Other than winning the presidential election by the biggest possible margin, I have a few other things on my wish list. I obviously want to win every Senate race (with the exception of Tennessee). But I also would love it if Paul Ryan lost his House seat. I’d like to Steve King of Iowa and Michele Bachmann and Allen West lose their seats and go away. If Eric Cantor loses, I will do a happy dance. All of these things are possible, although Allen West is the only one who looks likely to lose at the moment. What’s on your wish list?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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My wish is to understand what the judge ruled in the Penn ID bill. Voters do or do not have to produce a valid ID within 6 days of the election? What does the decision mean for voters?
It’s decided:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/02/1138775/-Pennsylvania-judge-halts-voter-ID-nbsp-requirement
?showAll=yes
As I read it, the procedure will be the same in the general election as it was in the primary. Election workers can ask you for ID, but voters that do not have it will still be able to vote a regular ballot and not a provisional. Election workers can tell you that you will need ID for the next election.
I want Sue Thorn to beat McKinley in WV.
And, of course, for the entire republican party and its enabling media to collapse into an ash heap on the ash heap of history, and a sensible conservative party to arise from the ashes.
I only want 2 things: the Senate and the House.
AND a pony.
What color pony?
I believe, in contrast to ponies, unicorns are self-maintaining. Of course Janicket could take care of all our ponies
I want the House back and the Senate still in Dem control, with the filibuster defanged, and ponies for everyone!
Self-mucking ponies, please — I have more than enough cleaning up to do for my own, let alone thundering herds of new Blue ponies, thankyouverymuch.
Appabluesa ponies, all dappled and spotted
Here ya go!
Madam Speaker Of The House Nancy Pelosi, of course.
Exactly. She’s outstanding, and I want her back.
I wish to see you do your ‘happy dance.’
All the Senate races. take back the House and a dappled unicorn
If anyone can find a copy of the actual PA judges opinion on the ID law, I’ll do english translate.
I haven’t been able to find one.
Here you go:
http://media.philly.com/documents/CMWSuppDetAppPrelInjOrder_100212.pdf
I’m on it.
I’ll publish it on my blog, here and in the Cafe when I’m finished.
My wish list is that the trends we are seeing now continue through November – oh, and that the vote counts are very close to the actual votes.
The trend now is quite amazing. It is hard to believe that just 6 or 7 short years ago the left was so frustrated at the political planning and amazing message discipline of the GOP. Do you remember those days? Every day was a choreographed line of GOP spokespeople saying the same stuff. And the planning – Rove was talking to the NY Times in December 2003 about how they had stuff on all of the leading Demcratic presidential contenders and that they’d release it in August – and that they did.
Hell, they were so coordinated that they didn’t even have to spend any real money on the Swift Boat ads – they said they were going to and got all the news channels to play them far more often than they were run as paid advertisements.
Today the national GOP is pure chaos and it appears to be Obama’s team that is leaking a series of September and October surprises. Everything appears – as it was with Rove – planned out months or even a year or two in advance. Such as laying the foundation with months of attacks on Bain to seed doubts about Romney – and then only when people were prepared to believe the worst are they bringing up the GOP policies on Medicare, taxes, and Social Security. I am really looking forward to seeing what new stuff will come out the next few weeks.
By contrast 4 years ago we laughed about McCain had a new strategy every day in the last two months of the campaign – now we see that is a universal GOP characteristic. Now their “October Surprise” is Libya – which they are trying to sell as worse than Watergate. No, it’s an edited-out-of-context Obama video from 1998. No, it’s something else.
I just hope this continues for 5 more weeks. If it does the Dems will have both houses and the Presidency again – and this time perhaps the guts to revise the filibuster rule so that they can actually do something with their majorities.
I would like to think that the trends that you are describing are at least partly attributable to the rise of blogs, fact checkers, and the general availability of information. By and large I think people are more savvy political consumers than they used to be. Not everyone is there of course, but a growing segment of the population seems to be. That coupled with the Obama campaign, whose team has used this new media extremely well, is something that the GOP is having a lot of trouble combating because their current model depends largely on an uninformed constituency.
Around the time that the Repub idea that “we create our own reality” appeared in a NYTimes magazine article (iirc) someone wrote an oped in the NYTimes pointing out that “there is a reality” and it will push back, and the illusion of “creating our own reality” can only go so far. That’s what’s played out; progressive policies are based in the reality, GOP, in the Rove period, not so. Some years back, in the midst of Bush Jr., a family friend, pol sci prof in a red state area talked at a family event about the problem of teaching poll sci to white working class students who vote against their own interests. Just an example of one person putting in a lot of work that seemed thankless at the time, but that work is bearing fruit. It’s been an education process also via hard knocks. Also, reading today about how James Carter IV tracked down the 47% video. He really did the work to bring the entire tape to David Corn (not linking cause it’s huffpo). It wasn’t magic it was lots of work. anyway, my 2 cents.
The tea party is tearing the GOP apart internally and meanwhile the Dems have the most disciplined campaign team in quite a while for the top of the ticket. Add an amazing ground game based in good measure on the practice of community organizing and we’re the strong ones.
I’m curious about what happens after Obama however. Have other Dems really understood what made the Obama campaign team a success? Will Dems continue OFA in some form or find a way to continue the strong GOTV efforts?
And the Repubs had ALEC, Luntz and a top-down corporate sponsored organization to lead them to success in states and nationally. Will that still be as strong in the future?
Good point about what happens after Obama. My working theory on what happened to the GOP is that Rove was fired by Bush in December, 2006, and his team stopped acting as the universal GOP planner and message coordinator.
My theory is that you can only take an alternate reality so far. Eventually the cognitive dissonance gets so intense that people get migraines and figure out that they’ve been lied to. The Republican house of cards is collapsing before our eyes.
Squirrel!
They will be able to ask for Photo ID but they will not be allowed to force people to cast a provisional. We won.
pdf
For now, we won. It’s a small, temporary victory, but I’ll take it.
On my political wish list, I want to see Citizens United overturned, and I want to see us gain a solid majority in the House and Senate.
In my daily life, I want to win the Powerball, so I can give most of the money away to my friends who need it.
I wish white conservs like George Will & Ann Coulter would STFU about what African American should feel about the 1st Black President. I also wish life was like one of those 70’s blackploitation films & could walk up to both Coulter & Will and slap the crap outta them Foxy Brown style.
WOO-SAH! WOO-SAH!!
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2012/10/02/hello-blackness-my-old-friend-george-has-come-to-talk-about-
you-again/
I do think there is a decent chance on West, Bachmann and King going down, but there is no way Ryan loses. If peopel really paid attention to Cantor/Powell debate last night, Cantor can go down. The fact that Cantor even agreed to a debate indicates he thinks he is vulnerable.
As to my wish list, the pony I most want is for the media to actually start showing some sign of real journalism. Maybe that would be the equivalent of two ponies.
West, Bachmann, and King might be forced out of Congress, but there’s no way they “disappear.” As with Palin, they’ve got Wingnut Welfare for life, and corporate media will continue to take their opinions seriously even though they hold no office and have no relationship to reality.
Oh, and: I want the House, a Democratically controlled Senate that reforms the filibuster rule, Citizens United overturned, world peace, and a unicorn that farts sparkly glitter. For starters.
Nah, they disappear. Palin was in a weird way, very special. She has a natural constituency that was wildly underrepresented at the national level: Trailer Trash. That she has been making the most of her ludicrously extended 15 minutes, merely emphasizes the lack of competition in her selected societal sub-set.
King’s constituency is MidWest Redneck. He is not the only representative of this set of people. He is not even the most well known. King looks like someone’s caricature of machine politician. No one is going to want him on their side if they can have someone more photogenic … which isn’t hard to do.
West is just out and out insane. He MIGHT get along for a few years as a token in some RW radio fantasy land, but again, he has competitors for this slot. The competitors are not necessarily certifiable (think Alan Keyes, Kevin Pritchard, Gary Franks and others). Furthermore, he legitimatly has no natural constituency.
Bachmann might TRY to go the route of Palin, but she doesn’t have the chops for it, she, like West, has competition and besides, she looks a LOT classier than Palin. Oh yeah, and that husband of hers? Gaydar going off is minimalizing his effect.
That Cantor/Powell debate… Wow. I watched it last night. Anybody with an hour to kill can watch it on C-Span online (Actual debate starts about 10 minutes in.) You won’t be disappointed. It’s not boring, I promise.
I want to keep my Democratic president, senators, congressman and state representative.
Why yes, it is very nice.
Also, Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair.
Holy Shit. I am watching the Wayne Powell/Eric Cantor debate on CSPAN and Powell just eviscerated Cantor. Destroyed him. Left him in sackcloth. A nuclear explosion.
Amazing work by Powell. Especially on Cantors ties to the drug companies and wall street. Don’t quite get the audience reaction. Several times, they loudly applauded fairly weak statements by Cantor. I wonder if Cantor somehow stacked the audience?
He’s playing on his turf in Country Club Virginia.
How could the audience NOT be stacked?
I see. All the same, Powell really killed. I hope he wins, he’s great.
Aside from great election results, I want to see the economy take off next year, here and overseas. Then I want to see Obama raise taxes on wealthy assholes, fend off the attacks on S.S., fix medicare and medicaid spending, end the war in Afghanistan and the war on “terror”, legalize marijuana, and then ponies for everyone.
I want Montana to continue having a Dem governor and two Dem senators. I’d also like our one representative to become a Dem and be yet another piece of the puzzle that gets that gavel back in Nancy’s hand.
I want Klansman Arpaio to lose to Paul Penzone, Jon Kyl to be replaced by Rich Carmona, and the defeat of the three incumbents on TUSD’s School Board (all Democrats) who voted to dismantle Mexican American Studies out of fear of the state legislature and HB2218.
Is good ol’ Sheriff Joe gonna have his armed
thugsdeputies out in force at downtown (minority) polling locations on election day “protecting them from terrorist threats” this time? That’s what he did in 2004 when I lived there. The good white folks were greeted with a smile by his Goodwill Ambassadors and the browns were treated differently…What are the realistic odds of ever overthrowing that tyrant before he dies?
Something’s in the air….
The opposition has changed its tactics to point out that in addition to being a racist dirtbag, he’s really shitty at doing the rest of his job. It was a winning strategy to get rid of Russell Pearce so anything’s possible. It will take a perfect storm, though, of 1) the Arpaio opposition vote consolidating behind Paul Penzone 2) the massive voter registration drives among Latinos in the state delivering on people actually showing up on election day and 3) just enough white people who are sick of Arizona being the laboratory for Tea Party
PoliticsFascism.Wish list? Trials for American War criminals, meaningful action on climate change, single payer, a tax on wealth, the Fairness Doctrine, public financing for campaigns only, Affirmative Action strengthened, Private Sectors Unions to gain power, and permanent employment.
I’d like Nan Hayworth to go away.
I want the WI state house and senate in Democratic hands and Scott Walker sweating like a pig as he watches everything he’s done dissolve around him as he is confirmed as the John Doe in the John Doe investigation. Then I want a nice big trial that makes national news and exposes all of the Walker corruption on the way to marching him off a for a good long term in prison.
I’ll have what you’re having!
What’s the outlook on the state legislature? Dare one hope that the other Fitzgerald shit goes back to being a backbencher?
It’s hard to say. The more hooked-in local Democratic politicians are hopeful, but we were all hopeful at the start of the recalls too. There’s just not enough data at the local level to make a good guess, but WI is purple enough that a Romney blowout stands a decent chance of shifting things even in the face of the gerrymandering.
Aside from the obvious good stuff, three events top my wish list: Rob Zerban beats Ryan in WI 1st. The Dems increase their Senate majority and finally do radical surgery on the filibuster. We see a bunch of retirements from SCOTUS over the next 4 years.
I fear the least likely to be fulfilled is the filibuster one. As long as we’re wishing, I wish I felt more confidence in the Dems pushing hard to do the right thing.
As to Ryan’s House seat, I disagree with the “history-based” pundits who say this is an impossible outcome. This is a district that gave Obama 53% last time, while giving Ryan a big margin. Since then the WI mood has changed. Here’s a bit from the GOP-inclined Milwaukee Journal:
This was back in July. Since then, WI as a whole has turned deep blue in the polls, RyanRomney is sinking nationwide, Zerban is the first credible candidate for the seat in many years. If the Dem advantage statewide holds until the election, this will be a competitive race if the Dems and allies get over the nonsense that past numbers are rigid determinants of the future — just ask Coakley and Lugar about that. There’s still time for the liberal/left to get behind Zerban and rid the US Congress of its most toxic member.
Since ponies and unicorns are allowed, I w-w-w-wish:
A complete shellacking of the GOP in November, top of the ticket to bottom–especially state legislatures.
A movement of the Overton window to the center of the John F. Kennedy era.
All of the troops out of Afghanistan.
No lame duck session of Congress. Yep, that means automatic expiration of all of the Bush tax cuts…and the trip over the fiscal cliff.
An Obama inauguration speech that claims that the red state-blue state nonsense is over, that the American people have decided on unity, and that provides a vision at least as eloquent is that of Kennedy’s inaugural speech. And outlines a more conciliatory foreign policy.
A formal declaration of the end of the global war on terror and all the bullshit that has come to represent.
Quick Congressional action to present a real infrastructure-oriented stimulus package and renounce the deficit scolds.
Increase in the minimum wage to $20/ hour resetting the work week from 40 hours to 20 hours and strict enforcement of time and a half overtime pay for everyone who does not set their own salaries.
Rich Cordray as Secretary of Treasury.
Total reconsideration of the US national security institutions aimed at significantly downsizing them, restoring accountability to Congress, and providing limits on the abuse of “state secret” claims.
Restrictions on former members of Congress’s employment as lobbyists, including sacrifice of some ex-Congressional perks when they do get hired.
A Constitutional amendment that corporations are not people and money is not speech.
A national monument to Seamus.