Post-Election Thoughts
- Are some people finally going to stop calling it the “Incumbent Protection Act?” Because from where I sit, it looks like it did a piss-poor job of protecting incumbents (or, at least, the ones with R’s by their names…)
- Best comment (so far), from liberal commenter Raven at The Evangelical Outpost:
I wish I could gloat, but the Republicans have basically driven us off a cliff and now, with the car hurtling down toward the rocks, you’ve slid over, handed us the wheel, and said, “OK, you drive.”Let’s see how we do.
But as we move forward, I hope that you finally get it out of your heads that Democrats are bad people. We’re your neighbors, we’re 50 percent of the country. The only difference between us and you is that we want the terrorists to win. Other than that, we’re exactly the same.
- Speaking of evangelicals, what does this say about their influence in American politics? Is it waning? Merely dormant? As Kevin pointed out, they’ve pretty much beat the gay-bashing thing into the ground, and even though it passed most places, it wasn’t by the margins we saw in 2004, and it seems unlikely to last more than a few more years. The stem-cell research initiative passed in Missouri, recently a very pro-life state. Abortion bans went down in flames. My impression is that if not for strong evangelical support, the GOP would have had its ass handed to it even worse.
- Still on the topic of evangelicals, Jeff at The Dawn Treader seems to be taking things surprisingly well. Rather than responding with anger, he did so mostly with introspection. And although I disagree with him about most stuff, I think that can only be a good thing. Sure he uses “liberal” as if it’s a dirty word a couple of times, but after my gloomy/bitter reactions in 2004, I’m more than willing to cut him some slack on that.
- I’m really not sure what’s so horrifying about Speaker Pelosi, but Right Blogistan sure is afraid of her. Yeah, she’s got an incredibly annoying laugh, but she doesn’t break into a sweat just walking up to the lectern, and she doesn’t look like she’s one Extra Value Meal away from an extended hospital stay on the taxpayer dime, as is the case with the outgoing speaker…
- Relax, people, we’re not coming after your guns. And even if we were, we’d never get past the filibuster, never mind the veto. Your hands can stay warm and alive.
- Fiscal responsibility is almost certainly going to mean raising taxes. Get over it. You didn’t think $300+ billion wars were free did you? You didn’t really think the supply-side fairy was going to magically save the day, did you?
- The closest thing to a gloat you’ll get from me: To all those LGF-style righties who kept telling us lefties that if we didn’t like it, we should leave, now’s a good time to take your own advice. Try Russia. They’ve got that whole unitary executive thing you seem to like so much. And you won’t have to worry one bit about those nasty, evil minimum wage laws, labor laws, and environmental protections you despise so much… Moderate Republicans and non-asshole conservatives, please disregard this mesage.
- Even if Planned Parenthood and NARAL had all their wildest dreams come true, you still won’t have to have an abortion if you don’t want one, nor will you have to perform an abortion if you don’t want to.
- While we’re on such subjects, you won’t have to gay marry, either.
- Memo to newly-elected Democrats: Please don’t screw this up.
“Are some people finally going to stop calling it the “Incumbent Protection Act?” ”
No. The difference is that all the ugly ads this time came from either the candidates or their parties. In the past, those ads came from groups like the NRA, NOW, etc. You saw none of that. You saw the version as illustrated by two parties.
“I’m really not sure what’s so horrifying about Speaker Pelosi,”
After things settle down in a few weeks, I’m looking forward to reading the blog about all the non-union businesses that Pelosi and her husband own. That should make some interesting reading from the pro-union crowd.
Uncle:
That still doesn’t even come close to explaining why the new rules necessarily favor incumbents. And although you didn’t see much of it this year, in 2004 many of the ads came from 527s and PACs, which are essentially the same thing as NRA, NOW, etc. So it’s not as if they were prevented from getting their message out there.
So as far as I can tell, “Incumbent Protection Act” is nothing more than a sardonic name with absolutely no substance behind it, given that (A) nothing about the rules necessarily favors the incumbent over the challenger; and (B) the rules didn’t seem to protect incumbents very well at all.
But I suppose as long as it has a nice ring to it, it doesn’t matter whether or not the nickname has any basis at all in fact.
“Memo to newly-elected Democrats: Please don’t screw this up.”
What do they need to do in order not to screw up? What agenda should they persue that would not turn off the people who voted for them? What are the first five things they should try to accomplish? Remember, they won’t be able to live off of “We will do a better job.” The job is theirs.
It’s not so much about what they should do to not screw up. It’s more about what they shouldn’t do. Don’t pursue a vindictive, “Let’s get revenge on the Republicans” agenda. Don’t start doing silly things like aggressively pursuing gun control. That sort of thing.
Iraq is the biggest thing that needs to be fixed, but given that this is still in the hands of the executive, there’s only so much they can do anyway (although they can, at least, demand accountability, and stop rubber-stamping whatever the administration wants to do).
As far as a legislative agenda, I’d have to say that energy independence needs to be very, very high on the list.
” Don’t pursue a vindictive, “Let’s get revenge on the Republicans” agenda. Don’t start doing silly things like aggressively pursuing gun control. That sort of thing.”
That’s good advice. The more the liberal dems can keep their beliefs under wraps, the better they will do with normal people.
Does anyone know of someone who has done a Red/Blue county analysis for 2006? All I can find are from 2004.
Fred:
Don’t have county-by-county (which is really only relevant in a presidential election), but here it is district-by-district (House), which gives the best idea of how the country voted. But even that is skewed, because each district is roughly equal in population, even though their geographic sizes differ widely.
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