Of all of the races yesterday, the most interesting for me was the Missouri Senate race. Senator Claire McCaskill was one of the least popular members of the Senate and a virtual guarantee for defeat until Rep. Todd Akin delivered victory from the jaws of defeat. Akin’s infamous rape remarks made him completely toxic to the entire nation and the GOP leadership quickly called for his withdrawal from the race. Akin treated the suggestion as absurd and allowed two deadlines to pass that would have allowed his party to repair the damage that he caused. At one time, politicians would put the interests of their party and their country before their own. However, we live in a different time and Akin is the face of the times: egotistical, selfish, and extremist. Linda MacMahon in Connecticut cut the same intensely egotistical image: spending $100 million of her own money in two unsuccessful efforts to make herself a Senator despite a fairly toxic personality and image associated with professional wrestling. Despite the sound defeat in the last election, MacMahon spent even more of her own money as the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment to secure a second defeat. The question for the GOP is whether the disaster this election will cause anyone in the party to consider the eradication of moderates in their party and the loss of what we once called “Rockefeller Republicans.”
In the end, Akin appears to have been unable to even break 40 percent of the vote.
Had Akin withdrawn, the GOP would have likely secured the seat in Missouri. Not only Akin but the entire Tea Party worked last night to the great benefit for the Democrats — alienating moderate voters and securing wins across the country.
Akin will be left to history as a sad clownish figure who refused to accept the obvious reality that his own comments and extremist views destroyed any chance for election. MacMahon will fill another footnote on the amount of money someone is willing to spend in pursuit of egotism. Notably, MacMahon never appeared to have any particular vision or idea or cause — she just wanted to be a Senator and thought she had the money to guarantee it like some choreographed WWF bout. They are not the only such figures in this election.
The question is how we end up with such caricatured candidates in national elections and the overall low quality of politicians in this country. I have long blamed the monopoly of the two major parties on our politics. I still hold that view. However, Akin also represents a sad cultural reality today. It is not just the loss of moderation in politics but a loss of a sense of personal integrity and responsibility. Akin immediately blamed others and refused to stand aside for the benefit of his state and party. He is for me the face of what is wrong with our politics: an anti-intellectual extremist who ultimately shows little sense of duty or calling beyond himself.
Source: USA Today
Bron,
I think what Smom says is essentially on point. Aiken and Mourdock’s statements did some serious damage to the GOP image with women voters. They didn’t just hurt the most recent election, they created a huge damage control/rectification situation moving forward.
Bron, There was some movement among women to Romney after the first debate where he appeared to be moderate. Akin and Mourdock reinforced the image that the GOP created for itself during the legislative sessions at both the federal and state levels in the spring. They made the GOP war on women seem real again and quite possibly turned the younger generation of women off to the GOP permanently. I think McCaskill ended up winning by 17 points.
Woosty:
you go girl, are you still drunk with the intoxicating emotion of victory?
how much did what Aiken and Murdock say affect the election?
Any thoughts?
Or was it inevitable?
7:48 EST PEL(post election poll)…and weather report…
still HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
with a chance for Glee 😉 in the afternoon and a possible yet mild I told you so blowing in from the East…
;P
What AY said. Elaine conjures many (fine) adjectives to mind, but bigot? Not even.
Elaine,
I do not think you’re a bigot….. Bigots come in many forms……
Bettykath,
Yes the electoral college would be gone in my opinion.
The machines make it too easy to fiddle the vote. Even if it’s not a deliberate error there’s no real, credible reason to trust any tabulation from any touch screen system or without a full, paper-ballot recount on optical scan machines. Things were a bit “funny” in one Ohio county:
“Vote totals for Obama and Romney inexplicably decreasing in three Ohio counties
by Free Press staff
November 7, 2012
Election monitors are reporting funny numbers coming out of Clark, Columbiana, and Hamilton counties (Ohio). Two of these counties are listed in Ohio Secretary of State Directive 2012-49 as participating in the Secretary of State’s ENR (Election Night Reporting) Pilot Project. The most disturbing numbers are in Clark County where the computers seem to be subtracting numbers from vote totals early in the evening.
What’s currently happening at 12:23am fits the familiar pattern of election theft in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Here’s the scenario: the exit polls are predicting a Democratic win. The state is called and projected for the Democrat. Suddenly, after 11pm, Karl Rove emerges with supposed “magic numbers” saying “not so fast. I’ve got our own numbers on the ground.” Then what happens is that the projected Democratic victory disappears and numbers that fall outside the margin of error of the exit polls are accepted.
So instead of scrutinizing the cyber election voting system for fraud, the unbelievable numbers become the official numbers, and the exit poll numbers are adjusted to meet the improbable political outcomes. That’s what’s happening right now.
Election results have fluctuated throughout the evening:
8:48pm:
25,333- Obama
25,760- Romney
9:15pm
6165- Obama
5647-Romney
Stay tuned.”
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4801
I understand completely why women don’t prefer Romney and the rest of the Republicans who want to return women to the mores of the 1950s. But it scares me to think that more than half of the men agree with them.
Raff, So all ballots are counted for a popular vote and if a candidate doesn’t get 50% +1 of the total votes cast, then the candidate with the lowest vote total is eliminated and the second choice of the voter receives that vote. This suggests that all ballots are retained and are available for redistribution. It also suggests that the electoral college is eliminated. Anything is possible but this seems a big leap.
Mike S.,
You got that right!
Bettykath,
It would be done on a national basis, as I understand it.
raff, I was looking for a bit more of an explanation of how you see it working. At what level are candidates eliminated? within a precinct? a county? a legislative district? a state? Or does it depend on how the electoral votes are distributed? Or do you depend on the electoral college being eliminated and the redistribution happening based on popular vote?
The question is how we end up with such caricatured candidates in national elections and the overall low quality of politicians in this country. I have long blamed the monopoly of the two major parties on our politics. I still hold that view. However, Akin also represents a sad cultural reality today. It is not just the loss of moderation in politics but a loss of a sense of personal integrity and responsibility.
Caricatured candidates, low quality of politicians, loss of moderation in politics, this seems to me to be a not so surprising outcome of the efforts of our corporate elite over the last forty years. This is exactly the way they “see” politics, exactly the way they want the arguments presented and exactly the correct level of discourse for their think tanks, their media machines, and the idiot stooges they hire for bit parts in their political theater.
Still no one talks about the biggest elephant in the room — our defense budget — and the fact that our defense contractors sold $85.3 billion of weapon systems last year. Up from a measly $21.4 billion in 2010. Russia was far behind at only $4.8 billion. Go team!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/world/middleeast/us-foreign-arms-sales-reach-66-3-billion-in-2011.html
War — perpetual or otherwise — distorts economies, morals (absolute or relative) of any given culture, and makes us, today, the world’s biggest hypocrites.
Maybe we should not hold our internal divisions so politically dear and instead consider our actions on the world stage as the cutting edge of the wedge between our own rabid discourse and a potential reason why, to paraphrase Shrub, “they hate our freedom.”
Swarthmore Mom,
I wasn’t aware of this gracious side of you and am frankly sorry to see it.
BB, I like the election results for the reasons Mr. Coates states above. if you don’t, start organizing early for the next elections. It takes a lot more than rhetoric to mount an effective campaign. I made 120 calls yesterday into Florida and I am tired.
Let us review:
The United States of America — a country where only eight years ago, opposition to the right of gay and lesbian couples to form and protect their families, under the color of law, was a winning national election strategy — for the first time by popular vote defeated an effort to discriminate against such families in one state, and endorsed the right to marry in three others.
This same United States sent a woman who is gay to its upper chamber.
The United States of America, where legal marital rape is in living memory, turned away two men who would minimize that rape and likely turned control of the entire Senate over that issue.
The United States of America, where under the color of law and under the force of terrorism whole swaths of black people were deprived of the right to vote in recent memory, saw black voting not only match levels achieved in 2008 but exceed them.
The United States of America, a country of immigrants, saw the Latino share of the vote increase, not decrease as so many predicted.
The United States of America, whose prison system is a mockery of justice, endorsed a mature and sane drug policy in three states.
The United States of America, where the disenfranchisement of women is in recent memory, sent a historic number of women to its upper chambers.
The United States of America, whose media has long been held hostage by the vendors of hair-tonic and lead alchemy, saw those self-same vendors shamed, embarrassed, and reduced to self-mockery before the world.
The United States of America, a country with the vending of black people barely out of living memory, with the systemic white supremacy very much in its living memory, re-elected a black president. From the Atlantic article I linked above.
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