Skip to main content

A very questionable bellwether

By


It would seem that the Republicans are placing a lot of weight on the recent Florida Congressional Special Election where their man, David Jolly, beat Alex Sink in a race that apparently was largely over "Obamacare."  It seems Democrats had high expectations, but prevailing conservative attitudes won out. Rep. Bill Young, a Republican who passed away last year, had represented the House district for decades.  However, Obama had carried the district in 2012, and so Republicans take this as an important victory.

Robert Gibbs, Obama's former press secretary, talked about another "wave election" like in 2010 that swept Democrats out of the House, which this time could wash away the Democratic control of the Senate.  There are some signs of worry for Democrats, but Scott Brown's much talked about bid for the New Hampshire senate seat seems a bit overblown, as Brown is viewed as little more than a "carpetbagger" in the Granite State, and I doubt could mount a serious challenge, but I guess once you've had a taste of the Senate, it is hard to go back to normal life.

Like much of this early election talk it is mostly speculation, and one House race is little to hang your hat on for a political party that has shot itself in the foot repeatedly since its sweeping electoral mandate in 2010.  It has lost a number of key elections, including the governor race in Virginia last year.

Then there is Kentucky, one of the states where the roll out of the Affordable Care Act has been successful, thanks largely to Gov. Beshear, who has actively promoted the ACA.  This doesn't bode well for Mitch McConnell, who finds himself in a very tight race with Allison Lundergan Grimes.

But, the Republicans scored the first significant win of 2014 and I guess that's what counts most in this election year.  For the record, Jolly edged out Sink by less than 2 percentage points, but close doesn't count except in horseshoes and hand grenades.

Comments

  1. James FergusonMarch 18, 2014 at 10:50 AM

    Added this bit about the petulant Scott Brown,

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/17/scott-brown-leaves-fox-after-bristling-at-questions-about-launching-campaign/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more