole bunch more images, including closeups of her face. Take special note of her upraised arm; no flabby saggy triceps, even at 75? The mind boggles. Her skin must be made of different stuff than the normal human’s.
Of course, Loren began with a head start. In her youth, she looked like this:
And the rest of us didn’t.
[NOTE: Here’s a previous post featuring Loren. And here I take note of the facial resemblance between Sarah Palin and Sophia.]
WaPo writer E.J. Dionne…
…is taught a few lessons by his commenters, nearly all of whom have a great deal more sense than he does.
Dionne still thinks it’s all about “the narrative.” His commenters think it’s actually about the poor decisions made by President Obama and this Congress.
Here’s a good one, and quite typical (by “Letscheck,” at 2:11 AM on January 18):
Smoke and mirrors have been blown away. What is going on in Obama World has been apparent to many for years. Every single day, more people wake up to the reality of who Obama is and what he is doing to this country.
Lies piled upon lies just won’t do it any more. No one believes them.
Blaming others night and day won’t cover up the people who are actually responsible for this terrible turn in our country and the fact that it is being driven forward by this Obama Administration and this Congress.
Attacking business, organizations, people, and news stations to get the focus off of what goes on in Washington is no longer effective. The bag of tricks is out in the open and we don’t like it at all…
Democrats are running from their own party. I suspect most Obama voters are as embarrassed by the result of their vote as I was when I believed Jon Cozine’s lies, and voted for him for NJ Governor. That was over four years ago and I still smart from the revelations of the true Corzine a month into his Governorship.
Corzine was the Obama canary test. He flew so they threw in Obama. Too bad they didn’t pick up on how NJ felt about Cozine after he was voted in. If the Dems had, then they would have foreseen that Obama would end up in the same place.
Government leaders need to be adults.
For all of the blame the childish Dems place on Bush, it would seem that he was the adult and they are the spoiled kids who wanted to take over the house because they thought they knew better.
Give this guy Dionne’s job!
And here’s “radical centrist,” at 2:30 AM on January 18:
Dionne is not just drinking the Kool Aid. He’s passing it out. Keep it up and the Democratic Party will have committed suicide. It will lose 10 more Senate seats in November, not just four or five.
We all know the financial crisis and recession began on Bush’s watch. But we also know that Obama has done next to nothing to stimulate renewed growth and prosperity. We know the “stimulus package” was a Christmas tree of gifts to favored Democratic constituencies and not a carefully targeted jobs-generating program — at a cost of nearly $800 billion. We know that GM bailout was a gift to the UAW and Michigan pols. And we know that more than half of Obama’s time has been consumed by the obsession to pass a monstrosity of a health care bill that will gut Medicare and raise premiums and taxes while handing out more gifts to everyone from Big Pharma to hold-out Senators — at a cost of trillions (and we’re not so stupid as to believe the phony 10-year accounting gimmicks).
So don’t condescend to us out here, Dionne. We’re not punishing Obama for Bush’s sins. We’re punishing him for his phony unkept campaign promises, non-stop bull @#$%& and horrendous health care “reform.”
You’d better “get it” well before next November or there are going to be a lot more “unexpected” losses.
You can feel the heat rising from the computer. These people get it; Dionne does not.
Skin lighteners bring risks
Yeah, but it’s all Harry Reid’s fault.
Coakley campaign’s calumny
In the heat of a campaign, politicians often shade the truth or at least partially misrepresent their opponents’ positions. But for height, depth, breadth, and pure poisonous brazenness of lie, the Coakley campaign’s latest is hard to equal.
The Washington Post reports on the story:
Republican Scott Brown charged Saturday that a Democratic mailing against his U.S. Senate campaign violates a Massachusetts law prohibiting false statements against a political candidate.
The cover of a four-page mailer sent by the Massachusetts Democratic Party says, “1,736 women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away.”
Brown is a state senator, and in 2005 he filed an amendment that would have allowed workers at religious hospitals or with firmly held religious beliefs to avoid giving emergency contraception to rape victims. The amendment failed, and Brown voted in favor of a bill allowing the contraception. He also voted to override a veto issued by his fellow Republican, then-Gov. Mitt Romney.
A section of the Massachusetts General Laws prohibits false statements against political candidates that are designed or tend “to aid or to injure or defeat such candidate,” with a penalty of to $1,000 fine and up to six months in prison.
Unfortunately, that sort of sentence is a mere slap on the wrist when the stakes are so high.
So far, Coakley has been mum on the subject of the ad and the suit. What’s more, an earlier advertisement that bore her official stamp of approval made similar false assertions about Brown’s record.
The Democrat Party operatives who sent out these mendacious flyers timed them well: early enough so that the lies could do their dirty work before Tuesday’s election, but not so early that Brown’s camp would have enough time to successfully challenge them before that date.
And in the event of any such challenge, Legal Insurrection blogger and Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson wonders whether, as AG of Massachusetts, Coakley would be responsible under the statute for prosecuting such a case against—her own campaign.
If so, I think she’s fully prepared. After all, the Boston Globe (which couldn’t find room yesterday to talk about the lying anti-Brown rape ad) yesterday quoted Coakley as being ready and eager to fight back against the misrepresentation of a candidate’s record—as long as that candidate is Coakley, that is:
When I am attacked, or my record is attacked, or my record is misrepresented, I’m going to fight back. We are going to make every effort to make sure that people know what the real differences are between me and Scott Brown so they can make a real choice on Jan. 19.
Martha, I think people already know the differences.
Can Kirk vote in the Senate until the Brown/Coakley winner is certified?
Fred Barnes attempts to answer the question of what whether it would be legal for Massachusetts Democrats to make good on their pledge to delay Brown’s certification if he wins Tuesday’s Senate race, in order to allow previously-appointed senator Paul Kirk to be the 60th vote for cloture in the health care reform bill fight:
But based on Massachusetts law, Senate precedent, and the U.S. Constitution, Republican attorneys said Kirk will no longer be a senator after election day, period. Brown meets the age, citizenship, and residency requirements in the Constitution to qualify for the Senate. “Qualification” does not require state “certification,” the lawyers said.
Yes, but we can safely say that Democratic attorneys are most likely saying the opposite. Funny how that works. And the Senate precedents cited in Barnes’s piece—that in previous cases involving back pay for senators, their term was deemed to have begun on the day of election—don’t really address the question of voting rights. For that, we appear to have no precedent at all.
The hypothetical situation is quite different from the recent Franken/Coleman election in Minnesota. That was a very close and contested election. Of course, Brown/Coakley may end up that way, as well, but Massachusetts Democrats are talking about the much more controversial question of delaying Brown’s seating in the event of a victory that is neither contested nor close, merely for the purpose of canceling the will of the people in their own state (and around the nation) and allowing health care reform to pass.
There is no precedent for that in American history, as far as I know, although we see it in various shakier republics and dictatorships.
In the Minnesota case, no one was allowed to vote until the contested election was settled. And Coleman was the previously elected senator from Minnesota. Kirk was only appointed to fill the seat by the governor of Massachusetts, the hated Obama-clone Deval Patrick. This would be a naked usurption of power by the Democrat Party that is transparently obvious.
Would they do it? We may not have a chance to find out; Coakley could win the election, and then the question would be moot. Tellingly, the Massachusetts Democrats are not speaking of delaying her certification, and my guess is that even if she’s only one vote ahead at the end of the day and there are absentee ballots still to be counted, they will be whisking her down to Washington for her swearing-in (although if they somehow decided to let Kirk stay in the Senate a while, the outcome would be the same—a vote for cloture).
But if Brown wins, and even if his lead is large and definitive, we may see a legislative power grab by the Democrats unprecedented in our lifetime, or perhaps in American history (any experts here to offer some parallels?).
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