See, I don’t like to see Christine O’Donnell called a maniac. For me, ‘maniac’ has a menacing connotation, as if there is at least a small chance that Ms. O’Donnell will lose her temper and snap my neck. I prefer to stick with milder descriptors like ‘delusional’ or ‘fruitcakey.’ Another bone I have to pick is the idea that just because the Republicans lost otherwise winnable senate races in Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado that it means that we didn’t just elect a bunch of people who are more crazy than Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Ken Buck.
I think we’ll find out that the Senate rules and Rand Paul are completely incompatible. The new senator from Utah, Mike Lee, appears dangerously unhinged. But the real gems will be found in the House. We don’t even know who they are yet, but there are dozens of would-be felons, scoundrels, thieves, and tax-cheats to choose from. The prototype for these politicians is Joe Miller, the Alaskan candidate for Senate. But Joe Miller got a lot more scrutiny than the used-car salesmen, exterminators, and war criminals that are coming to office next week.
We’re still suffering from the fallout of the 1994 elections: witness Sam Brownback becoming the governor of Kansas. We will likewise be suffering the consequences of the 2010 elections when 2026 rolls around. Count on it. The midterms are not a story of a tragedy narrowly averted.
That’s what I can’t wait for. Gingrich’s band of misfits had so many of those that this class is bound to have more.
It’s a tragedy period.
Obama thought he was simply engaged in hard ball Chicago style politics with the Republicans. He never realized that we are in a war with an opposition determined to create a one party state, or if he did, he failed to be an effective general because from day one his strategy has been ill considered and wrong. He will have to pull a Harry Truman out of the hat to win re-election in 2012 unless he’s running against Palin.
JMO
I have a question. How much is it the fault of the people to get out to vote, and how much of it is the Democrats(the President, the House and the Senate) fault for not giving people a good enough reason to vote? Yeah, I know how so much legislation was passed and such, but as I have stated before, how much of it can you run a campaign based on it? How much did the President’s deficit fetish hurt him? After all, regular voters don’t care about it(and to the extent they do .. it’s because of the corporate media and Pete Peterson).
We’re just not that great of a people. We’re not awful. But we’re not especially virtuous either. And we’re undereducated. So, we usually vote for the worse of any two options. We’re silly like that.
I never said she was a maniac.
I said she was a GRIFTER.
haven’t changed my mind about that.
is directly attributable to Barack Obama’s lack of leadership. We wouldn’t have these bozos if Obama had stood up against the “dangerously unhinged” instead of collaborating with them.
In hindsight everyone wishes that the Democrats has “stood up against” — whatever that means in terms of actual action. I’m afraid, however, that it’s way too simple an attribution, in my opinion.
I have a neighbor, an intelligent man, a success, who feels that Obama won in an illegitimate way because he got “the minority vote” to vote for him. This nice man felt it was wrong for a country to be governed by someone who didn’t really have a broad representative sample of voters. Well, I disagree with his facts … but it’s just part of the understand in some quarter, perhaps many quarters, that Obama doesn’t really represent all the people.
From the days of Joe the (non)Plumber through Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and others, there are those who believe that Obama wants to redistribute the wealth … ie., take from White folks and give to those people of color.
They see much of the legislation from that framework.
So you have a Steve King who says that making things right for Black farmers who were screwed by the Dept of Ag — he calls that reparations. Folks see health care as giving something “free” to Blacks and illegal immigrants, etc. And all of this is amplified by Fox and others, by a bad economy, and by latent racial animus.
So what would Obama’s presence of leadership have looked like to you? How do you imagine he could have convinced people that they should choose “bad” (blue dogs) instead of “worse” (tea-partiers)? What would have gotten the Dems out to the polls in the numbers that they did when he was on the ticket? The Republican strategy (party of “no”) was to demoralize the Dems, to force us to watch the sausage-making (and it’s ugly, indeed). It worked. I can’t imagine anything more Obama could have done.
and Independents stayed home for the midterms. The tea party crazies were energized regardless what Obama did. By laying down like a fish on the beach the President chose exactly the best course for a Democratic disaster in 2010 – leave your base home and leave the field open to the other guy.
You seem to be saying that because Obama is black he should lay low and just try to be all things to all people.
He didn’t run on that – he ran on “change”.
Somehow I’m not that concerned. To some degree, no matter what Obama did the opposition was going to make serious gains anyway. The wacko and corporate right showed in 08 they didn’t much care about anything except winning. Actually providing sound government and reasoned leadership meant nothing and still doesn’t.
I think history will show Obama was smart to push through as much as he could as fast as he could, even if it wasn’t nearly perfect because to wait would bring much less.
And I think it will be shown to be fortunate that the GOP won what they did because now they will have to actually do something and be held accountable for the results.
By 2012 the right may seem even more scary and more incompetent to more people than they do now and voters will do what they usually do and that’s make the safer choice for the incumbent president — especially if the economy begins to turn better which is likely.