« Well I'm back. | Main | Wow! What A Night! »
November 8, 2006
Montana and Virginia
I'm sure you're waking up this morning asking what's the deal keep in mind that in elections past the right wing media has called races that were even closer than these for Republicans without a second blink on the subject. The GOP puppets in the media are holding out hope that the fix will come in for their masters. I wouldn't rule it out at this point, but here's how things stand.
In Montana, Jon Tester is up by about 2,000 votes. On the east coast that would be nothing, we have precincts that cast that many ballots. But in Montana, it's just not that large. A 2,000 vote lead is like have a 100,000 vote lead. The area that has caused a recount of the ballots is around Billings Montana, which for those of you that don't know is a heavily leaning Democratic area. Alright as heavily leaning as you get in a red state, but anyway, before the recount was triggered the area have Tester another 1200+ votes over Burns. A lead that would be insurmountable for Burns. This race is over, it's just a matter of seeing how big a victory it's going to be.
In Virginia, it's over as well, we are just figuring out the margin of victory here. Webb declared victory last night, which I think says all that needs to be said. This loss was a shocking defeat for the racist Southern Strategy (which worked flawlessly in Tennessee, big surprise) and the Swiftboating methodology that they used so effectively in 2004. The remaining districts that haven't turned in their numbers are minority, Northern Virginia, and around the Naval base districts. Traditionally the latter would be a guaranteed GOP windfall, but given that they had to pick from a guy that had won the Navy Cross and been Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan verses a draft dodging California Cowboy, it's a pretty safe assumption that one is going to go our way. The other two have gone against the GOP all night, so there is no reason to believe they are going to turn out any differently.
So where does that leave us? Since it was within 1% the loser Allen is allowed to request a recount, but as we learned in Virginia in 2005, those electronic voting machines spit out the same totals with great accuracy. The last recount changed the total about 37 votes, giving Webb's comfortable 8000+ vote lead, it will be more of the standard radical posturing by Allen to even attempt it.
Now I know what you're thinking, that's 51 seats in the Senate, we win. Not exactly, the Democratic party suffered a major defeat last night, that really mute any reason to celebrate. With Lieberman's victory in Connecticut, it's the same as if the Republicans had held us. If he does caucus with the Democrats and is allowed to keep his committee positions, and that's a majorly big if considering that the GOP financed his entire campaign against the Democratic party, there will be no change in the face of Congress. Lieberman is an ardent and unapologetic supportor of the Republican apocalyptic foreign policy agenda, so there will still be no oversight of the Republican debacle in Iraq or anywhere else. So even if Lieberman does side with us the Senate is pretty much a doomed exercise for as long as we are dependent on him for anything. He plans on punishing the Democrats of the Country for their efforts against him. Honestly our best hope would be that he would replace Rummy and we have a special election to get a real Democrat elected to office.
The Lieberman problem is two fold, beyond him undermining the Democratic party for his masters in the GOP, we have the fact that the DLC Democrats worked to save one of their buddies in the Senate and that has created a wedge between the Netroots and the Establishment Democrats. I think Bower's sums it up nicely.
A big thank you goes out to every Democrat who didn't run against the Democratic Party in this election cycle. Those who stuck with us can share in the spoils. Those who didn't can stick it, and expect continuing retribution. The Democratic Party won tonight. If you ran from it, then you lost. Even if you didn't lose today, you loss is coming soon. Count on it.
The Netroots is not happy with the Obama's, Hillary's and other people who only paid lip service to our efforts to transform the Democratic party away from the destructive DLC cancer that has been costing us victory in election after election. When you talk to people on the street they will tell you all politicians are alike and that's the effect of the DLC Democrats on the public's perception, because it's honestly true...The DLC represents the same kinds of corruption and irresponsible behavior that people have come to despise about politicians.
You can't sell out Americans and expect to win folks, the GOP just proved that for us in one of the most dramatic elections since the Republicans last controlled everything and led America into the Great Depression. I only hope that America moves quickly enough this time that we can avoid that natural result of irresponsible Republican political ideology. The key for the Netroots will be to find great candidates to run against the DLC candidates everywhere we can in the primary to send a message.
And to the DLC presidential hopefuls, you'd better have a radical conversion to putting America first instead of your DLC agenda, because it's going to be a long ugly fight and as your Republican buddies can tell you, you can only hope to slow us down, there is no way to actually stop the will of the American people.
Posted by Jamison at November 8, 2006 7:11 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.daffodillane.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/7308