Official midterm elections thread

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Sestak is up by 89,500 votes in the latest official results with 78% reporting, so I do question the wisdom of ABC's calling for his opponent.

[RedImperator]

The melodrama isn't really necessary. Yeah, this is ugly, but the Dems still control one house and Obama has his veto pen even if they don't. You might have noticed, in 2004, the GOP controlled the House and Senate, and had managed to get some kind of talking monkey into the White House.

You might have also noticed that two years after 2004, the Democrats spanked the Republicans. Believe it or not, this isn't the end of the world.

[Broomstick]

No, it's not the end of the world, even the situation you noted in 2004 was not the end of the world, but it IS very frustrating for some of us.

We need to make things BETTER in this country, or at least not worse, and I don't see that happening. We're still on a downward spiral in many ways and that is bad. Bad enough if we were talking about some backwater country but the US is still a major world power and the US going down the shitter is bad for people elsewhere, too.

I really don't want to see actual unrest and rebellion but we are still headed in that direction. That's bad, too. It certainly could happen here, it has in the past, it could in the future. Living in a time of riots and political assassinations sucks. I don't want to see that again.

[Bakustra]

The melodrama isn't really necessary. Yeah, this is ugly, but the Dems still control one house and Obama has his veto pen even if they don't. You might have noticed, in 2004, the GOP controlled the House and Senate, and had managed to get some kind of talking monkey into the White House.

You might have also noticed that two years after 2004, the Democrats spanked the Republicans. Believe it or not, this isn't the end of the world.

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

[Liberty]

The melodrama isn't really necessary. Yeah, this is ugly, but the Dems still control one house and Obama has his veto pen even if they don't. You might have noticed, in 2004, the GOP controlled the House and Senate, and had managed to get some kind of talking monkey into the White House.

You might have also noticed that two years after 2004, the Democrats spanked the Republicans. Believe it or not, this isn't the end of the world.

That was my point about studying history.

What's different about this year, it seems to me, is the whole teaparty thing. My suspicion is that if you started asking the average teapartier supporter which public services he'd like to see cut (let's see, Social Security, Medicare, or both?), you have them backtracking in a heartbeat. I don't thing these people realize what they're supporting. The question is if the tea party will last.

And yes, Indiana sucks this year. Maybe Ellsworth will come back in 2012 and take his old house seat back.

[Kyler]

And yes, Indiana sucks this year. Maybe Ellsworth will come back in 2012 and take his old house seat back.

I don't know, I have feeling if Brad is offered some type of job representing law enforcement on national level he may stick with that for awhile.
It is really hard to say what he is going to do now that he is lost. I am sure he'll do fine though, he is a really great guy. There are talks the mayor of Evansville may run for the governor of Indiana. Brad could definitely win the job pretty easily, since he was the countys sheriff for 8 years and knows all the local politics.

[Simon_Jester]

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

I'd expect the opposite. Deadlock if the Republicans have a solid majority and the Tea Partiers can be reined in from trying to pass measures that the Republican leadership knows damn well won't pass.

Conversely, if the Tea Party Republicans and the relatively moderate Republicans can't be kept together under the same tent, then things get interesting.

Essentially, the real question remains what it was before the election: will the Tea Party split the Republican Party to any substantial degree, or will they vote in lockstep with the Republican leadership? I'd bet on the latter, but that's mostly sheer pessimism on my part.

[Cecelia5578]

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

I'd expect the opposite. Deadlock if the Republicans have a solid majority and the Tea Partiers can be reined in from trying to pass measures that the Republican leadership knows damn well won't pass.

Conversely, if the Tea Party Republicans and the relatively moderate Republicans can't be kept together under the same tent, then things get interesting.

Essentially, the real question remains what it was before the election: will the Tea Party split the Republican Party to any substantial degree, or will they vote in lockstep with the Republican leadership? I'd bet on the latter, but that's mostly sheer pessimism on my part.

I just have to say this, but what moderate Republicans?

[Pelranius]

Are you somehow believing that what will be in effect a hung parliament with the teabagger faction holding the balance of power will somehow not result in fucking retarded social and economic policies being implemented?

You think radical legislation can get passed by a deadlocked congress with an opposition party President based on what?

I'm more worried about a GOP controlled House shutting down the government. I rely on the post 9/11 Gi Bill for my main source of money. The fucking GOP can kiss my ass. Then again, it wasn't like Congressional Rethugs were big fans of the post 9/11 Gi Bill anyways.

If Boehner somehow tries to shut down government like Newt Gingirch, the Democrats could probably run the entire surviving membership of the SDS and Black Panthers as Representative candidates and landslide back the House in 2012. Of course, that won't make up for the damage in the meanwhile.

[The Romulan Republic]

...well shit. It looks like you done fucked this one up America.

I guess we'll see you on the other side of the next depression/war/genocide.

You guys say that every time the Republicans win. It didn't happen in 2004, and it won't happen now.

Yes, I have to agree. Its depressing, but as RedImperator for example noted, even if they control the House they probably won't take the Senate, and they won't have the White House. And God willing they won't have the White House in two years. And even then, I don't know if things would get as bad as genocide. Its a set-back, but its a bit early to be seriously talking about genocide taking place.

And here's some good news: CNN apparently called the Colorado governorship for the Democrats. The GOP guy got hilariously crushed. I'm disturbed that Tancredo got so many votes, but at least he lost.

[RedImperator]

The melodrama isn't really necessary. Yeah, this is ugly, but the Dems still control one house and Obama has his veto pen even if they don't. You might have noticed, in 2004, the GOP controlled the House and Senate, and had managed to get some kind of talking monkey into the White House.

You might have also noticed that two years after 2004, the Democrats spanked the Republicans. Believe it or not, this isn't the end of the world.

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

Well, you have the true believers and then you have the hacks who jumped on the teabag train. The hacks have already sold out; they were probably born sold out.

The true believers, on the other hand, won't sell out for at least 20 minutes.

[General Zod]

It looks like Tancredo's going to stay the fuck out of the Governor's seat for awhile longer. . . unfortunately I can't say the same about the CO Senate staying in Democrat hands. There's only a 4% difference with 10% reporting.

[The Romulan Republic]

But the Democrat had the lead according to CNN.

I voted for Bennet, and I am watching this race with interest.

[Bakustra]

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

I'd expect the opposite. Deadlock if the Republicans have a solid majority and the Tea Partiers can be reined in from trying to pass measures that the Republican leadership knows damn well won't pass.

Conversely, if the Tea Party Republicans and the relatively moderate Republicans can't be kept together under the same tent, then things get interesting.

Essentially, the real question remains what it was before the election: will the Tea Party split the Republican Party to any substantial degree, or will they vote in lockstep with the Republican leadership? I'd bet on the latter, but that's mostly sheer pessimism on my part.

Deadlock would come in because the Republican leadership currently wants to moderate their tone and compromise (but people will still take their rhetoric about never surrendering at face value), especially with the situation as of tonight. But if the Tea Partiers are sincere and bullheaded enough to try for blocking anything that doesn't carry their stamp of approval, trying to chop out any "pork", and generally acting like a bull in a china shop... then they become a liability and they weaken the Republicans because they'll fight any attempt at compromise. But if the Republicans themselves start crossing the aisle to crush the Teabaggers back into line, then they'll face primary challenges and worse in 2012. Either way, they end up fucking the Republicans over, almost 95 style. (It'd be worse than 95 if all the mainstream Republicans in the House got their brains sucked out and the Tea Party set the agenda).

Alternately, if they can be brought into line (the really most likely scenario), I think that we'll mainly see battles over the Bush tax cuts and the Repubs will probably have to shelve any attempts to hurt health care reform. We may actually see DADT repealed, though I doubt it.

I just have to say this, but what moderate Republicans?

Snowe, Collins, Scott Brown. People who vote with the party on big votes, but will cross the aisle and work bipartisan on smaller matters.

Well, you have the true believers and then you have the hacks who jumped on the teabag train. The hacks have already sold out; they were probably born sold out.

The true believers, on the other hand, won't sell out for at least 20 minutes.

Hopefully they won't sell out until they threaten to shut down the government over something idiotic. Then you'd probably be able to hear Boehner's sigh of relief from where I'm at in Michigan.

[Cecelia5578]

Well, its still not over for progressives yet. There's still Prop 19 in CA, and the Alaskan results aren't going to be in for a while.

I guess the moral of the (really, really) tight races here is to get of your arse and vote.

[Cecelia5578]

Snowe, Collins, Scott Brown. People who vote with the party on big votes, but will cross the aisle and work bipartisan on smaller matters.

Smaller matters that are, quite honestly, close to irrelevant. Especially Snowe and Collins-when was the last time they seriously crossed the GOP leadership on anything of importance? Fuck, its not as if teabaggers are a big movement in Maine, they are extremely popular, and probably wouldn't have lost anything had they voted to overturn DADT.

[FSTargetDrone]

Its a set-back, but its a bit early to be seriously talking about genocide taking place.

Yeah, a "bit" indeed. Whoever even started with the "genocide" stuff needs to settle down and not dissolve into a ball of histrionics.

[General Zod]

But the Democrat had the lead according to CNN.

I voted for Bennet, and I am watching this race with interest.

http://www.denverpost.com/election2010

The gap between Bennett and Buck is increasing, but I'm not inclined to breathe a bit easier until it's more than 10%. On the bright side the stupid personhood law is going to be quashed. We can still eat fetuses.

[weemadando]

If anything it looks like it'll be similar to Australia at the moment. Neither side will be able to get much done without selling out on so much to get the votes that it becomes a zero-sum game.

Wait, did I just describe the past two years when the Dems held all of the power? Or the past 3 years in Australian when Labor had it all in the bag?

I fucking hate opinion poll driven politics.

[Bakustra]

Snowe, Collins, Scott Brown. People who vote with the party on big votes, but will cross the aisle and work bipartisan on smaller matters.

Smaller matters that are, quite honestly, close to irrelevant. Especially Snowe and Collins-when was the last time they seriously crossed the GOP leadership on anything of importance? Fuck, its not as if teabaggers are a big movement in Maine, they are extremely popular, and probably wouldn't have lost anything had they voted to overturn DADT.

Except that Snowe, as an example, isn't trying to overturn health care reform, rather trying to modify some of its provisions. She has a strong enough party identification to vote by bloc on major votes (and the GOP will not support an end to DADT until its base demands it), but her opinions and actions identify her as a moderate. That merely speaks to the ruthless, Blofeld-esque efficiency of John Boehner rather than duplicity on her behalf.

[Simon_Jester]

I just have to say this, but what moderate Republicans?

And that is why I said "relatively."

I don't expect it to happen. If it did, what I'd think to see would be more along the lines of the Tea Party faction will prove indisciplined and make it impossible for the Republicans to play "politics is the art of the possible." They'll be so busy demanding an end to Social Security/withdrawal from the UN/whatever that the government will deadlock and the Republicans will be forced to choose between ignoring the Tea Party or looking really stupid.

Deadlock would come in because the Republican leadership currently wants to moderate their tone and compromise (but people will still take their rhetoric about never surrendering at face value), especially with the situation as of tonight. But if the Tea Partiers are sincere and bullheaded enough to try for blocking anything that doesn't carry their stamp of approval, trying to chop out any "pork", and generally acting like a bull in a china shop... then they become a liability and they weaken the Republicans because they'll fight any attempt at compromise. But if the Republicans themselves start crossing the aisle to crush the Teabaggers back into line, then they'll face primary challenges and worse in 2012. Either way, they end up fucking the Republicans over, almost 95 style. (It'd be worse than 95 if all the mainstream Republicans in the House got their brains sucked out and the Tea Party set the agenda).

Ayup. This is what I'm talking about.

Alternately, if they can be brought into line (the really most likely scenario), I think that we'll mainly see battles over the Bush tax cuts and the Repubs will probably have to shelve any attempts to hurt health care reform. We may actually see DADT repealed, though I doubt it.

If Obama were committed he'd make an executive order of it just so he could check something off on his resume in 2012 with his own base (he'll probably face primary challengers in 2012, credible ones).

Somehow, I don't think he will...

Except that Snowe, as an example, isn't trying to overturn health care reform, rather trying to modify some of its provisions. She has a strong enough party identification to vote by bloc on major votes (and the GOP will not support an end to DADT until its base demands it), but her opinions and actions identify her as a moderate. That merely speaks to the ruthless, Blofeld-esque efficiency of John Boehner rather than duplicity on her behalf.

What good will that do, though? Put simply, if Snowe can be counted on to vote for X because the party leaders tell her to do so, it doesn't really matter what she thinks or says. Not unless she's so afraid of running into Tea Party challengers that she decides to flip parties (like Arlen Specter, though Specter's fate would not be encouraging to her).

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

I'd expect the opposite. Deadlock if the Republicans have a solid majority and the Tea Partiers can be reined in from trying to pass measures that the Republican leadership knows damn well won't pass.

It works to the GOP's advantage to have a fired-up class of freshmen Republicans who want to pass Republican things. There's no way in hell Obama would ever sign onto a Republican agenda, except at political gunpoint . . . and with the GOP only having a razor-thin margin in the House and no control of the Senate, they have neither the gun, nor the bullets to put into it. But, they can paint Obama and the Democrats with the same "Party of NO" rhetoric the Democrats tried to use on them going into the midterms. Government will grind to a halt for the next two years. The Republicans will say "Hey, we tried to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. We tried to cut taxes on small business to grow the economy. We tried to reign in wasteful Democrat party spending. We tried to roll back the failed socialist experiment of Obama-care. We had a plan that's right for America, and look who obstructed us at every turn! Barry Hussein Obama tried to paint us as the party of NO! But when you, the American People, told him and Pelosi that their liberal agenda was wrong for America . . . did he want to work with us? NO! He became President NO!"

With many of the anonymously funded groups that got the teabaggers elected having registered as "social service" groups . . . these groups will be spending money on "call your Congressman and tell him to vote YES on insane conservative shit" ads for the next two years. It would be to the GOP's advantage to let the Teabaggers indulge themselves, because it makes the Republican party look like the party of action.

[Bakustra]

@Simon_Jester
The executive order would just prevent enforcement, not actually kill the bill, and more importantly, would ruin the chances of getting it repealed (which were pretty good until the filibuster) for the next couple of years, barring some kind of magical, progressive/liberal yet unconcerned with such end-runs of the separation of powers Democratic supermajority in both branches. Basically, while Obama could do more, any lasting solution would require either a separate challenge in the courts or a legislative repeal.

The thing with moderates is that if the climate in Washington cooled significantly, then Snowe and Collins would cross the aisle regularly. Currently, it's the partisan atmosphere that makes the Republicans vote in lockstep. I think that trying to fix it would be problematic, because much of what underlies the atmosphere is subconscious, but alternately, if you could free them to vote their conscience by breaking the RNC stranglehold on support or by creating a Tea Party faction in Congress to break the ultraright away from the rest of the party, then you would still see them cross over.

It's not, as many people love to claim, just a matter of faceless Republicans marching together to crush freedom, but something rather more complex and salvageable.

What I'm looking forward to is whether the Tea Party will fall in line with the Republicans readily or not. If they don't, things will become very interesting in Washington. I think that things could well end up pretty deadlocked then.

I'd expect the opposite. Deadlock if the Republicans have a solid majority and the Tea Partiers can be reined in from trying to pass measures that the Republican leadership knows damn well won't pass.

It works to the GOP's advantage to have a fired-up class of freshmen Republicans who want to pass Republican things. There's no way in hell Obama would ever sign onto a Republican agenda, except at political gunpoint . . . and with the GOP only having a razor-thin margin in the House and no control of the Senate, they have neither the gun, nor the bullets to put into it. But, they can paint Obama and the Democrats with the same "Party of NO" rhetoric the Democrats tried to use on them going into the midterms. Government will grind to a halt for the next two years. The Republicans will say "Hey, we tried to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. We tried to cut taxes on small business to grow the economy. We tried to reign in wasteful Democrat party spending. We tried to roll back the failed socialist experiment of Obama-care. We had a plan that's right for America, and look who obstructed us at every turn! Barry Hussein Obama tried to paint us as the party of NO! But when you, the American People, told him and Pelosi that their liberal agenda was wrong for America . . . did he want to work with us? NO! He became President NO!"

With many of the anonymously funded groups that got the teabaggers elected having registered as "social service" groups . . . these groups will be spending money on "call your Congressman and tell him to vote YES on insane conservative shit" ads for the next two years. It would be to the GOP's advantage to let the Teabaggers indulge themselves, because it makes the Republican party look like the party of action.

See, this assumes that Republicans just want to sit around and do nothing for the next two years, rather than try to get something out of it. I think that you'll instead see them quietly trying to compromise with Democrats on various issues over the next two years, because the last time they tried something like that, Bill Clinton swept the 96 elections, and they're worried that Obama will do the same and come out even more popular like Slick Willie.

[Elfdart]

Am I the only one disturbed the the thought of the nation being tea-bagged by Speaker Boner?

[LMSx]

Harry Reid liiiiiiivvessss!

For now. 54-44 with about half the vote in