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Teddy has a sad.
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Teddy has a sad.
So here we are, the day after: liberals desperately seeking an answer for how they lost Ted Kennedy's seat — to a tea-bagging, waterboard-loving, American Idol-fathering, former Cosmo centerfold, no less — and conservatives touting this as a wholesale national rejection of everything Barack Obama has ever done. And everyone seems to think the health care bill is finished.
The latter first: It's not.
The former is a more complex thing to understand. It's not so simple to say that everyone hates Barack and took it out on Martha Coakley. Nor is it correct, as is permeating its way through the liberal blogosphere, to say that the whole of the blame rests on Coakley's absolutely terrible campaign, though some of it surely does. Special elections are strange things. Special elections, fueled by populist outrage, although often mis- or un-directed but focused on the party of power anyway, in an atmosphere of 10 percent unemployment and a two-year recession, are incredibly strange things that produce strange results.
My guess, to take up the proverbial sports metaphor: It's not so much that the Democrats got outplayed. It's more like they decided to not put their starters on the field until there were two minutes left in the fourth quarter and they were already down by a couple touchdowns.
But we'll need a better answer than that. So, I've asked resident SmartyPants David Faris to dig into the numbers, and come up for an explanation for Scott Brown's inprobable victory. It's set to appear in our Jan. 28 issue (by which time it will be old-ish, but hey, deadline cycles). In the meantime, feel free to prognosticate below.
Oh, and by the way: Brown will be up for re-election in 2012. I've got $20 that says he gets less than 45 percent of the vote. I've got another $20 that says Obama will be re-elected with a larger share of the popular vote than he got in 2008 (that's 53 percent, for the record. Any takers?
- JCB
Scott Brown getting elected in the "bluest of the blue states" involved a) exploitation of all of Obama's failures up to the point (no Olympics, winning the Nobel Prize for doing nothing which is ultimately a failure, "systemic failure" of the homeland security system to catch the Christmas Day Underwear Bomber, failure to treat terrorists as enemy combatants in the Global War on Terror by giving them taxpayer funded legal representation & constitutional rights), b) exploitation of Obama's broken promises on healthcare reform - ie. transparency & all hearings broadcast on CSPAN, letting Nancy Pelosi run the show instead of Obama & his own staffers managing and micro-managing the process and c) electability of Scott Brown who is not an elitist, connects with the common working man, has a beautiful family, and is more moderate on social issues. His nude / semi-nude spread in the 1982 Cosmopolitan magazine no doubt helped also. .....So there you have it - how a republican can win in the bluest of the blue states.
I also don't remember Scott engaging in bash / smear / lie / drive-by politics, which Jeffrey Billman is so good at in his blog posts. Maybe people in the northeast are starting to value integrity and humility again with their politicians.
re: Maybe people in the northeast are starting to value integrity and humility again with their politicians. That's doubtful. They voted in a Republican.
Yeah and let's not forget the Senator who occupied this seat for 46 years was all about integrity and humility. LOL!
re: Yeah and let's not forget the Senator who occupied this seat for 46 years was all about integrity and humility. LOL! You should be laughing at the voters who pulled the Republican lever. Can you believe there are still people that stupid?
After what the Democrats could have accomplished, but didn't, with their power chokehold, those Republican voters actually seem like a Society of Geniuses, Allan.
Sally, Does that mean you accept my wager? :)
I will accept your wager Mr. Billman...because I think Scott knows Massachusetts better than you do.
re: After what the Democrats could have accomplished, but didn't, with their power chokehold, those Republican voters actually seem like a Society of Geniuses, Allan. Only if you don't have a brain.
Mr Smithee: You cite the stupidity of people voting Republican. What about the stupidity of people voting for the same Democrat for 46 years only bacause of his name? Or that in any Philadelphia mayoral election to routinely vote straight Democrat? If that is not stupid I am not sure what is. Is that alright as long as it is not for a Republican? Go back to being angry.
@ Jen re: Go back to being angry. You're confusing me with a teabagger. Are you one of them?
Mr Smithee, Sorry, I am not a teabagger. I simply take issue with your generalizations. You are stirring the pot and coming across as a douchebagger. Very truly yours, Jen
Dear Ms. Jen, re: I simply take issue with your generalizations. You are stirring the pot and coming across as a douchebagger. Why, because I think people who vote Republican are stupid? Take a look at their platform: http://www.gop.com/2008platform/ Sincerely, Allan Smithee
How long until Allan answers a question with the I'm Rubber You're Glue approach?
Mr. Smithee, Love to chat some more but my lunch break is over and I need to get back to work. Copying and pasting from others on this thread or from the GOP platform position is not an indication of great intellect nor will it sway my earlier opinion of your real motive.
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