09/11: Winners & Losers
Category: Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
1. The Cook Political Report. Charlie Cook and his organization are awesome. Right on target once again. Three cheers for Jennifer Duffey and Amy Walter; they were right on the money.
2. Me. I got pretty close on the House and went 8/10 on the Senate (which would be a pretty good batting average in baseball), but I missed the big pick: loss of control in the Upper Chamber. Although I had Virginia as the key race, I had Allen squeaking by. I am still surprised that he lost--granted, I was one of the few surprised by this. (A review of my Senate picks here).
3. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are losers for all their cheerleading in advance of the election--and their sudden about-face "I told you so" recriminations the day after. (For another post on another day: Rush and Sean have it all wrong on immigration and minimum wage.)
4. Karl Rove and the theory of "turnout over persuasion" are losers (a review of my post considering the two schools of campaign strategy here).
5. Joe Lieberman is a big winner (a review of my posts on Joe Lieberman here). (FYI: Kos is a big loser--but not significant enough to merit his own number).
6. Mike DeWine and Jim Talent are major losses for the Senate and the United States. They are statesman of the first rank. So much of politics is timing. It is always a tragedy when good men get swept up in the zeitgeist of an election. Claire McCaskill may prove a great senator; we will wait and see. Sherrod Brown is in the Ted Kennedy-John Kerry class, and he will prove much too liberal for Ohio.
7. Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Minimum Wage win (see this post for a review of those issues as campaign levers). The Democrats wrecklessly gambled minimum wage on the election, which was risky, but they got away with it. Good for us. More on immigration and minimum wage as the debate unfolds.
8. The conspiracy theorists who assured us that diabolical Republican forces would rig the election through electronic voting machines lose again; my prediction: they are beat but not broken. They are silenced for now--but will be back soon.
9. The biggest loss in my book, however, is the Senate. I really hate to see the Senate turn over. I am happy that the GOP lost the House; we deserved to lose the House; the country is better off for the GOP losing the House. The Senate is a different story. The Upper Chamber is the more dignified body; the council of wise men. The "saucer that cools the fiery hot liquid of democratic-representative government." The Republicans are great at running the Senate.
More to the point, I hate to see the Republicans lose control of the Judiciary Committee. The Democratically controlled Judiciary Committee gave us the Robert Bork hearings and Anita Hill and the ultra-politicization of the judicial branch (not that the GOP did not return fire during the Clinton administration). But this all started when the Democrats won the Senate in 1986 and decided to teach Ronald Reagan and conservatives a lesson.
The change in chairmanship from Arlen Specter to Patrick Leahy is not a plus. We will see if the claims of a new tone and the end of partisanship are for real, but I have my doubts. One other thing: I trust Joe Biden as chairman of Foreign Relations (in fact, I have very high hopes for his leadership). However, trading John Warner for Carl Levin on Armed Services is not a happy development.
2. Me. I got pretty close on the House and went 8/10 on the Senate (which would be a pretty good batting average in baseball), but I missed the big pick: loss of control in the Upper Chamber. Although I had Virginia as the key race, I had Allen squeaking by. I am still surprised that he lost--granted, I was one of the few surprised by this. (A review of my Senate picks here).
3. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are losers for all their cheerleading in advance of the election--and their sudden about-face "I told you so" recriminations the day after. (For another post on another day: Rush and Sean have it all wrong on immigration and minimum wage.)
4. Karl Rove and the theory of "turnout over persuasion" are losers (a review of my post considering the two schools of campaign strategy here).
5. Joe Lieberman is a big winner (a review of my posts on Joe Lieberman here). (FYI: Kos is a big loser--but not significant enough to merit his own number).
6. Mike DeWine and Jim Talent are major losses for the Senate and the United States. They are statesman of the first rank. So much of politics is timing. It is always a tragedy when good men get swept up in the zeitgeist of an election. Claire McCaskill may prove a great senator; we will wait and see. Sherrod Brown is in the Ted Kennedy-John Kerry class, and he will prove much too liberal for Ohio.
7. Comprehensive Immigration Reform and Minimum Wage win (see this post for a review of those issues as campaign levers). The Democrats wrecklessly gambled minimum wage on the election, which was risky, but they got away with it. Good for us. More on immigration and minimum wage as the debate unfolds.
8. The conspiracy theorists who assured us that diabolical Republican forces would rig the election through electronic voting machines lose again; my prediction: they are beat but not broken. They are silenced for now--but will be back soon.
9. The biggest loss in my book, however, is the Senate. I really hate to see the Senate turn over. I am happy that the GOP lost the House; we deserved to lose the House; the country is better off for the GOP losing the House. The Senate is a different story. The Upper Chamber is the more dignified body; the council of wise men. The "saucer that cools the fiery hot liquid of democratic-representative government." The Republicans are great at running the Senate.
More to the point, I hate to see the Republicans lose control of the Judiciary Committee. The Democratically controlled Judiciary Committee gave us the Robert Bork hearings and Anita Hill and the ultra-politicization of the judicial branch (not that the GOP did not return fire during the Clinton administration). But this all started when the Democrats won the Senate in 1986 and decided to teach Ronald Reagan and conservatives a lesson.
The change in chairmanship from Arlen Specter to Patrick Leahy is not a plus. We will see if the claims of a new tone and the end of partisanship are for real, but I have my doubts. One other thing: I trust Joe Biden as chairman of Foreign Relations (in fact, I have very high hopes for his leadership). However, trading John Warner for Carl Levin on Armed Services is not a happy development.
Tocqueville wrote:
I think the tea leaves are hard to read on this election as a referndum on Iraq. For example, the Democrat's most pro-war candidate (Leiberman) won big. And the Republican's most openly anti-war candidate (Chafee) lost big.