Politics Revisited

Politics Revisited

In a blogpost [1] shortly after the midterm elections I promised to post more here about politics.  So after a brief respite from blogging (work, work, work -- not a complaint!) here it is, with much of what had been written earlier and an update based on recent events.

Losing and Winning



Election Day this year resulted in a major surprise: it seems that all my votes went to winners.  There's a local (county
not village or town) race or two about which I remain unsure, but for
the most part, I cast my vote with the majority this time.  Wow,
that's unusual. (update: those locals went my way, too!)



Voting for Hillary for Senator [2] or for Spitzer for Governor [3] was a no-brainer.  Their opponents [4] waged almost no campaign effort, and had less name recognition than Mr. Whipple [5].  And Mr.Whipple's been retired for some time now.  I cast a clothespin vote [6] for son-of-Mario [7],
but the stench was still evident.  Why do this?  Here's why:
the woman running versus son-of-Mario made Ginny Ferarro seem like an
altar boy, to mix and mangle many a metaphor.



But this is not about gloating.  Nor is it to celebrate the
changes in office here in NY and elsewhere.  The topic at hand is
losing and winning.  And knowing where politicians are coming
from, where they stand, how they might vote, how they might represent
their constituencies.



In an earlier post [8] I made mention of the seeming apathy in Connecticut,
at least due to a lack of political signs, bumper stickers, and general
public view of the citizenry taking issue.  I'd driven through CT
a few times in the course of the campaign, and had seen almost no
political messages at all.  Teeny little Rhode Island, next door,
was teeming with political messages, but CT seemed asleep at the wheel
of the party wagon(s).  One drives through RI in a mater of a just
few heartbeats, but --thumpety-thump, thumpety-thump-- impressions re:
Whitehouse and Chaffee (and a bunch of local races) were in abundance
in Rhode Island.. Granted, this observation is coming from a New Yorker
just passing through.  Stopping, if at all, just for gas or to
visit a rest stop.  But all my trips back and forth took me
through major cities as well as rural areas.

In Connecticut, despite all the attention paid by political TV analysts and pundits, the race was a sleeper.  The only excitement seemed to take place among the correspondents covering returns on election night.  And the news reporters and pundits showed greater concern than did the Connecticut voters, or so it seems in retrospect.

In the matter of losing and winning, one can say that Lamont lost, and yet he won the Democratic nomination, he won the primary, he captured the ticket from Joe Lieberman.  But the bottom line is where it all stops.  Lamont lost the senate race.  He was a one-item, one-issue candidate. And that issue was more 'I am not Joe Lieberman" than an anti war or anti GOP-leaning representation by a Democrat or any other  issue of substance.  Further, Lamont all but vanished afte rthe primary.  He's a wealthy man, so it wasn't a lack of campaign funds.  He simply vanished.  This is amateurism in politics, and would not have boded well for Lamont as a senator or a Washington player.

I'm no Lieberman fan.  When he was on Gore's ticket on 2000 it was a bad move.  As a senator since then Lieberman has become a Republican in  Democrat's clothing.  He ran as an independent, but his voting record aligns him more with Chuck Nagel than Chuck Schumer.  Connecticut voters had a miserable choice last time around: a Republican not supported by the Party, a Democrat not supported by any campaign intelligence other than "I am not Joe" as the campaign meme, and a Republican formerly known as a Democrat then running as an Independent.  Sad for Nutmeg state residents, the most experienced man won.

Now we can look at how winning and losing will effect races ahead of us.

The GOP took a number of hard hits in November.  As a result of this clear statement of discontent with "how things are' among the voters, many GOPers are distancing themselves from the current administration, from support for the war, from support for W's "surge" plan (in which more lives will be put at risk in a civil war brought on by a war waged by  W, Cheney, Halliburton and Associates) and from things, generally, as they are.

The Republicans seem to be taking their lead from a page in Bill Clinton's playbook.  No, not getting frisky with interns.  Claiming party loyalty and identification, while moving firmly into The Center.  The Center, where partisan lines are harder to differentiate, where room to move always exists (nicely termed as modifying or rethinking one's position), and where having no firm belief is a tool used to convince voters that the candidate is in touch, acting on thier behalf.  Much as the current White House occupant likes to poke fun at focus groups, it appears his party is paying more attention to voter attitude and perception research than to how it feels in the heart, or felt in the political inclination just a few years back.

Welcome to the new century, where chameleon politics make it very hard to determine which candidate feels what way about a good many issues.

This is bad for the Democrats. It provides the GOP with a headstart, time to reshape and partially reinvent itself.  It breathes life into moderate Republicans and gives hard liners two years to ballyhoo how much toward the center and far from the right they've come.  Oddly, McCain (and Lieberman, his ideologue-in-comman and running mate perhaps?) has gone whole hog in his support fior the surge and the war, despite public opinion to the contrary.

And suddenly that party outsider, that twice divorced --or maybe once divorced once annulled-- lapsed Catholic sorta kinda liberal (by GOP standards) New Yorker married to Jew (just like Howard Dean in that regard) Rudy Giuiliani is looking like a credible alternative to the way things were over in GOPville.

Comng soon: the Democratic Presidential Wannabe Follies.