Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Ted Kennedy Wins Re-Election! And other amazing facts about the election!
1. a 51-49 Democratic Senate is insanely cool and far beyond what anyone thought possible. For some delicious proof that conservative pundits have their heads up their asses, check out the National Review's haughty predictions. Seriously. They're delicious.
2. There remains but one New England Republican congressman, Chris Shays of Connecticut--and he probably won only because Joe Lieberman drove so many Connecticut Republicans to the polls in the wealthiest district in the region. There are 22 Democrats representing New England. To see what a truly historical occurrence that is, look at the electoral map of 1936.
3. For the time being, the momentum appears to be pushing the Southern Strategy to its logical conclusion: the Republican Party as a regional party, limited to the South (minus Northern Virginia, South Florida, the NC Research Triangle, SW Texas, Arkansas and a few urban pockets), a few rich suburban districts, racist evangelical-heavy spots in the Midwest, and Southern California.
4. Time to flush them out of Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan. New York State can still stand to shake itself free of one or two more, even though the Republicans hold the smallest percentage of seats here since the New Deal.
5. However, the last time the Democrats won big--1992--the GOP destroyed them two years later, and 2004's talk of a Republican 'perpetual majority' seemed dispiritingly convincing at the time, but look where we are now.
6. Yet in 1933, there were only 25 Republicans in the Senate and 103 in the House, so why not aim high?
7. It's funny when well-paid smart people on tv cover their asses by inferring from the victory of Heath Shuler in rural North Carolina that the entire class of freshman/-woman Democrats are conservatives (some forty people) when only days ago they were being tarred as leftists. But oh no, Jon Tester opposes gun control!
8. Nancy Pelosi's grim visage might have motivated some flagging GOP stalwarts to go out and vote, but no one seems to have stopped to think about what super-secret ultra-lefty agenda she's supposedly be thinking about. Getting troops out of Iraq, halving student loan interest rates, ending earmarks, investigating the Bush Admnistration's googolplex of errata, making health care affordable, responding to climate change, reducing the alternative minimum tax for the middle class, not being corrupt as shit...not much room for the mandatory priest-goat weddings or the abolition of Christianity, really.
9. If nothing else, 2006 is significant because libertarians (whatever that means) left the Republicans for the Democrats in significant numbers. Arizona and Colorado will be blue states by 2012. Most people prefer government to stick up for them against terrorists and predatory corporations, but they prefer that their government treat them as adults when it comes to making personal decisions. I seriously can't believe Arizona voted down the anti-gay marriage amendment. This is the same state with the Minutemen and the Israel-style fence against Mexico. Then again, it was Barry Goldwater who said "You don't need to be straight to shoot straight" (not that I advocate for gay people wanting to be xenocidal myrmidons).
So here, a bold prediction: if the Democrats don't stick together or Lieberman defects and the Senate is lost (good probability of that), and the GOP tastes blood in the water, the Republican 2008 primaries will propel a reliably Bush-like (though comparatively isolationist) conservative to the fore, because I don't think they're going to bet on Giuliani or McCain. (McCain already lost and the GOP hates losers; at some point it's going to come out that Rudy lived with a homo couple after his wife divorced him and kept Gracie Mansion).
So if they repudiate Iraq but essentially stick to what's going on now, and they lose again, we're going to see some serious shit. I think that by 2012--the election-after-next--the evangelical crowd will no longer be driving the party, and, as they did from 1925 till the early 1970s, they will essentially forego politics as a tainted dominion not worth getting tangled up in, especially since the Rapture will be really, really imminent by then.
But yea--the Democrats!
2. There remains but one New England Republican congressman, Chris Shays of Connecticut--and he probably won only because Joe Lieberman drove so many Connecticut Republicans to the polls in the wealthiest district in the region. There are 22 Democrats representing New England. To see what a truly historical occurrence that is, look at the electoral map of 1936.
3. For the time being, the momentum appears to be pushing the Southern Strategy to its logical conclusion: the Republican Party as a regional party, limited to the South (minus Northern Virginia, South Florida, the NC Research Triangle, SW Texas, Arkansas and a few urban pockets), a few rich suburban districts, racist evangelical-heavy spots in the Midwest, and Southern California.
4. Time to flush them out of Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan. New York State can still stand to shake itself free of one or two more, even though the Republicans hold the smallest percentage of seats here since the New Deal.
5. However, the last time the Democrats won big--1992--the GOP destroyed them two years later, and 2004's talk of a Republican 'perpetual majority' seemed dispiritingly convincing at the time, but look where we are now.
6. Yet in 1933, there were only 25 Republicans in the Senate and 103 in the House, so why not aim high?
7. It's funny when well-paid smart people on tv cover their asses by inferring from the victory of Heath Shuler in rural North Carolina that the entire class of freshman/-woman Democrats are conservatives (some forty people) when only days ago they were being tarred as leftists. But oh no, Jon Tester opposes gun control!
8. Nancy Pelosi's grim visage might have motivated some flagging GOP stalwarts to go out and vote, but no one seems to have stopped to think about what super-secret ultra-lefty agenda she's supposedly be thinking about. Getting troops out of Iraq, halving student loan interest rates, ending earmarks, investigating the Bush Admnistration's googolplex of errata, making health care affordable, responding to climate change, reducing the alternative minimum tax for the middle class, not being corrupt as shit...not much room for the mandatory priest-goat weddings or the abolition of Christianity, really.
9. If nothing else, 2006 is significant because libertarians (whatever that means) left the Republicans for the Democrats in significant numbers. Arizona and Colorado will be blue states by 2012. Most people prefer government to stick up for them against terrorists and predatory corporations, but they prefer that their government treat them as adults when it comes to making personal decisions. I seriously can't believe Arizona voted down the anti-gay marriage amendment. This is the same state with the Minutemen and the Israel-style fence against Mexico. Then again, it was Barry Goldwater who said "You don't need to be straight to shoot straight" (not that I advocate for gay people wanting to be xenocidal myrmidons).
So here, a bold prediction: if the Democrats don't stick together or Lieberman defects and the Senate is lost (good probability of that), and the GOP tastes blood in the water, the Republican 2008 primaries will propel a reliably Bush-like (though comparatively isolationist) conservative to the fore, because I don't think they're going to bet on Giuliani or McCain. (McCain already lost and the GOP hates losers; at some point it's going to come out that Rudy lived with a homo couple after his wife divorced him and kept Gracie Mansion).
So if they repudiate Iraq but essentially stick to what's going on now, and they lose again, we're going to see some serious shit. I think that by 2012--the election-after-next--the evangelical crowd will no longer be driving the party, and, as they did from 1925 till the early 1970s, they will essentially forego politics as a tainted dominion not worth getting tangled up in, especially since the Rapture will be really, really imminent by then.
But yea--the Democrats!
