Campaign

At first glance, it would seem last night was a huge victory and vindication, of sorts, for Sarah Palin. I certainly thought so in the excitement of the moment. Now I'm not so sure.

While I don't agree with all of Palin's positions, I've admired her tenacity and have defended her at times because of the unfair beating she took from the mainstream media after the 2008 presidential campaigns, and the arrogant mishandling and trashing by establishment GOP campaign staff. She now stands on her own, and is capable of accepting both credit and blame, criticism and praise. In that regard, she has won.

On an MSNBC panel I joined yesterday, there was talk — yet again — of sexism in the midterm elections. I participated with members of the media establishment who jointly agreed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) low approval numbers among independent voters (8 percent) are a function of sexism that continues to taint politics.

I’m not going to say sexism doesn’t still exist in the political arena. Certainly female candidates face unique challenges, and many are forced to defend personal decisions — about marriage, relationships and children — that male candidates do not. In fact, there’s perhaps no other place where women’s proper role in society is scrutinized more than in the political realm.

Two personal big winners on election night were Harry Reid, who conquered an army of political opponents after he was treated as politically dead, and Marco Rubio, a serious and thoughtful conservative who will soon be mentioned as a future presidential and vice-presidential candidate.

Reid taught other Democrats how to fight back. He fought back ferociously and defeated the Tea Party, Karl Rove, interest groups and the Republican power structure. Reid is now the rock star of Democrats, and the relationship between Reid and President Obama is now the No. 1 power relationship in Washington.

My New Hampshire governor, Democrat John Lynch, won a landslide victory here in a historic fourth term. He ran on a positive business model that echoed that of Virginia Sen. and former Gov. Mark Warner‘s (D) when he was voted one of the best governors in America in a Wall Street survey. Lynch, last man standing on this creative approach, should be considered the most successful Democratic governor and a candidate for the 2012 presidential race if President Obama bows out. The Lynch/Warner business model should be the new Democratic template. But for now the Democrats’ future is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann at the news desk giggling at Michele Bachmann. And the future is Michlle Bachmann. And the future is the slow realization that Sarah Palin is a real part of American life and will continue to be. The question today is who will be her running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney or Texas Gov. Rick Perry?

In many ways, it was the best-case scenario for the Republican Party.

They swept the House in dramatic fashion, and while they didn’t quite win the Senate, they got the next best thing: Harry Reid is still going to be the chief spokesman for congressional Democrats.

It is now the conventional wisdom that the demise of the hated Republican establishment was overstated. Rob Portman and Roy Blunt cruised to easy victories, and those two are the best examples of the best of the Republican establishment.

Republicans would do well to acknowledge early that they could easily lose their majority in two to four years. Recognizing that reality doesn’t hasten its arrival. The electorate is simply that volatile. And the sooner that’s acknowledged, the freer the GOP will be to do the right thing.
 
What they choose to do with this awesome 60-seat gain in the House rests solely in their hands. They should seize this moment and tackle the most pressing, intractable problems our country faces. Not sheepishly move to issues that will not better this country in wholesale ways. Am I talking about “overreaching”? No. Rather, they need to address the calamitous problems that have gone unabated for far too long. Read more...

Contrary to the popular notion that voters today are causing a tremendous upheaval, an electoral tsunami, an election earthquake and every other description imaginable to articulate the huge midterm election event, the truth is something else altogether. It's a mystery, actually, why anyone should be dismayed.
 
In fact, Americans have been dismayed and then alarmed at the tremendous upheaval, tsunami and earthquake Barack Obama has instituted with unprecedented spending, government overreach and thumbing his nose at the wishes of the people of this democracy.

People vote for a variety of reasons. They don’t vote for just one.

People don’t vote because they think that their vote doesn’t matter. How can one person make much of a difference? they ask themselves, ignoring the history that shows that one vote has made a difference thousands of times.

I live in the District of Columbia, so in all likelihood my vote doesn’t really matter. But I wrote in Adrian Fenty, just because, who knows, he might win in a write-in campaign.

Two years in the making, nearly a billion dollars spent campaigning and hundreds of political careers on the line — it’s finally game day.

The political forecast for the Democrats is bad. If you believe the hype and you’re a Democrat, this evening might be among the worst in your political life. If you believe the hype and you’re a Republican, tonight you inherit the earth.

But what of the hype? Political prognosticators are scrambling ever higher in their predictions about the so-called “wave” election. Estimates of House seats “in play” have topped 120, an astounding number even if it were half-true.

It’s safe to say there’s nothing assured for Senate Democrats. Even if they manage to keep their majority, the grip on that power will be tenuous at best. As recent history has shown, anything under 60 spells looming problems for the party in power in the upper chamber.
 
Yet even if President Obama calls sure-to-be Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on election night to congratulate him for keeping the Senate, there’s no guarantee he’ll have the votes to continue pushing his extreme liberal agenda. Read more...