Stumbling through history
Oh yeah, babies–here’s what happens when you have a race between a thin resume who couldn’t win a “one-man charm contest” and a neophyte who until six months ago couldn’t get anyone to talk to him but the Greeley Tribune. Stay tuned, folks–if you give a crap. As of this minute, the Denver Post vote returns have Bennet and Buck within 9,000 votes of each other, with Bennet at 47.4% of the vote and Buck at 47.0% (and 87% of precincts reporting.) It’s going down to the provisional ballots and the military ballots.
In other Colorado election news: the GOP flipped two U.S. House seats (CO-3 and CO-4), lost the Governor’s race (but that was a foregone conclusion), and all of our idiotic ballot measures and amendments to the clusterfr@ack that is the Colorado Constitution failed.
Party on dudes, and be exellent to each other. The fate of the Republic is in their hands now!
Historiann 
Here in Florida the Democratic Governor candidate just conceded. It’s a complete Republican takeover. I may move to Colorado. Does Baa Baa Ram have any openings? 🙂
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I’m still shocked about Russ. And I don’t even live in Wisconsin.
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BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAH! “Does Baa [Ram U.] have any openings?”
Surely you must be joking, loyal reader. We haven’t hired anyone since 2007. And Colorado has just elected a Democratic governor who’s going to do the Republicans’ dirty work for them and de-fund higher education!
Awesome!!!
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Well our friend, the Medicare Scam artist, Rick “Baldy” Scott is going to completely gut the state government, privatize the prison system and other state institutions, and destroy our own K-12 system. God knows what he will do to higher ed. Packin my bags, packin my bags…..
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Though Historiann, as some of your earlier commenters pointed out, the education system in Colorado is is f**ked up for some pretty complicated reasons, TABOR among them; Democrats can’t be blamed for everything here. And strangely enough, some schools — shocking as it may be — actually are hiring in Colorado, so maybe part of this is Baa Ram U’s mismanagement, not all the politicians’ fault.
And the Dems certainly can’t be blamed for making Ken Buck an anti-choice, anti-amnesty, anti-separation-of-church-and-state conservative who believes that my people — the homosexualists — somehow chose their homosexuality. Like alcoholics; you know! I hope he goes down in flames, great burning homosexual flames!
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While the inability of candidates like Bennett and the Blue Dogs to win may not be surprising, I was surprised at the defeat of real progressives, like Greyson and Kilroy. If the “liberal” wing of the Democratic party wants it to be less centrist, you think they would have come out in support of these individuals. What’s the take-away message from this election-it doesn’t matter what kind of a Democrat you are, you will lose?
And I agree with HA above. It is going to take a lot more than 2 years of Democrats in power in Colorado to undo the mess that Republicans spent 8 years crafting in terms of funding for Higher Education.
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ej–the Dems have run the state house for 6 years now, and they’ve held the Governor’s office for 4. Like Obama and the Washington Dems, the reason they don’t take progressive action is that they don’t want to.
Progressive voters are only useful in general eletions. Democratic pols don’t serve us because we don’t make them. We go ahead and pull the D lever anyway, so why should they?
Homostorian Americanist: you got your wish! Bennet looks like he won (see my newest post.) I don’t know if 7,000 votes really counts as “great burning homosexual flames,” but I’m certain that gaffes like his comments on homosexuality = alcoholism helped Buck lose at least 7,000 votes.
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It’s strange, though, because that’s been up on the Post’s website for some time. And yet the lead doesn’t really seem that substantial — 7,000 is not a lot of votes. CNN and NYTimes still aren’t calling it, which worries me.
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I know–but I think the Post knows where the uncounted votes are coming from better than the national news sources or the NYT. I’ve heard that they’re mostly in Boulder County, which is NOT Buck country!
Still, either way it’s far from a distinguished win on either man’s part. Bennet had a *hyoooge* cash advantage, plus all of the outside groups running ads saying that Buck is a rapistaxemurdererchildmolester. But as I said above, Buck failed to do himself any favors pretty much whenever he opened his mouth in October.
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But that’s exactly my point. The people who were considered the most progressive Democrats lost. Where were their supporters? According to your logic, these are the people who have earned Democratic votes, yet they were hung out to dry. You can’t say their supporters stayed home (or worse, voted Republican!) because they disapproved. If Liberals want to move things away from a center/right position, they need to be proactive, not just complain and abstain.
And I direct you to HA’s point about the problems with Higher Ed in Colorado. Dems did work to dismantle Tabor, and Ritter was willing to dip into K-12 funding in part to help Higher Ed, which certainly didn’t win him points in the polls. I think there is a structural problem in Colorado, not just a political one.
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Decaying Rustbelt State also had a Republican sweep. I would have hoped that a state whose biggest export is its own citizens would have been smarter. But, no such luck.
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ej–most of the people who lost were people like Salazar and Markey in Colorado–Blue Dogs. The progressive losses were outliers, not the big story. Unfortunately, the lesson Republicans and the media will push will be the “Obama was too liberal!!!!” story line, rather than the truth, which is that Obama’s caution and conciliation (and that of the Democrats in congress) led us here.
If I could have I would have voted to re-elect Grayson or Feingold. But, it looks like they’re collateral damage in the wave.
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But now I’m confused. If you approve of Grayson and Feingold and if their own constituencies did not, are their losses the fault of Obama and the Democratic establishment or are they the fault of the voters who chose not to reelect them? I may think that those voters were misinformed and foolish, but it’s still down to them, not Obama. This isn’t just about the media message, as you say above, it’s also about what actual voters did, and sadly actual voters did not vote for Progressive candidates. I’m not sure that you can blame Obama for that.
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“According to your logic, these are the people who have earned Democratic votes, yet they were hung out to dry.”
The repeated back-of-the-hand from the White House and Congress to Democrats, liberals, and progressives meant a whole lotta of “meh” among voters.
Women and gays have been taking a lot of “collateral damage” from the President’s bargaining away our rights. I’m not going to shed a tear because Feingold got caught in the crossfire.
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Agree with Emma. Gotta go teach the earnest youth of Colorado.
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“I would have hoped that a state whose biggest export is its own citizens would have been smarter.”
What’s so not smart about voting out Dems? Granholm in MI has been a huge disappointment. What have Dems, as a party or as individuals, to earn votes?
The question always comes back to this: what real choices do voters have? I’m not sure how one can blame voters for ping-ponging back and forth between whoever they perceive as the lesser evil of the moment. That’s exactly how the system is set up and exactly how voters are conditioned. It’s like blaming Pavlov’s dogs for salivating at the bell.
This, right here, what happened yesterday, this is how it works because that’s how the people in power designed it to work. This is what all the smoke and mirrors and BILLIONS of dollars is supposed to lead to.
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I’m totally comfortable blaming people for sitting out this election (the “meh”), especially if they turn around and spend their time complaining about the current state of affairs. Painting all Dems with the same brush is inaccurate. There were some very good candidates running, and they lost largely because of low turn out. I’m not willing to accept apathy as justification.
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Agreed that sitting out an election is not honorable, especially if one is inclined to b!tch about our sad state of affairs. One can always vote for a write-in or 3rd party candidate. But just because a few progressives didn’t get elected doesn’t necessarily mean that all are doomed. Maybe Alan Grayson was spending too much time on C-SPAN to worry enough about constituent services? Maybe his district changed a lot and he didn’t pay attention? Maybe he’s not good at the retail/shoe leather end of things? I don’t know.
Feingold went down, but Kucinich will be back, Bernie Sanders will be back, Boxer got re-elected, etc. Hell, Governor Moonbeam will be Governor again! (Although I don’t think of Jerry Brown as a liberal so much–so maybe he’s out of place here. I just like calling him “Governor Moonbeam!”)
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In Pennsylvania, Sestak, a true progressive, lost to Toomey by 51-49 (despite being heavily outspent) while Onorato lost by 10 points. If Sestak had even a hint of national progressive support that flooded PA in 2008 he probably would have won. But there were no NYers knocking on doors and the only robo-calls we got were from a leading black republican listing the not inconsiderable things Corbett had done for the black community/my neighborhood (going after check cashing places, prosecuting crooked pols who pocketed considerable amounts of public money funneled through non-profits that bought neighborhood institutions and bankrupted them while lining their pockets – all dems, FYI). If Corbett works with Mayor Nutter to through half the city council in jail in Philly, he’ll probably win my vote next time around. Sigh.
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“Painting all Dems with the same brush is inaccurate. There were some very good candidates running, and they lost largely because of low turn out. I’m not willing to accept apathy as justification.”
What’s the point of “good” Dems who can’t get anything done because the Dems as party suck. Tell me, what has Feingold accomplished in the Senate in the past 2 years? What has Kucinich accomplished in the House in the past 2 year? Did they get us a good healthcare bill? Stop the war? Protect choice? Stop FISA? How about the Patriot Act? If the Dems suck, it doesn’t matter what individual Dems do or don’t do because it isn’t about individual Dems. It’s about the party sucking and pulling all the “good dems” under with it.
Apathy? You can call it that, I suppose. Or you can call it Dem suckage, which is what it was.
It’s not MY job as a voter to be enthusiastic about crap and dreck and double dealing and my rights being used as a bargaining chip and individual dems who have no power to accomplish their individual goals. It’s not MY job as a voter to play jr. political pundit and excuse away Dem party failures. It’s my job to vote for politicians who get things done for me. And if both the Dems and Repubs can’t or won’t get things done for me, why should I vote? Who is there to vote for?
Sure, Feingold’s gone. But his presence in the Senate was meaningless except as a voice of consience who couldn’t get anything done.
The dems are being held accountable for their failure to exercise the power they have held since at least 2006 for the good of the people who voted for them. If that means that some “good guys” end up shot in the back as collateral damage, oh fucking well. Maybe they should have dumped the party that dumped on them.
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Seconding Emma, as I am wont to do in this space. I really wanted Russ Feingold to win–Ron Johnson is execrable–and if I lived in Wisconsin I would have voted for him. Living in a state that had less at stake on its ballot, I voted, because I am not apathetic.
But ej, please don’t tell me to care more about a senator who (in the name of presidential prerogative or lord knows what) helped put John Roberts on the Supreme Court. Feingold was all neutral and principled about forcing pregnant women to give birth; I’m all neutral and principled about tolerating whichever WI dude gets more votes.
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I never said included Feingold in my list of progressive Dems. I applaud his decision to not take outside money, but I don’t consider him terribly liberal on a lot of issues (i.e. gun rights). I was referring to the number of more recently elected folks who were true progressives, but lost in spite of their opposition to the more centrist Dems.
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I’m the one who brought in Feingold–I do think it’s too bad that he lost, but I also agree with Emma that he’s been notably less impressive since ’08 without Bush as a foil. He was the lone vote against the so-called PATRIOT Act in 2001. But, there’s only so much good or damage one Senator can do without majority support. And the Dems lost Congress Tuesday because of their inability or unwillingness to use the political power they were handed in 2006 and 2008.
Use it or lose it.
I linked to this in an earlier post, but the interview Jack Hitt did with Paul Begala is very revealing. Hitt describes how the Dems were cowed from taking a vote before the elections on an issue (middle- and lower-income tax cuts) they win on 2-1. Begala marvels at the cowardice, and points out that there’s no way the Republicans would walk away from an issue they win on 2-1.
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