So, I stayed home and did not take up the invite to go to Watertown, NY like last year. To a certain degree I am kicking myself as I would have known folk in the Democratic celebration party, the GOP celebration party and in the media covering both. People I know and like will be losing their jobs and others will be keeping their jobs. Funny to think about that as you are eating late night bowl of cereal and watching results come in as you sit in your jammies. My golden observations?
- The New York Times interactive result mapping system was simply amazing.
- It was a repudiation for the Tea Parties but a bigger repudiation of the handling of the US economy by the Democrats.
- Sarah Palin will not be President in 2012. She may now be simply irellevant as others take the microphone and shift the conversation.
- My more immediate northern New York connections should grow which bodes very well for the expansion of the Kingston Society for Playing Catch's morph into the Kingston St. Lawrence into a greater Frontenac-NNY social / weird re-enactment / folk history and art / business folks' club. I don't know how public radio and beer fit into that matrix. But they shall. By gumbo, they shall.
- If the Tea Party continues in any active generic populist way, the GOP may eat its own and rapidly mirror the demise of "Hope and Change". The Alaskan write in vote is as important and the Nevada loss in this respect.
- Glad I took today off. Why? It's a day off! What reason more than that do you need?
Now... when is the next election out there? When and where?
Comments
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 11:24 AM
More impressive about the NY Times page -- it was more up to date on vote count than the TV tickers...
Alan - November 3, 2010 11:29 AM
I was feeding a few numbers by Facebook into a blackberry in a victory party and I think I beat the TV on a number of occassions.
Alan - November 3, 2010 11:46 AM
The New York Senate race is very tight. Odd that they collective outcome was less covered locally than the district races.
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 12:28 PM
Interesting.
I'd assumed it would just flip back to the GOP, as was its historical wont.
CHIPOLTI MAXIMUS - November 3, 2010 12:35 PM
How bizarre - I 100% agree with your points 2 & 3. It seems the Tea Parties will be a historical curosity, sort of like Ross Perot, in a decade's time.
David Janes - November 3, 2010 12:36 PM
LOL it kept my old name I typed in for the UPPER CASE LETTER GUY.
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 1:02 PM
Before y'all get too anxious to proclaim the death of the Tea Party movement, may I point out that the three candidates first proclaimed as potential Tea Party senators did, in fact, win? Toomey, Rubio, and Paul made it, and a fourth very impressive Tea Party guy, Ron Johnson, just ended the senatorial career of Russ Feingold.
What last night showed is that the more professional Tea Party-oriented folks won, and the sketchier ones flopped.
Alan - November 3, 2010 3:20 PM
Oxymoron: "...the more professional Tea Party-oriented folks..."
Palin = "sketchier"
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 3:44 PM
Russ Feingold discovered otherwise.
One fun bit of news: Michelle Bachmann is running for a leadership position in the House caucus.
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 3:47 PM
Other Tea Party senator: Mike Lee, who clerked at SCOTUS under Alito, and successfully challenged Bob Bennett in Utah.
http://volokh.com/2010/11/03/a-few-thoughts-on-the-mid-term-election-results/
Alan - November 3, 2010 9:03 PM
The Tea Party will fade. Things change. Even Judge Alito was getting very close to a living tree interpretation of the Constitution yesterday:
"Chief Justice Roberts: So your position is that the state legislature cannot pass a law that says you may not sell to a 10-year-old a video in which they set school girls on fire?
"Answer: This court said just last year that it doesnt have a free-wheeling authority to grant new exceptions to the First Amendment.
"Justice Alito: But we have here a new medium that cannot possibly have been envisioned at the time when the First Amendment was ratified.
"Answer: We have a history in this country of new mediums coming along and people vastly over-reacting. Dime novels in the 1800s, comic books and movies in the 1950s, rock and roll lyrics - all of these have spawned similar attempts at censorship, said Smith, all of which failed. And the sky has not fallen."
Ben (The Tiger) - November 3, 2010 9:07 PM
Key phrase of the living tree doctrine that gets left out by your side -- "within its natural limits".
Alan - November 3, 2010 10:49 PM
"...by your side..."???