Election Day in California is pretty dull because California is a one party state with Democrats and their illegal alien voters running things.
“We don’t need no stinkin’ voter IDs !”
Elsewhere there is excitement. Voting machines in multiple states are changing GOP votes to Democrat.
The Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti said the machine’s failure was “a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine,” and that Moynihan’s votes were not actually registered. Scalzitti said that voters are always asked to double-check their votes before they’re counted.
The same “error” is occurring in North Carolina and Maryland, the latter a state where the Democrat governor is in trouble with a GOP challenger close in polls.
Naturally, that is where voting machine “errors” will cluster.
In Maryland, another deep-blue state with sky-high taxes, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a Democrat, had to vow “no new taxes” while struggling to convince voters he deserves a promotion to the governor’s mansion. His Republican opponent, businessman Larry Hogan, has made a top issue of the dizzying proliferation of taxes during Mr. Brown’s eight-year tenure with Gov. Martin O’Malley.
O’Malley has been touted as a possible presidential candidate for Democrats in 2017 but it sounds like that boomlet has popped.
Michael Barone, the guru of American politics, is dismissive of Obama’s record.
Why has the Democratic Party fared so poorly under Obama’s leadership? I can see two reasons: one ideological, one demographic.
Start with demographics. The Obama coalition, even more than Bill Clinton’s, is based on overwhelming support from constituencies with some conflicting interests. It’s a top and bottom coalition: he carried the very lowest and highest income and education groups, while his support sagged among those in the middle.
His strongest groups are blacks and gentry liberals — the same two groups he gathered together when he got to design his own state Senate district in 2002. Majorities of both groups still support him, but perhaps with diminished enthusiasm. Black crowds unexpectedly started walking out before he finished talking at recent events in Prince George’s County, Md., and Milwaukee.
Moreover, the geographic clustering of blacks and gentry liberals in central cities, sympathetic suburbs and university towns puts the Obama Democrats at a disadvantage in equal-population districts where Republican voters are spread more evenly around.
That explains House races but what about the Senate ?
Bill Clinton was credited with competence and acceptable ideology, which made his party competitive in the early 2000s and well-positioned to take advantage of George W. Bush’s perceived incompetence (Iraq, Katrina) in 2006 and 2008.
President Obama’s ideology — expanded government, Obamacare — has been less widely acceptable and his reputation for competence is currently in tatters. He was able to eke out re-election with a reduced percentage by good organization. But he leaves his party in trouble.
Yes, Hillary Clinton leads in polls for 2016. But her numbers have been sagging. And other Democrats poll worse against not-very-well-known Republican alternatives than I can remember any party’s potential candidates polling in the last half-century.
We can only hope that the fraud and low information voter don’t win this time.
Now the president is full of resentment, fatalistic, irritated at being ignored or disrespected by his people and The People. But this doesn’t come from long years of attempts to bring the parties together to forge compromise – it comes from his realization that he’d rather golf than put up with the demands of the job. If Obama truly thought that politics only consists of getting elected, he was truly naïve about the demands of the presidency – just as he has been naïve about the nature of the Republican Party, conservatism and libertarianism, party and congressional politics, the public’s desire for wage growth and job security, even middle eastern dictators’ and terrorists’ assessment of their own interests.
The stunning part is the nature of this naïveté. It is not that it is the high-minded academic view of a cloistered college professor – it’s the naïveté of a dim-witted screenwriter, an acceptance of an beau ideal of the American presidency that is most recognizable as an invention of Aaron Sorkin, not a reflection of history.
I was unimpressed with this man from the beginning.
He was created by an Illinois politician named Emil Jones.
It’s a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.
Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama’s seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative achievements.
Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor’s office as well as both legislative chambers.
The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.
Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s kingmaker.
Jones made Obama a Senator like other, nameless, people made him a law student.
Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio program.
I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:
“He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'”
“Oh, you are? Who might that be?”
“Barack Obama.”
Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.
And that’s how it happened. Plus, of course, Axelrod getting the Chicago Tribune to open the sealed divorce records of Jack Ryan, Obama’s opponent.
Like many nasty divorces, especially with custody issues, things can be said that are not true and devastating to a political career. The judge, of course, was a Democrat. Gov. Gray Davis appointed Schnider, a Democrat, to the Superior Court in 2002. A California Democrat at that.
No matter, It was Chicago and the fix was in. Ryan eventually dropped out and the rest is history.
Jack Ryan was railroaded not just by a criminal conspiracy consisting of Democratic operatives and members of the media, but also by his own party who abandoned him and handed the Senate seat to Obama, subsequently doing irreparable harm to the United States. If only the state GOP hadn’t been so spineless and incompetent, we would have avoided this catastrophe and sent someone to Washington who would have been a great political leader instead of Obama just waltzing right in.
Election Day in [Illinois] is pretty dull because [Illinois] is a one party state with [the Chicago Democratic Party Machine] and their illegal alien [/dead/fictional/out-of-state/multiple] voters running things.
Ryan was not forthcoming when he should have been but I blame his ex-wife. I know what women do when child custody is an issue. A Los Angles city councilman, 25 years ago, was nearly sent to prison for perjured testimony by an ex-wife who wanted custody. Hius name was Art Snyder and he was a colorful character but a bitter ex-wife tried to have him prosecuted for child molestation.
In recent years, Snyder shifted away from the political world and became the proprietor of a Huntington Beach tiki lounge, Don the Beachcomber.
Snyder would have turned 80 on Saturday. He is survived by Delia, his wife of 31 years, and his children from two previous marriages, sons Neely and Miles, and a daughter, Erin.
I think that daughter was the subject of the custody battle and the false allegations.
I think Jeri Ryan has no more place as a Republican authority than Nicole Wallace who did a fair job of destroying Sarah Palin and, incidentally, the McCain campaign in 2008.
“Our relationship really erupted and exploded, and was irreparably damaged after the Katie Couric interview, in which she had thought I had set her up for failure,” said Wallace.
Wallace, like a few supposed “Republican women,” disdained Palin and set out to destroy her. Ryan still turns up occasionally on a letterhead.
We voted early – last week, as a matter of fact. They were actually quite strict about this – we had to produce picture ID, and our names were checked off on the list of voters in our precinct. And they reconfirmed our address, too. And I overheard a soft-voice but intense confrontation between a poll worker and an elderly potential voter; the precinct worker insisting again and again that Potential Voter HAD to produce a legal picture ID. Don’t know how it worked out in the end – finished voting and was out of there before it was resolved one way or the other.
Ryan was a good man who would have made a great Senator. He made two key mistakes in his life. He married a Hollywood harlot who ruined his nascent political career, and he trusted state GOP leaders.
He had good reason to keep his divorce details private. That kind of information wouldn’t be safe with the backstabbing hacks in charge of the party, and he had his child to protect. They already had a rogue Senator with Fitzgerald and surely didn’t want any more outsiders mucking up the program.
It’s unbelievable now to think how they sabotaged the election by jettisoning their candidate, but it’s worse to think of the damage they did to the country. Ryan quit in June, and Obama wasn’t given the DNC convention slot until July. Ryan was gaining in the polls in the spring. Regardless of whether he won, even just staying in the race would have blocked Obama’s momentum and potentially his speech.
How likely would it be for the DNC
to give an amateur in a dead heat a speech slot? Slim.
Instead, they got a low risk uncontested slam dunk, and it launched his national political career.
“They already had a rogue Senator with Fitzgerald”
My understanding has been that FitzGerald was clean and the Illinois pols didn’t like his independence. Wrong ?
Yes, Fitzgerald was roundly disliked by the entire state GOP establisment. He didn’t play ball, especially with Denny Hastert.
After Ryan withdrew, Hastert took personal control of the transition and made the call to the national committee to bring in an outside candidate. You know how nothing ever gets done in Illinois without a deal being made and scraps being tossed around? Looking back, the timing of the whole thing in the summer was just a little too perfect. I wonder if Hastert had an agreement to get Ryan out before the DNC convention??
Remember Blagojevich said about that senate seat,
‘I’ve got this thing, and it is golden.’
He didn’t just make that up.
” I wonder if Hastert had an agreement to get Ryan out before the DNC convention??”
Hastert had a lot to do with the failure of the GOP Congress in the 2000 to 2006 era. He is an Illinois crook. I understand his kids did almost as well as Harry Reid’s.
Rauner wins !
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/529848260358197248
It looks like wave after all. Even my lefty daughter-in-law got sore loserish.
Michael Kennedy Sorry about all the Democrats.
14 mins · Like
Kate Isaacson Not interested in that type of discussion with you, thanks!
9 mins · Like
Michael Kennedy You’re welcome !
9 mins · Like
Hilarious.
And Joni Ernst now a senator in Iowa!!
Larry Hogan Governor of MD!!
Charlie Parker Governor in MA!!
Thom Tillis now a Senator in NC!
Cory Gardner now a senator in Co!
Wendy Davis still not governor of TX!
Scott Walker still governor in WI!
Rick Scott still governor in FL!
Wow.
News from West Virginia (where I live): Democrats lose control of the House of Delegates for the 1st time in 83 years.
Shelley Moore Capito (my current representative) elected to the Senate by a landslide.
Alex Mooney (like me a refugee from Maryland) elected to Capito’s House seat.
Corrupt representative Nick Rahall voted out.
It’s amazing how in just the 16 years I have lived here, the Democrats have made themselves absolutely toxic. And Joe Manchin, our other Senator, is said to be thinking about bolting the Dems.
What has President Ebola got to say about all this?
A huge repudiation of Obama’s presidency in his “home” state.
Although, I’m not sure who really considers Obama an Illinoisan.
First on the agenda, approve fracking. Next, cut income taxes. I hope the celebration doesn’t last too long because there’s a huge mess to clean up.
Well, Jason Carter is Illini, and he may headed back. Seems that Sam Nunn’s lovely daughter will also be heading back to D.C. or wherever it is that she lives. My home state also had some good news, some cat named Charlie Baker will sit in the state house. But Grurray is correct, there’s been a lot of damage done, and the bast*rds ain’t gone yet.
“Run, Joe, Run!!!!”
It will be interesting to see Obama’s demeanor today in his presser. Will he be defiant or like Clinton in 1994 ? I just don’t think he is as smart as Clinton was.
There are plenty of other races to consider but one more comment about Illinois. With results in, it looks like Rauner won every county except for Cook.
He only got 20,000 more votes in Cook than the 2010 GOP candidate, so his strategy of contesting Chicago wasn’t much of a factor.
He scored big in the suburban and exurban outlying “collar counties”, doing much better than 2010.
This is what put him over the top, and this is a bad sign for Illinois’s status of Blue State Stronghold. It suggests that rather than a solid, historic shift to blue, Illinois has a silent majority capable of swinging decisions.
Downstate he won the three Southern Illinois counties that went to Quinn in 2010, counties just outside St. Louis and on the Mississippi River with large black populations, so maybe his appeal to black voters resonated more outside Chicago.
He generally did a bit worse in Central Illinois and elsewhere in Southern Illinois, but so did Quinn. The difference was more votes for the Libertarian. In 2010 there was a Green Party candidate that split the 3rd party protest vote. This year the Green Party was kicked out earlier for not getting enough qualifying signatures, so we can’t exactly say that there’s a trend evident. On the other hand, numbers are numbers, and the bottom line is the Libertarian got more votes.
Rauner still has to work with a veto-busting super-majority of Democrats in the state legislature. The state is politically divided, which is an improvement from one-party Democratic hegemony. The key now is to make sure the lame-duck regime doesn’t pass any left-wing parting shots before Rauner’s inauguration.
“The key now is to make sure the lame-duck regime doesn’t pass any left-wing parting shots before Rauner’s inauguration.”
I’m more worried about that on a national level. I’ve been worried about this for a while
A president Obama, facing a GOP majority in both houses of Congress and a foreign policy disaster, might have real problems with his control and his emotions. Bill Clinton, a more experienced politician had an emotional meltdown after the 1994 election.
Clinton downplayed the fact that his press conference was only picked up by one major network, saying “I am relevant. The Constitution gives me relevance. A president, especially an activist president has relevance.” Clinton sought to paint himself as a moderating influence on the House, and said he had shown “good faith” toward Republicans.
Clinton was a far more experienced man and less of an ideologue than Obama.
I am quite concerned about this. Obama thinks he is impeachment proof and he is an immature thinker.
Also, our foreign adversaries know that the current period, in which they have a relatively free hand to exploit our weaknesses, will soon end.
I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe that’s what’s behind the recent Russian air incursions over Europe.
So after listening to Barry’s news conference, I see little hope for any significant common ground. He tried to sound nice, but it ain’t in He, Himself and We.
He won’t reach out, those Republicans are invited to the castle to suggest what they want to give Him.
Immigration? What’s a poison well? Keep on keeping on. Come to ME with what I want and don’t you dare mention border security.
Obamacare? Nothing going to get past Him because it isn’t financially viable and everything that needs to be fixed will make it even less viable.
Keystone? “There is a process that I am going to let play out.” or words to that effect. Petroleum production on Federal lands or off shore? Why? We’re doing just fine and don’t forget the Holy Grail of green house gasses. Clean coal? Don’t make Him laugh.
What’s left?
Free trade agreements? Maybe. Him might like that with cover for exported job perceptions.
Bring back the two trillion in overseas profits? Maybe one time with massive earmark shovel not-ready construction union projects and other pet rocks Reduce the debt? What are you smoking?.
New Attorney General and lots of judicial appointments? Lame duck senate you will be busy for the next two months.
Mike
Well, tastes differ, but I thought the Republican gains in California this year are pretty interesting. It is possible, for instance, that California will make the largest contribution of any state to the GOP House gains.
In fact, I may be doing a post on the subject.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the Democrats were unable to regain their “super” majorities in the legislature. (After having lost some legislators to criminal charges, of whom the most interesting, by far, is Leland Yee. If you have missed the news on Yee, check it out. It’s a pretty amazing story.)
I went to Open Salon (where I haven’t been for ages) and relished the sight of Obamista sorrow and despair. Yes, and I have to admit that I took a positively indecent pleasure in the spectacle of Wendy Davis folding up like wet cardboard in the rain. (Which, to mention rain – it’s been pouring down steadily since last night, and cool weather has blown in for good at long last…)
I’d still worry about what Obama is capable of — and willing to do, upon his practices and policies being rejected. He still has the bully pulpit, the loyalty of g*d knows how many politicized functionaries … and he is a nastily spiteful and vengeful person. I hope the Repubs (at least the most stalwart Tea Party types) recover some backbone, after this.
One of the more interesting developments in California.
Orange County, home of diversity
Although the OC GOP has long been able to depend on Vietnamese voters, the past couple of years have seen the party double-down on other Asian-American groups, grooming candidates and making inroads. The payoff showed last night: The following is a list of non-incumbent GOP Asian-American candidates who effectively won their races (the Registrar of Voters won’t certify the results for a couple of days):
*Henry Charoen, Centralia School District Board
*Sandra Lee, Cypress School District board
*Peggy Huang, Yorba Linda City Council
*Khanh Nguyen, Westminster School District
*Young Kim, 65th Assembly District
*Janet Nguyen, 34th State Senate District
*Michelle Steel, OC Supervisor, 2nd District
*Ling-Ling Chang, 55th Assembly District
*Tyler Diep, Westminster City Council
*Dina Nguyen, Orange County Water District, District 1
*Satoru “Sat” Tamaribuchi, Municipal Water District of Orange County, District 5 (don’t know his official party affiliation, but he worked for the Irvine Company–which makes him a Republican)
Why, the GOP even got three new Latinos elected–James Vanderbilt, as an Anaheim councilmember, Steven Vargas on the Brea City Council (where he’s served in the past) and Paulo Morales on the Cypress City Council. And the GOP HATES Latinos.
On the other hand, all the Democrats were able to score, diversity-wise, were five seats: Cynthia Aguirre on the La Habra City School District Board; Phat Bui for Garden Grove City Council; Valerie Amezcua on the SanTana Unified School Board; Ryan Ruelas for Anaheim City School District Board, and Art Montez, Centralia School District (Rae Tso might also be a Dem down in Laguna Woods, where she won a council seat–but it’s Laguna Woods, so that really doesn’t count).
What an Orange County where the GOP elects almost three times as many candidates of color as the Democrats. This disaster for the Dems can squarely be put on the feet of chairman Henry Vandemeier–but that’s a whole other post. In the meanwhile, let’s laugh at the Democratic Party of Orange County anew for thinking that the future of their party in Orange County is Anaheim councilmember Jordan Brandman, a pendejo if ever there was one…HA!
Interesting. The Vietnamese have always been conservative since arriving after 1975. They are also high achievers. A Vietnamese girl was company commander at West Point.
What worries me is bitterness – we all have some. Obama’s seems oversupplied.
Krauthammer keeps hammering on Putin’s sense that the end of the Soviet Union was tragedy – one to be redressed. That does make for a dangerous man, if true.
In his own feckless way, Obama may already see yesterday’s election as tragedy, one to be redressed with (& for) his ego and by pen. Meanwhile we remain rightly distrustful of scientific consensus on Ebola or much else, of the IRS, of the Attorney General, of the border patrol, of the State Department, of the press, and increasingly of statements from military leaders.
You don’t have to be a Tory to think institutions are important; even Nixon, a bitter man, did not contest the Illinois and Texas votes because he didn’t want to destroy a general faith in the process.(I heard that long ago – at a time when feelings ran high – including mine – against Nixon. It may not be true, but if it is, surely it signals partial redemption. But then I’m enough conservative to respect such institutions as the vote. When the respect is only that of the gullible and naive, we will not easily regain it.)
I was surprised for California – was glad to hear Doug Ose won his seat back – even John Garamendi – a career politician who bounced from office to office – lost his seat.
I voted “Yes” for Props 1 & 2, “no”on all the others. 47 won, which the DAs didn’t want but all and all, for being a native Californian see it change from red to blue – a surprising evening.
Oh, and for those people who think ALL of CA is blue – just a sliver of the coastal area (down to LA) – most of the rest is red
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/11/197979-big-red-flood-take-look-four-maps-see-just-country-changed-yesterday/