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No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No

Jill

I had to copy the LA Times’ headline on this one. Looks like Arnie’s in a spot of trouble over in California — voters there just rejected all of his ballot proposals. They also rejected a state-wide initiative which would have required parental notification for abortion. Way to go, California!

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the parental notification initiative is the one I’m most interested in. What’s notable, I think, about this vote is that the people who would be most negatively affected by it — minor females — didn’t have a say at all. It would be easy for California voters, who are all of majority age and many of whom are parents, to vote on their first instinct of, “Well if my daughter were having an abortion, I’d want to know.” And yet most voted against the initiative anyway. To me, this demonstrates a remarkable ability on the part of a large chunk of California voters to cast ballots in the interest of weaker members of society, instead of simply following their first knee-jerk reaction. I suspect this is rare in electoral politics.

In shocking NY news, Bloomberg won the mayorial race. Who would have guessed?

And way to go Dems for winning two important elections in Virginia and New Jersey. The Jersey race, at least, was hilarious in its utter nastiness, culminating with the former Mrs. Corzine appearing on a television ad accusing Mr. Corzine of abandoning their family and telling voters that he would also abandon the state. It does not get dirtier than that.

Of course, Corzine’s no angel either. One of his political ads featured a man in a wheelchair asserting that Forrester (Corzine’s opponent) doesn’t support stem cell research, and therefore doesn’t “support people like me.”

When the whole mess was over, Corzine celebrated his victory by playing a Bon Jovi song. If only he had been at the mall and had teased his hair.

33 thoughts on No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No

  4. They also rejected a state-wide initiative which would have required parental notification for abortion. Way to go, California!

    One of the ballot initiatives was to put together a nonpartisan commission of retired judges to draw the voter district lines, in order to prevent gerrymandering. Does that sound like a bad thing to you? Or is it just because a Republican proposed it?

  5. Shankar, that’s unilateral disarmament. We’ll allow non-partisan redistricting in our 50-seat behemoth if you’ll allow non-partisan redistricting in purplish red states with fifty seats.

  6. if you’ll allow non-partisan redistricting in purplish red states with fifty seats.

    I had no idea I wielded such power. Alright, we’ll totally do it.

    And free beer for everyone!

  7. I think the redistricting would have been a good idea. It would have been unilateral disarmament but I don’t think it would really have hurt the Dems that badly and it might be a spark for the purplish states to change. Sure would contrast sharply with Delay’s redistricting of Texas.

  8. I’d suggest you leave the gerrymandering alone in Indiana. We manage to put 3 Dems consistently in the House out of 9 possible seats. The 8th and 9th districts are usually highly competitive, and I know in my home district, the 4th, we seem to have a really compelling Dem candidate against Steve “Asshat Nuke’m” Buyer.

    It’s concievable that a majority of Indiana’s districts will be Dem seats after the 06 election. John “I didn’t know I couldn’t carry a gun on my flight” Hostettler is especially weak in the 8th, and Mike Sodrel barely eeked out a win in the 9th last time.

  10. What’s notable, I think, about this vote is that the people who would be most negatively affected by it — minor females — didn’t have a say at all.

    But isn’t that more or less how electoral politics works? Minimum voting/drinking ages, primary education standards, vaccination requirements, etc. are all set forth by legislatures which exclude the actual individuals affected by the legislation.

    I suppose an argument may be made, though, that while parental notification facially places minor females on a protected pedestal, it really puts them in a golden cage (much like legislation “protecting” female laborers did in the 19th and 20th centuries).

    Oh, and fuck NJ malls. The Jersey Shore is what it’s really about in the Garden State.

  11. I’m very happy we elected a Democratic Governor 2 terms in a row. It’s very exciting and I hope Kaine continues Warner’s good work.

    However, I’m not looking forward to our Lt. Governor and Attorney General, (Bill Bolling and Robert Whittman respectively) but I survived Kilgore as our current Attorney General, I suppose I’ll survive these 2.

    Now it’s rumored Warner will either fight George Allen for his seat on the Senate or run for President in 2008. I’m game either way and will support Warner completely, especially if Obama is his VP.

  13. Well, here’s my spin on what happened yesterday. On the ballot initiatives, it was a tactical mistake to hold this special election right now, when Arnie’s popouarlity is at an ebb, and when most of them could have been handled at the legislative level. I like non-partisan redistricting too, but this wasn’t the way to go about it. We probably shouldn’t be surprised parental notification failed, given CA’s social liberalism and the lack of a unified “yes” campaign.

    The NJ race was over before it started. NJ has decided it likes high taxes and corruption, so Corzine should be a good fit. The good news for the GOP is he is now out of the Senate, and Tom Kean, Jr. has emerged as a strong consensus candidate for Republicans, which makes that race a toss-up next year.

    In VA, Kilgore ran a lackluster campaign, failing to emphasize traditional GOP issues like taxes, instead focusing weirdly on the death penalty. His failure to excite the base hurt him, as did the independent candidacy of Russell Potts. Kaine didn’t exactly get a mandate though, as he’s now faced with a GOP lieutenant governor, AG, and legislature. His main function will be breaking out the veto pen.

    The best news yesterday was that the left-wing-backed Ohio election reforms failed, as did an NY proposition that would have granted sweeping new budget powers to our state’s dysfunctional legislature.

    Bottom line:
    1. The MSM and liberals will say this is a harbinger of impending GOP doom. They’re wrong. NJ and VA elections haven’t been accurate predictiors of the next year’s Congressional elections since 1993.
    2. Kilgore’s failure should be a sign that Republicans can’t take it for granted that the base will always pull through an unexciting candidate.

  14. Also wanted to comment on the Virginia victory for Dems. While Kaine is certainly a much better choice than the Republican Kilgore, Kaine isn’t exactly what pro-choice Dems hope for in elected officials. He has a “faith-based” opposition to abortion, which means that while he isn’t lobbying for a reversal of Roe v. Wade, he supports things like the criminalizing of so called-partial birth abortions and other restrictions. So let’s celebrate this victory but remember that we can, and should, do better.

  16. The VA race was incredibly nasty too. Lots of the pundits think that what did Kilgore in was his totally over-the-top ad in which the father of a murder victim talks about Kaine’s opposition to the death penalty and says that Kaine wouldn’t have executed Hitler.

  17. NJ has decided it likes high taxes and corruption, so Corzine should be a good fit.

    Keep telling yourself that, because as long as you believe that, we’ll sneak right up on you. In fact, despite a legacy of high taxes and corruption, your party cannot beat Dems in NJ because the national Republican Party is viewed all over the Northeast as nasty, partisan, corrupt, incompetent and in thrall to the Flat Earth Society. As long as you’re Delay/Rove dirty and Coburn/Brownback fanatical, you can’t buy a vowell above the Delaware River.

  18. 1. The MSM and liberals will say this is a harbinger of impending GOP doom. They’re wrong. NJ and VA elections haven’t been accurate predictiors of the next year’s Congressional elections since 1993.

    Actually, I don’t think most will say this. The MSM reports that I’ve seen so far seem to echo exactly what you’re saying – that this means nothing for the midterms. Not that I like defending the MSM, but you lumped us liberals in with them, so I felt that I had to respond. Personally, my own liberal thinking hasn’t been in line with the MSM for as long as I can remember.

  20. Note that I’m defending the liberal media, not MSM. Most of the TV MSM is stupid, not liberal, so I wish you wouldn’t call it that. And then of course, there’s Fox, which is stupid and decidedly not liberal. So again, please be accurate. The liberal media is reporting what you reported. The mainstream media is stupid. 🙂

  21. One of the ballot initiatives was to put together a nonpartisan commission of retired judges to draw the voter district lines, in order to prevent gerrymandering. Does that sound like a bad thing to you? Or is it just because a Republican proposed it?

    I meant “Way to go, California!” only as a response to the sentence before it about parental notification about abortion. To be quite honest, I don’t care all that much about the other initiatives, although the loss of Arnold’s four are quite a hit to him.

  22. Keep telling yourself that, because as long as you believe that, we’ll sneak right up on you.

    Sneaking up? NJ is a reflexively pro-Dem state. I don’t think anyone was surprised by yesterday’s results.

    In fact, despite a legacy of high taxes and corruption, your party cannot beat Dems in NJ because the national Republican Party is viewed all over the Northeast as nasty, partisan, corrupt, incompetent and in thrall to the Flat Earth Society.

    Right, that’s why Republicans control the governorships of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

  23. They’ve all done that by running from the national party on social issues, and several of them are holdovers from the 1990s swing right, and are on the way out as the national mood turns against the Republicans. Take a look at the electoral map in 2004 — solid blue throughout the Northeast. In Connecticut, Shays is in trouble. Shays! He’s an institution. He could have had that seat until he was Strom Thurmond’s age if the national party didn’t move so far tot he right of him. Lincoln Chaffee is in trouble in Rhode Island. And my universal consensus, Spitzer will replace Pataki.

    Besides, you folks have problems in your backyard. Virginia has a second consecutive Dem governor. Are you sure you can hold the Old Dominion in ’08? With your margin among black folks down to, what, 3%, that might be tough.

  24. In Connecticut, Shays is in trouble. Shays! He’s an institution.

    He’s also a liberal, who bucks the party every chance he gets. In fact, I think he may be the most liberal Republican in the House caucus. He’s a bad example to use if you’re trying to show that Republicans are failing because they’re moving right on social issues.

    Lincoln Chaffee is in trouble in Rhode Island.

    And the NRSC is fighting hard against his primary opponent, Steven Laffey, who is generally considered to be more conservative. Again, not a great pick if you’re trying to show that the national party is flacking for the social right.

    Besides, you folks have problems in your backyard. Virginia has a second consecutive Dem governor. Are you sure you can hold the Old Dominion in ‘08? With your margin among black folks down to, what, 3%, that might be tough.

    By that logic, you guys must really be concerned about Massachusetts, given that you’re on your third GOP governor in a row there. C’mon, give me a break. You can cherry-pick these examples all over the place of red states electing blue officials and vice versa. West Virginia has a Democratic governor if I’m not mistaken, but I don’t think Hillary’s going to be making many campaign stops there. Kilgore lost a close race in VA, but that was his own fault, as the rest of the GOP ticket did fine. None of this tells you anything about national trends. The House isn’t switching hands any time soon, and even if Democrats successfully defend all their incumbent Senate seats in ’06 and win every toss-up, they’ll only have a net gain of two.

  25. Nonetheless, the electoral college on the East Coast is absolutely closed to Republicans from New Jersey to Maine. It’s a solid Northeast for anyone the Democrats nominate in ’08.

    It is not at all clear how the midterm shakes out, because the filing deadlines have not passed in most places, so we don’t even know who many of the candidates are. The margin in the House will be a lot smaller in Bush’s last two lame duck years. The Republican legislators will have lots of reason to move to the center for ’08 races. The Republican three-branch sweep has accomplished just about nothing, much like the Contract with America.

  26. The Republican legislators will have lots of reason to move to the center for ‘08 races. The Republican three-branch sweep has accomplished just about nothing, much like the Contract with America.

    That is assuming that Dems will get back in charge. Considering that so far their only platform is that we aren’t George Bush / we aren’t the Republicans, I wouldn’t hope too much (especially since they won’t have Bush to kick around in 2008).

    The only other platform they have is “bring our troops home now” which if implemented would likely result in total collapse in Iraq, horrible unrest in the middle-east and sky high gas prices / tanking economy. Resulting in the Republicans back in charge in 2012. On the bright-side it might spur adoption of hybrid cars which would make at least the environmentalists happy.

  28. I too voted “NO” on just about everything, and was very pleased — and surprised — that 73 (parental notification) went down. We are a divided state — if you go to my blog (sorry, flagrant pitch) and click on the state maps by county, you see that the left has the coast and the right has the inland…

  31. Yeah, and I sure noticed the divide in the state (in general), when Joel and I went back to our old hometown for a few days. Palo Alto is way more liberal than Orange County.

    We got multiple last minute messages on our voice mail urging us to vote yes on the parental notification for abortion proposition, while all our snail mail urged us to vote no on it (I think because the snail mail was from people who had us down as liberals and wanted to bring out the liberal vote). I didn’t watch any of the TV ads, so I don’t know what campaigning went on there.

  32. Kilgore and Bolling used this infamous tagline to promote themselves: Liberal Tim Kaine wants to raise the gas tax or Liberal Leslie Byrne wants to allow beneifts to immigrants. Liberal is bad, Conservatives like Bill Bolling are good.

    They pulled out the evil “L” word but Kilgore didn’t scare his base enough. Kilgore also spent most of his time telling everyone how bad Kaine was and why they shouldn’t vote for him while forgetting he should be trying to sell himself in the meantime.

    I believe we picked up 3 Dem seats that were previously held by Repubs.

  33. What’s notable, I think, about this vote is that the people who would be most negatively affected by it — minor females — didn’t have a say at all. It would be easy for California voters, who are all of majority age and many of whom are parents, to vote on their first instinct of, “Well if my daughter were having an abortion, I’d want to know.” And yet most voted against the initiative anyway. To me, this demonstrates a remarkable ability on the part of a large chunk of California voters to cast ballots in the interest of weaker members of society, instead of simply following their first knee-jerk reaction. I suspect this is rare in electoral politics.

    Unborn fetus: “… agh… dammit. Well, I suppose it is hard to get a mic up” GOOD NIGHT EVERYBODY

    KEKEKEKEKEKE (Note: KEKEKEKE is code word for non-serious cheap shot.)

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