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Source: Reuters -
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Republicans across America will be waking up on Thursday morning with the first smile on their faces since 2006.
Two gubernatorial victories, in Virginia and New Jersey, will see Republicans make the case that a referendum was held on Obama and that he was found wanting. Facts won't get in the way and the manner in which supporters of the victorious new Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, mockingly chanted "Yes We Can" would have been galling for Democrats.
In Virginia, social and economic conservative Bob McDonnell thumped his unfortunately named Democratic candidate Mr Deeds (59-41%). For those readers who have watched the Gary Cooper movie of the same name (or the Adam Sandler remake), the Virginian Mr Deeds had none of Cooper's Chance Gardiner -like charm.
Deeds was arguably doomed from the point that he won the Democratic primary; coming from rural south-western Virginia he never managed to connect with Democrats in the more populous northern Virginia. In fact he never even connected with his own people, losing the rural vote 33-66%.
I've been following the Deeds train wreck ever since I arrived in DC in mid-August, and by September I was already involved in some heavy plotting with friends - always late at night, and always after having way too many drinks - about the need to manufacture an " October Surprise" surprise against the Republican. But being a good Fulbrighter, these plans were always left at the bar, not that they would have helped.
I went down to a couple of polling stations to witness the fall. A colleague chose to go down with HMS Deeds, so I went along to hear the band's final tune, which wasn't so much sombre as ambivalent. In Arlington, which should have been a Deeds stronghold, a poor field worker was being shunned or glared at by voters as he tried to offer them Democratic sample ballots.
McDonnell, who cast himself as a bi-partisan-seeking moderate, wrote a masters thesis a couple of decades ago which flayed women who dared leave the sink while also vilifying solo mothers as degenerates.
He nevertheless wooed voters by having no plan whatsoever, other than a relentless mantra about jobs, jobs, jobs. It was enough, he looked the part, and when a negative McDonnell ad showed Deeds stuttering in a horrifying fashion while disowning a rare assertion of principle, the final nail had been delivered. RIP Mr Deeds; no sequel for you.
In New Jersey, a solidly blue (Democrat) state, the deeply unpopular multi-millionaire incumbent John Corzine, a former chairman of Goldman Sacs and senator, lost to the Republican Christie.
Christie had the virtue of prosecuting over 130 corrupt public officials during his time as a US Attorney in the state, which proved a novel way of degrading Corzine's political machine. Notwithstanding Corzine's role in blocking, whilst a senator, investigations into AIG, his huge spending advantage kept this race close. So much so that Fox launched a pre-emptive strike before votes were counted, alleging massive voter fraud. Obama stumped with Corzine last weekend in a last-ditch attempt to win but, on the night, another Democrat fell, this time by 45-49%.
So if Republicans are back smiling and making a lot of noise from their reading of two electoral tea leaves, their more thoughtful strategists will be scratching their heads about the third portent last night, in New York's 23rd District. A vast district straddling Lake Ontario to the West, and Vermont in the East, and sharing a border with Canada to the North, it had been in Republican hands since Ulysses Grant was president, although Obama sneaked the district in 2008.
The official Republican candidate, Dede Scozzofava - a moderate, poor thing - so enraged the " Tea Party" crowd that they put up one Doug Hoffman, an unknown ultra-conservative who was parachuted into the district as a conservative party insurgent to topple Scozzofava.
Hoffman knew nothing about the district and was content to declare so, indeed so much so that Dick Armey, a Texan mate of Dick Cheney's and a prime force behind the "Tea Party" movement, accused the locals of being too parochial. Fancy them expecting a candidate to know about local issues, whatever next?
Hoffman received high-level backing from two key Republican presidential hopefuls, tweeters Sarah Palin and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.
Soon poor old Scozzofava was running third in the race. She pulled out over the weekend, beaten up by her own, so she endorsed the bemused Democrat Bill Owens. This left a down-to-the-wire contest between Hoffman and Owens, which the Democrat sneaked, by 49-46%. Scozzofava, whose name was still on the ballot, had the last laugh, or cry, as she deprived Hoffman of enough votes to ensure his defeat. The angry-white-Tea-Party-absolutists had just conspired to send the first Democrat to congress from NY23 in over 100 years.
No doubt the deluge of punditry now unleashed will focus on Obama's performance, or lack thereof, especially around health care, where overnight conservative democrats will be feeling the noose tightening around their re-election necks. Exit polling, however, revealed that solid majorities in Virginia and New Jersey did not see their vote as a referendum on Obama. He remains popular in both states and, if anything, it shows that congressional Democrats need Obama's coat-tails, especially to mobilise the young, African American, and Hispanic voters. All three groups stayed at home in this election.
The import of these three elections was more about inside-the-beltway atmospherics. Obama needs to pass health care, and before, not after Christmas as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid foolishly suggested. Passage will restore Obama's momentum. But it's really the economy stupid, and next year's mid-terms are intimately tied to jobs and the US economy. Obama will be hoping that growth doesn't stall and that unemployment begins to fall. The concerns of independent voters also have to be front and centre for Obama, for they broke for the Republicans this week.
As for the GOP, while they will be smiling today, the furious storm in NY23 was the only race with strategic implications for the 2012 presidential election. So long as the conservative base, led by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, preach ideological purity and actively seek to purge moderates, the GOP will not reclaim the White House, and that might explain why Obama chose to avoid the wall-to-wall air-bashings last night and instead watch a game of basketball.
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