Topic: politics
Here it is, the morning after, and I’m happy to stand corrected.
For weeks I’ve been telling people the Democrats would blow it at the end, that they would fall a few cards short of a full deck in the House. I felt they were foolishly banking on voter revulsion with the obviously revolting Republican Party when they should have been pushing a real program - some kind of new New Deal for this critical time.
As of this writing, however, the Dems have garnered around nine more seats than the 15 they needed to take power in the House - in other words, a dozen more seats than I thought they’d win. Good for them, and for the country, which benefits every time the door slams on another Rick Santorum.
But in the real vanguard for change, things could have been better. I was hoping Malachy McCourt would get the 50,000 votes in the NY gubernatorial race and thus get ballot status for the Greens. As it was, according to unofficial totals in this morning’s New York Times, McCourt got only a bit over 40,000 (and absentee ballots, etc., won’t make up the difference). On the brighter side, Green US senatorial candidate Howie Hawkins got more than 51,000 votes; this indicates a significant antiwar response to the winner, Hillary Clinton.
Too bad insurgent candidates Eric Massa, Jack Davis, and Dan Maffei didn’t whip rightwingers Randy Kuhl, Tom Reynolds, and Jim Walsh, respectively. But Massa, Davis, and Maffei each lost to the incumbent by only 2-4 percent, and this was in what are always touted as “dependably Republican” Congressional districts.
I wonder what would have happened if Massa, a strong and photogenic campaigner, had been running against the politically-weakened Reynolds. Probably Massa would have squeaked out a victory. You’d think the Dems could have found a Massa clone somewhere in the district. Instead, they followed the money in just the wrong way: going with the wealthy, self-funded Davis, a One-Dimensional Man who stood little chance until the Foley scandal eroded Reynolds’ support.
