OK, folks: who are you rooting for? Obviously, we political junkies love a landslide, because it produces Members of Congress (and, presumably, state officials) who have no business being there, and will rapidly crash and burn in spectacular ways. Any candidates?
Who else? As for me, I think (as I hinted in a previous post) that the best potential is from Alaska, as long as the Democrat doesn't win (which would, to be fair, be a great story in itself, but would presumably be dull after the votes are counted). If it's Murkowski, we have the continuing Murkowski/Palin feud to look forward to. If it's Miller, then we have the future Miller/Palin feud to look forward to, and until then we get to speculate about what will get her to turn on him, and how long it will take. Either way, good fun for political junkies!
But that's me -- who are you rooting for?
Sunday, October 31, 2010
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Alaska is probably the most interesting race. I think it would be hysterically funny--well maybe not "hysterically funny," but funny--if Scott McAdams won there. The irony of the Palin-Miller-Murkowski nonsense--and there are multiple levels of nonsense--delivering a win for Dems in AK this year is just too delicious.
ReplyDeleteFor me this isn't so much a partisan issue (i.e. the fact that I dislike Democrats less than Republicans, though that's true) but rather more a case of schadenfreude and enjoying a bizarre political twist.
As a junkie, I kinda like Angle and Paul. (I'm not including O'Donnell because she can't win)
ReplyDeleteAngle gives us unbalanced crazy, so that's fun. Paul gives us paleocrazy, so not as fun, but also couched in this notion that "if only people would listen, they'd agree" which seems more common amongst the disciples of his dad. So, he might keep spouting the crazy, but I think the way he pulled back after the Maddow incident suggests that he learns.
So, on balance, Angle probably provides more entertainment. Pretty sure gay marriage will be compared to sex with box turtles by her, among other gems.
Well, at least if Angle pulls it out, we Californians will have the opportunity to snicker about the clowns that Nevada elects to public office. Already they have a junior Senator facing indictment for felonies committed during his term of office related to his extramarital affair. And of course their governor, who beats up his girlfriend in a drunk rage in a parking lot. At least Harry Reid, perhaps THE most powerful Senator next to Mitch McConnell, has been scandal-free all these years, is still married to his high school sweetheart, and has used his office for the benefit of his constituents. For that, Nevadans despise him. So they elect a crazy lady, extremist rightwinger to take his place. It's no wonder Nevada has among the highest unemployment rates, the highest mortgage default rates, the highest school dropout rates in the nation. This is what a decade of Fox News can do to a community. The voters should blame themselves for their failure.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia's bad, but not THAT bad. There's that.
I think that with Miller dropping in the polls in AK, he has no chance of winning it. I'm looking forward to the months of lawsuits regarding Murkowski. I think that she may win the initial count slightly to McAdams, and that Miller will join McAdams in challenging the result.
ReplyDeleteAlaska conservatives will follow their brilliant logic: rather a Democrat then a RINO. War will between establishment Republicans, and the Jim DeMinters.
What will happen if a higher court says that it was illegal to post Murkowski's name at polling stations? If it is found that the Board of Elections took a liberal outlook on which votes counted for "Lisa Murkowski".
I think this election, combined with the onslaught of money from Citizens United, may provoke a widespread rethink of our electoral system.
Interested to see what happens to Rand Paul in the senate, for two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) Libertarian ideology is good entertainment, but it meshes poorly with the modern reality of the expansive entitlement state. Last week Paul and Conway debated on our local PBS station, where Conway was attacking Paul's call for a Medicare deductible. Paul slimed out of it by saying that, while Medicare was in crisis and needed a deductible (someday) for solvency...don't worry, Kentucky seniors/voters, no current senior will ever have to pay a deductible.
Reassuring. The longest remaining lifespan among current seniors (i.e. 65+) is probably around 50 years. Which means that the Medicare crisis is one of those 50-years-out crises, unless of course Paul is as cynical and dishonest as all the less-straight-talking career pols he disdains. Its one thing to bury cynicism in an off-hand comment during an unwatched debate on public television; its another altogether to hide it for six years in the Senate.
2) How will the Republican tent contain the combustible combination of the Tea Partiers and the Evangelicals? Got a robocall from Jim Bunning yesterday reassuring us that Rand Paul was "100% pro-life". That seems hard to believe, but for some reason it reminded me of that awkward chapter in Freakonomics, which pointed out that anywhere and everywhere that abortions are made more accessible, 18-20 years later common societal problems (e.g. crime) subside.
So now in the Republican tent there are/will be a strong movement restricting abortion access (evangelicals) and a strong movement resisting paying for the societal consequences of fewer abortions (libertarians). The evangelicals will also likely push for more incarceration, and more wars, while the libertarians will resist spending money on prisons or veterans services.
Sort of a weird future for the GOP, and "100% pro-life Rand Paul" would more or less sit at the fulcrum of it. Interesting times.
Jesus H. Christ, Johnathon, this is disgusting.
ReplyDeleteYou're looking forward to having unqualified cretins run this country just so you can make sport? Maybe you're not aware that the country is up to its collective ass in the worst set of social, political and economic problems in decades, that there is a desperate need for real governance, and a chance of a serious disaster if we don't get it? I guess you don't get it.
While you're at it, why don't you just join Broder in calling for war on Iran to boost the economy?
I'm having a really hard time believing you wrote this.
Now, I must go hug a squid.
JzB
You must be a lotta fun at parties Jazzbumpa.
ReplyDeleteMy answer here is no different than on the previous thread. I want to see as few crazies win as possible. Sharron Angle would be amusing if she were nowhere close to actual power. Give her the powers of a Senator, and it doesn't seem amusing to me.
ReplyDeleteI'm a political junkie because I care about good policy. I like to see idiots and charlatans called out for what they are. I find the prospect of, say, Sen. Miller infuriating, not amusing.
JzB, your opposition to Jonathan's (tongue-in-cheek) endorsement of 'crash-and-burn' brought to mind the idea that there is some sort of objective version of 'good policy', and that the Angles and O'Donnell's of the world create 'bad policy', by dint of their weirdness or something like that.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, partisan hyperventilating aside, no one is really sure what good policy is, and the reason democracies are superior is their capacity to live and learn. Earlier I pointed out the contradiction of Republicans embracing the evangelicals, with their externalities of societal disarray, and the libertarians, who don't want to pay for same. Neither the Republicans nor the country will be able to adjust to that contradiction without some experience; you can't successfully manage a country as a thought experiment.
For a specific example, many Republicans are campaigning against the ACA, using socialist/tax fear-mongering. That's bullshit. But the ACA, it seems to me, is still a crappy piece of legislation, not for socialist reasons, but because it doesn't address the fundamental problem of price transparency in health care. We'll live and learn.
Tomorrow's landslide is not the end of the world. Its just the next step in the world. No need to call folks out for taking a lighthearted approach to what is just the next chapter in a long story (as opposed to, you know, Armageddon).