Quick Take
Quick take because President Obama didn’t start giving his acceptance speech until almost 2am. If you see me today, steer clear. I’m tired and filled with mixed emotion.
POTUS: Barack Obama won re-election rather handily, and a great deal of people – mostly made up the disingenuous and the dumb – owe Nate Silver from 538 a massive apology for doubting his predictive models and for complaining about “skewed” polls. Silver was right on the money, and people like the always-wrong Dick Morris, and a whole set of mostly Republican “pundits” were beyond wrong. Science and math win over “gut” and “feelings”. Maybe it has to do with boomer conservatives all being former hippies. You know, “me, myself, and I”. I’ll write more about this later, but a win is a win, and watching Fox News during part of last night, I found the most amazing Vaudeville show ever produced.
NY-27: This is devastating. Make no mistake, the electorate of the 27th Congressional District has left me – themselves – effectively without Congressional representation. For all intents and purposes, I’m an inadvertent, unvoluntary liberal tea partier. Only for real. Late last night, Kathy Hochul, who has served in Congress with excellence and bipartisanship sent this:
“Early this morning I called Chris Collins and congratulated him on being elected to Congress. I encouraged him to work across the aisle and offered to assist him in any way I can. I also volunteered to help him make a smooth transition in January to ensure our constituents are well served. Congress can do better, and the people of this country deserve better than what Washington has given them.”
Collins is all over the air saying Hochul lost because of her Buffalo China ads. I’ll agree that they went too hard on that tack, and didn’t push the real issue – that she’s bipartisan and he’s completely partisan. Mr. Obamapelosi has no business claiming not to have been more negative than Hochul in the race. Thank God Obama won, otherwise you’d see the rapid dismantling of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and a whole variety of so-called “entitlements” that you depend on and pay for.
Comptroller: Voters chose name recognition over qualifications, such as they were. No surprise there. Now what, Stefan?
Other than that – marriage equality won referenda in Maine and Maryland – a first. Horrible red-baiting Congressman Allen West is gone. Michele Bachmann almost lost. Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown in Massachusetts; democrats took back “Teddy Kennedy’s seat”.
A mixed night, but a relief that we will continue to move forward with President Obama. Hopefully Washington will start to get things done, now that the Republican’s chief policy aim of preventing Obama’s re-election is extinguished, they can get back to governing.
We dodged a bullet, now it is time for Republicans to do their job and govern. The majority of the American people have decided to give the president a second term and have rejected the agenda of Romney/Bush. We must demand the Republicans accept this reality and move back to the center where most Americans reside.
Republicans accept defeat? With grace? Hardy-har-har-har. The words “Ohio goes for Obama” were barely out of Brian Williams’ mouth before the Fox News brigade was bleating that this was no “mandate” for the President.
The GOP’s aim in term #1 was to prevent President Obama’s reelection. Their aim in term #2 will be to block his legacy by continuing their campaign of obstruction, obfuscation and sabotage. I wouldn’t be surprised if articles of impeachment are introduced in the House over the Benghazi attack.
Eric, I’m curious, based on your comments, do you consider Obama’s win a mandate? Or are you saying FOX was just engaging in negative spin? BTW, I didn’t cast my ballot for the Obama/Romney, virtually no different, ticket. Had I lived in a swing state, I may have cast aside principles and cast a pragmatic vote for Romney (not really sure), but this being NY State made it east to vote on principles knowing the outcome was a forgone conclusion here.
Michael – It was both. Yes, I consider President Obama’s reelection a mandate. That’s two successive presidential elections in which America chose the candidate who pledged to reverse course from the Bush-era policies that drove our economy into a ditch. The dead-enders on Fox News last night (led by Karl Rove) did their level best to portray a decisive victory in the electoral and popular vote as something other than a mandate, but that’s just typical GOP wishful thinking.
I also think that the Republicans in Congress need to reach across the aisle and start compromising to move our economy forward, seeing as their grand plan to thwart the President’s reelection crashed and burned last night
I don’t really see it as a mandate, nor would it make any significant difference to me if Romney had won. My greatest hope for Obama when he won in 2008 was that he wouldn’t continue Bush’s war-mongering ways. Obama has greatly disappointed in that area and in the area of personal privacy with his approval of abysmal domestic security policies. He not only carried out Bush’s unconscionable policies on spying and detention of U.S. citizens, he has expanded upon them. Not that Romney wouldn’t have done the same thing, it amounts to a very serious problem that goes to the root of why things are not as they should be in our country.
I’m with you on the domestic spying program, but candidate Obama told you in 2008 that he would get us out of Iraq and commit more resources to Afghanistan to find bin Laden and break al Queda. In 2012, we’re out of Iraq, bin Laden is dead and we will be out of Afghanistan by 2016. Oh, and we managed not to send troops into a multitude of conflagrations in the Middle East over the past two years. What’s the issue?
Our foreign policy will be heading in the right direction when all troops are out of the Middle East, including the hundreds still in Iraq training soldiers and the troops still guarding our massive embassy. The killing of Bin Laden was a symbolic, however meaningless, act. The loss of American lives in Afghanistan is indefensible and the proliferation of drones killing people, including innocent people, is deplorable.