Tag: elections

So it looks like the Greeks are about to put into office…

…the hard Left party* who promised to renegotiate Greece’s extremely unpopular bailout. Private scuttlebutt among those of my peers who follow European news more closely than I do is divided over whether the Germans EU will sign off on that, but don’t be surprised if they at least try. The alternative is… well, the alternatives to austerity are as follows:

  • A bailout.
  • Removing Greece from the EU.
  • Placing Greece under direct political and economic control of Brussels.

Continue reading So it looks like the Greeks are about to put into office…

Barack Obama not yet understanding that he needs to be irrelevant to 2016.

Well, I don’t need him to be irrelevant.  But you know what I mean.

This should be fascinating to watch: “In recent weeks, Democratic operatives have begun to voice concerns that the 2014 midterms made plain the limits of an approach that failed to reach beyond minority groups or those who are reflexively liberal. And yet what should come next is not yet totally clear.” Largely because it’s essentially futile.  The Democrats will not have control over their message in 2016, because in our system a sitting President has tremendous power to define for the public what his political faction does or does not care about.

And the bear is loose:

[Barack] Obama feels liberated, aides say, and sees the recent flurry of aggressive executive action and deal-making as a pivot for him to spend the last two years being more of the president he always wanted to be.

I don’t often feel sympathy for my opposite numbers – and, in fact, in this case I still don’t.  But if I were to feel sympathy, it’d be in the way that they’re going to have to spend the next two years going Never mind Barack Obama without actually looking like they’re going Never mind Barack Obama.  Because while Barack Obama’s popularity generally is in the toilet*, it’s noticeably better among Democratic primary voters. Which means that the Democrats can’t actually tell Barack Obama to sit down and shaddap.

In case you’re wondering: yes, normally second-term Presidents don’t need to be told this.  Generally speaking the sitting President gets out of the way as gracefully as possible so that the eventual nominee from their party can get on with the remarkably difficult task of winning three elections in a row.  Fortunately (for my side), nobody bothered to tell Barack Obama that. Or maybe he doesn’t care.  Or – and this would be the best answer – the man still hasn’t come to terms with the limits to his competence, and Obama thinks that he can (chuckle, snort!) help…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: If Barack Obama thinks that what was going this session was ‘deal-making’ (instead of, say, ‘trying to work around an over-rated Harry Reid’), we will probably find next year to be quite amusing, in its way.

*I should note, by the way, that his reputation will recover, post-Presidency.  That’s what typically happens.  Don’t get bent out of shape over it, because doing so won’t affect the process and you’ll just be there in the dark chewing bitter bones, as the Elves might say.

The Left’s plan to retake state legislatures through targeted character assassination.

(H/T: Instapundit) There are several amusing things about this article from the Washington Examiner on the topic of what the Left hopes to do towards state legislatures in the upcoming election cycle:

“We’re working with David Brock and Media Matters and American Bridge who have trackers that we can send out to monitor the debate on some bills that you all might be running,” Nick Rathod, executive director of SiX [a liberal group trying to get state legislatures back], said. “I think in many legislatures my understanding is that a lot of legislatures stream their floor debates but don’t necessarily transcribe it or capture it in any kind of way. And so we want to start capturing them on that. I think we know, someone’s going to say something about black people. Someone’s going to say something about women. Someone is going to say something.”

In no particular order: Continue reading The Left’s plan to retake state legislatures through targeted character assassination.

Actually, it’s the *conservatives* who can make better plays to the middle in 2016.

As in, they can do it and still get elected.

Allahpundit is raising an excellent point, here:

Why would a center-right voter prefer Jeb Bush to Scott Walker? We all do understand, I hope, that Walker will be running basically as a centrist, yes? …I think he’s going to run as a similar sort of pragmatist as Bush — lots of talk about jobs and education, squishy on immigration, socially conservative but low key about it, and if tea partiers start getting restless with him, he’ll pull the ol’ “remember the time the unions spent millions to recall me and I kicked the sh*t out of them?” card. And then everyone will quiet down.

Continue reading Actually, it’s the *conservatives* who can make better plays to the middle in 2016.

Why the Democrats stupidly wrote off Louisiana too quickly.

As you no doubt know, the Democrats got their clocks cleaned last night in two House seat runoff elections and one Senate one.  The question is, could they have done better? – Actually, no, the question is, could they have done much better?  …And the answer may indeed be ‘yes’ in both cases.  Please note: a lot of this is going to be a discussion on how much or how little the rubble might have bounced, so keep that in mind.

Let’s start with the Senate race. All numbers here from AOSHQDD: they’re not the certified results, but they’re going to be fine for this analysis.

 Election  Runoff  LA-SEN
    619,397     561,099  Democrat
    603,045  –  Cassidy
    202,554  –  Maness
    805,599     712,330  Total GOP
 1,424,996  1,273,429

The total drop-off for that election was 91% for the Democrats, 88% for the GOP, and 89% overall.  In other words: the Democrats managed to retain more of their Election Day voters than the Republicans did.  Mary Landrieu still got destroyed in the general because the people who voted for Rob Maness clearly decided to show up for Bill Cassidy, too.  This was not particularly contested by Sen. Landrieu, probably because she had limited resources and clearly decided that she needed to boost her own side’s turnout more than she needed to depress her opponent’s turnout. Considering that Sen. Landrieu’s base was mostly African-American – a demographic that’s hard to get to turn out, historically – she didn’t actually do a bad job. Continue reading Why the Democrats stupidly wrote off Louisiana too quickly.

Preparing the battlespace for a Democratic failure in 2016?

Dang, but those grapes look really sour.

Think of the billions the parties must raise to elect a president in 2016. Consider the millions of paid and volunteer man-hours that will be devoted to this enterprise. The White House is the center of the partisan political universe, and Democrats and Republicans alike measure success or failure by their ability to win and hold the presidency.

Instead, maybe they ought to hope they lose. The surest price the winning party will pay is defeat of hundreds of their most promising candidates and officeholders for Senate, House, governorships, and state legislative posts. Every eight-year presidency has emptied the benches for the triumphant party, and recently it has gotten even worse.

Don’t get me wrong: Larry Sabato has a point.  But it’s just as easy to say that the American people tend to be on an eight year cycle of Throw The Bums Out, with the bums switching off on a regular basis.  Of course, when you put it that way then the efforts of people like Larry Sabato – and, to be brutally honest about it, myself – start looking a good deal less relevant…

I actually think that these kids at Occidental really learned something.

I mean, it is funny, in a not-nice way:

…but there’s actually a life lesson here. Continue reading I actually think that these kids at Occidental really learned something.

Chuck Schumer quietly starts distancing Democrats from Obama for 2016.

I’m just going to summarize it: Senator Chuck Schumer today ever-so-casually indicated that working first on Obamacare was a mistake; that, in fact, Congress should have instead worked on pretty much anything else besides Obamacare; and that Sen. Schumer himself opposed starting first on Obamacare, but all those Obama supporters in the Obama administration were so adamant that Obamacare be put in place right away.  Also: how about that absent-from-the-Obamacare-debate Hillary Clinton, huh?  You know what her middle name isn’t?  That’s right: Obamacare.

I’m being mean, I know*.  But if Chuck Schumer is useful for any one thing it’s in determining just how toxic a politician and/or government program can be.  Based on this article, Barack Obama and his signature** political accomplishment are quite toxic indeed.  And it’s not even 2015 yet!  If Barack Obama’s a lame duck now, imagine how useless he’s going to be a year from now***. Continue reading Chuck Schumer quietly starts distancing Democrats from Obama for 2016.

How the GOP used social media to outsmart anti-free speech laws.

Looks like the NRCC was on the ball this cycle.

Republicans and outside groups used anonymous Twitter accounts to share internal polling data ahead of the midterm elections, CNN has learned, a practice that raises questions about whether they violated campaign finance laws that prohibit coordination.

Translation: they probably didn’t, which CNN will concede later. Moving on…

…The groups behind the operation had a sense of humor about what they were doing. One Twitter account was named after Bruno Gianelli, a fictional character in The West Wing who pressed his colleagues to use ethically questionable “soft money” to fund campaigns.

A typical tweet read: “CA-40/43-44/49-44/44-50/36-44/49-10/16/14-52–>49/476-10s.” The source said posts like that — which would look like gibberish to most people — represented polling data for various House races.

Continue reading How the GOP used social media to outsmart anti-free speech laws.

The Democrats are keeping their leadership cadre. …Bless their hearts.

Chris Cillizza is not quite gobsmacked:

Nine days ago, Democrats lost (at least) eight of their seats and their majority in the Senate.  On the House side, the party dipped to at their lowest level — in terms of raw number of seats held — since World War II. How did the party react to this rejection from the American public? By preparing to re-elect every single one of their top Congressional leaders, of course!

…but he can see gobsmacked from where he currently sits.  Basically, the Democrats are not going to change their leadership cadre.  This despite the utter disaster that befell the legislative branch of their party last week, mind you; and it’s not just that the Democrats lost the Senate and got rocked back on their heels in the House. It’s that Democrats in the state legislatures likewise got hammered.  I don’t believe in permanent Republican majorities than I believed in permanent Democratic ones, but one of the major things standing in the way of a new Democratic majority is their leadership cadre.  Robert Tracinski over at the Federalist noted that the Democratic party’s recruitment successes collapsed when it became clear that all those new, shiny Red State Democrats were there to rubber stamp urban liberal Democratic agendas. As long as the people who support that agenda still run the Democratic party, moving the needle again is going to be hard for the Democratic rank-and-file. Continue reading The Democrats are keeping their leadership cadre. …Bless their hearts.