Those in the media are spinning
hard in anticipation of Republican wins in some key races today. Many
news reports will try to lead you to believe the outcome at the polls
should be ignored and the focus should be on Republican divisiveness or
that any Republican wins are outliers, with absolutely no significance
or relation to the mood of the country as a whole. Don't believe it.
There are some close races that could go either way, but if Republicans
do well today it will be significant and the President and Democrats in
Congress know it. It will be very significant for those moderates in
the Congress still deciding which way to vote on health care. They are
looking at opinion polls and they are sticking their fingers up in the
air to figure out which way the political winds are blowing. They
should have a good idea when the polls close tonight.
Even if the GOP picks up some wins today, things could go either way
in 2010. Obviously the more races won today the better for Republicans
looking to next year, but a year is an eternity in politics. If you
don't believe me, just ask President Obama.
Update: I have seen a lot of people quoting Public
Policy Polling's projections on the NY-23 race. I don't know how
accurate they will be, but thought the following quote from Tom Jensen
on their blog was of note:
We think tonight will be very good for Republicans. Two of
the main reasons for that are superior party unity and pretty
overwhelming support from independents.
Ha! What I keep hearing from Democrats today is how Republicans are
divisive and driving moderates and independents away in droves. PPP is
a Democrat polling firm, but their analysis is very good
(even when I don't agree with it, I find it informative and
thoughtful). Evidently Jensen is not following the party line like
those in the media are today. Instead Jensen is reading the poll
results and they are undeniable.
In
NY-23 despite the presence more or less of two Republican candidates on
the ballot, Doug Hoffman is winning 71% of the GOP vote to Bill Owens'
67% of the Democratic vote. Hoffman leads Owens 52-30 with
independents.
In New Jersey Chris Christie is getting 82% of the Republican vote
while Jon Corzine is at 72% of the Democratic vote. Christie leads
52-29 with independents.
In Maine 77% of Republicans support the overturn of gay marriage
while 71% of Democrats are opposed to it. Independents say they'll vote
for it by a 52-46 margin.
In Virginia 94% of Republicans are for Bob McDonnell to 87% of
Democrats for Creigh Deeds. McDonnell is up 63-33 with independents.
More than undeniable, for Democrats, the rates of independent support for the GOP candidates is devastating.
Update II:Tom Elia
has the 2008 election results from New Jersey, Virginia and New York-23
for those who want to make comparison's with tonight's results.
Dan Riehl has a source saying Dede Scozzafava is no longer quietly supporting Democrat Bill Owens, but is making robo calls for him. Dan Karipides has a great post on the Scozzafava NY-23rd drama at Wizbang. The big question Dan Riehl and everyone is asking that we all, of course, know the answer to is whether or not the Republican party or individual contributors get any of their million dollars in campaign contributions back. I think another good question is whether or not Newt Gingrich can get his credibility back.
Although some say the U.S. economy has “turned
a corner” and Joe Biden says
of the stimulus, “In my wildest dreams, I never thought it would work this
well,” the unemployment rate has reached a 26-year high and many Americans are
suffering.We have not lost the 500
million jobs a month that Nancy Pelosi wildly estimated if the stimulus had
not passed, but the numbers are abysmal.
If the economy has turned a corner and is on its way to
recovery, those looking for a job might not know it. Neil King wrote in the Wall
Street Journal that “Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sunday that
his own hunch was that the economy would turn around over coming months, but
that unemployment would ‘penetrate the 10% barrier and stay there for a while before
we start down.’”
The most recent reports show the unemployment rate at 9.8
percent.That number doesn’t tell the
whole story though.There are many
unemployed Americans not included in that figure.Worse still, even if the economy is in
recovery, it may be well
into 2010 before the effects are felt in the job market.
If that is in fact what happens, the ranks of the unemployed
next year may just be joined by some current members of Congress.The latest
Gallup poll shows Americans are not happy with the job the Congress is
doing.The current approval rating is at
21 percent, down from 31 percent last month.
Those in Congress surely know it too.In
late 2003, when economic growth surged “at the fastest pace in nearly two
decades” with the gross domestic product (GDP) growing at a 7.2 percent rate,
those in Congress hoping to convince voters that George Bush’s policies were
failing pointed to the unemployment numbers. To draw attention away from the
incredible growth numbers, Democrats pointed to the job market which lagged
behind other economic indicators.
In August 2003, reacting to a July unemployment rate of 6.2
percent, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi asked “Where
are the jobs, Mr. President.”With
the current unemployment rate at 9.8 percent and many predicting it will go
higher over the coming months, House Speaker Pelosi should be asking that
question even more emphatically than she did six years ago.But since her party controls the White House
and both chambers of Congress, I don’t think she will be calling the public’s
attention to the dreadful employment situation.
Not calling attention to the problem is not going to make it
go away in the minds of voters.In fact,
a lack of adequate attention to the jobs problem is what could cost many in
Congress their seats.Voters who are
unemployed or know someone unemployed are going to wonder about the priority being
put on the employment issue, especially when compared to some of the issues
currently being debated.
As a reader recently put it when explaining one reason the
numbers of those on the left have taken a dive, it is because they are
“concentrating on insurance/medical care when unemployment is soaring.Seven in eight are satisfied with their
medical care/insurance. One in two college graduates do not have a job.Parents of those college graduates who doled
out thousands upon thousands of dollars are not pleased.”
Many more are not
pleased that the Congress has moved so far to the left in general, but the
employment issue in particular is one that tends to move public opinion.If the public sees the liberal agenda of
those in Congress as contributing to the loss of jobs, the electoral effect
will definitely be seen next year.
Of course, how the public reacts in the voting booth to the
unemployment numbers will depend in part on their impression of the
situation.During the Bush years,
unemployment rates several points lower than those we see now prompted scores
of news reports of gloom and doom.With
the current rate of 9.8 percent though, we often see headlines like this recent
one at the New
York Times:“Obama Aides Act to Fix
Safety Net.”If the White House and
Congress can convince voters (through positive media like that) they are
working hard to address the problem, maybe they won’t pay such a high price on
Election Day 2010.
A lot can happen between now and then, but there is one
thing of which I am fairly certain -- Nancy Pelosi is not going to be able to
blame the employment rate next year on George Bush.
Geez,
this one wasn't even thinly disguised. I don't know how often Media
Matters does this kind of thing because I almost never read them, but I
found a link to one of their posts at Digg and clicked on it because the title (Will Fox News hold Beck to its Dan Rather standard?) made me curious.
Here is the relevant part of the post by Jamison Foser:
Fox
News' Glenn Beck recently aired a video indicating that an ACORN
employee shot and killed her husband, without first bothering to verify
whether the husband is, in fact, dead. He isn't. The video is, in other
words, a fraud. But that didn't stop Beck from calling it evidence of
"murder" and perhaps even "premeditated murder." Of a person who is
still alive.
Sean Hannity aired it, too.
Here's a bunch of Fox News "reporters" who are outraged about the murder. Which didn't happen. Because the guy is still alive:
Got
that? Beck was being deceptive because he said the guy was dead. And
that the woman committed murder. Possibly premeditated murder! The
problem is, I saw that segment of Beck and I remembered that after
showing the video, Beck questioned whether or not the husband was even
dead. Media Matters posted the video though, so I wondered if I had
misunderstood what Beck had said. So I watched the following video
posted by Foser at Media Matters:
When
I watched the video Media Matters ran I immediately knew what was up
because they chopped Beck's commentary to bits and curiously left out
the part of it that completely contradicts their claim. I looked for
the Beck video at YouTube to make sure I was not misremembering his
commentary and here is a transcript of what I found.
Glenn Beck:
This is twisted, bizarre, macabre. I mean, is this theater? I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a jury. Um, but gosh
even to me it seems like this is a potential admission of murder and
the way she was describing doing some groundwork beforehand, you know
so everyone in town knew exactly what was going on, a case might be
made for premeditated murder. In fairness, I don't understand
people who stay in abusive relationships. I don't. I get it. I get it.
And maybe a jury might conclude that it was justifiable homicide. I
don't know but we haven't been even able to confirm from the state of
California whether Theresa's husband from ten years ago was killed. Or
if he's dead. Or if she even had a husband. Did she make the story up?
I don't know. Nobody is asking questions. See if the mainstream media will follow this one. This is shocking. It raises serious questions about what is going on inside of ACORN.
I
italicized the portion of the commentary Media Matters provided to
their readers in the mishmash video they put together. The parts they
omitted are not italicized. I put in bold the part of Beck's comments
that directly contradict Media Matters post. It is not like the
comments were made in a different Beck show, or even in a different
segment of Beck's show. They were part of the same paragraph if you
look at the commentary in written transcript. And the pieces they chose
to include in their video came from just before and right after the
part where Beck questioned if the husband was dead. There is NO WAY
that Media Matters could have seen Beck's commentary and not known he
questioned whether or not the husband was even dead. No way. I would
have argued that they could not have been any more deceitful in the way
they presented the material, but I would have been wrong. The
ridiculousness of the post continues.
After showing the video that is chopped off before Beck questions
whether or not the husband is still alive (which obviously negates the
basis of their attack on Beck), Foser posted a bunch of commentary from
Fox News people regarding Dan Rather and the fake Bush memos. Then
Foser asks:
Any chance we'll see this level of outrage directed at Glenn Beck for unquestioningly
airing an apparently fraudulent tape in order to portray an ACORN
employee as a murderer? Beck has, after all, been pretty clear that he
is trying to bring ACORN down.
Again, watch the unedited
video of Beck's segment, the one Media Matters didn't cut off in
midstream, or read the transcript provided above. Beck asked plenty of
questions, including whether or not the man was still alive. But Foser
wrote "Any chance we'll see this level of outrage directed at Glenn
Beck for unquestioningly airing an apparently
fraudulent tape in order to portray an ACORN employee as a murderer?"
Does he think his readers are not smart enough to go find the unedited
video.
I know my readers understand the difference between the nature of
the ACORN video and the Rathergate documents, but for those at Media
Matters I'll explain. The ACORN video is real. Whether or not the woman
was telling the truth when she claimed to have shot her husband has
nothing to do with the authenticity of the video itself unless Foser is
claiming James O'Keefe hired the woman to make up some lines and
deliver them on camera. Or maybe if it was butchered the way Media
Matters did Glenn Beck's commentary video. If neither of those things
happened then how is the ACORN video "apparently fraudulent"? The woman
may be a liar, but if she is indeed an employee of ACORN (which I don't
believe has been disputed), she was caught on camera, in an ACORN
office, giving advice to someone claiming to be a pimp trying to open a
brothel of underage illegal immigrant girls about how to hide the true
nature of his business in order and evade taxes and be eligible for
assistance. Glenn Beck was shocked by the statements from the ACORN
employee, in an ACORN office, and asked a series of questions,
including one about her claims about shooting her husband.
Is the argument that everything is cool if the woman was lying about
killing her husband? I have heard that one floating around -- that if
the woman's husband is not dead then the tapes are fake or fraudulent
or irrelevant. I would argue that it is much worse if ACORN hired a
woman who would lie to people coming into their office about killing
her husband, than if they hired a woman who (possibly in self defense)
shot and killed her husband.
Regarding the Dan Rather comparison -- do I really, seriously, have
to explain how that is different from supposedly seasoned professionals
at CBS news and 60 Minutes putting on the air documents that were
supposedly 30 years old, but were obviously produced with a relatively
recent version of a Word processing program (superscript and all)? I
won't get into all the ways CBS failed to do due diligence on the
documents that were so obviously inauthentic, but it is interesting
that those on the left are comparing the ACORN video to the Rathergate
docs in an effort to save ACORN's bacon, or to save their President who
has a history with ACORN. To me it sounds like desperate, grabbing at
straws, how the heck are we gonna spin this one, crazy talk.
For those who would like to see the unedited version of Beck's commentary in full, here is the video:
Recent reports of criminal activity in the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now (ACORN) are
serious and should be of interest to every American citizen, their
congressional representatives and the media.The series of undercover videos made in several ACORN offices across the
country by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, while certainly the most sensational
evidence of ACORN wrong doing, are far from the first.
Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Jim Hoft have been
tracking instances of ACORN problems for years, many related to voter
registration fraud.In Florida,
Indiana, Wisconsin and elsewhere tens of thousands of bad voter applications
were submitted by ACORN in the last election – “tying up election officials and
jeopardizing the voting rights of untold victims whose identities may have been
stolen.”
Other
illegal activity has been perpetrated and prosecuted as well.No matter how many instances of submitting
bogus voter registration forms and other improper or illegal activity have been
shown, the mainstream media have been remarkably uninterested.Not only had the organization continued to
receive millions in public funding, but was eligible to receive billions of
stimulus money.
The undercover video investigation by O’Keefe and Giles
finally forced the Congress to reconsider ACORN funding and even appears to
have prompted some official investigations into the operations of the
group.If not for publicity on the
internet, conservative talk radio and Fox News those in the mainstream media
would likely have continued to ignore wrongdoing by ACORN.In fact, some network television and major
national newspapers did not give the story any coverage until the Senate voted
to cut off funding.ABC News lead anchor
Charles Gibson said he didn’t even know anything about the video investigation
story until well after it had been covered by Fox News and was all over talk
radio and the internet.
Citizens should be troubled that the major news
organizations in the country seemed so determined to ignore the story.They should be particularly concerned because
they have a very real interest in what was going on at ACORN.Millions of taxpayer dollars have gone to the
organization and those taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being
spent.Likewise, those in Congress with
the responsibility of over-seeing those funds should be concerned about the
type of activity that was being funded.
The American taxpayer was let down multiple times.They were let down by their representatives
in Congress who ignored and/or made excuses for the group and they were let
down by most in the news media who ignored or minimized some very serious
problems within the group.I can’t help
but wonder if not for the sensational nature of the undercover video operation
if Congress and the media would ever have adequately addressed ACORN’s
problems.They have ignored them for so
long, I don’t know that anything short of ACORN workers on camera helping to
facilitate a child prostitution operation would have raised an eyebrow from
them.
Another reason citizens should be concerned about the ACORN
operation is that they were on track to help conduct the next U.S. Census.Census numbers, of course, affect the way
congressional districts are drawn.Thankfully
another result of O’Keefe and Giles’ investigation is that the Census Bureau
has severed ties with ACORN.
ACORN has played a large role in past elections and when
campaigning, President Obama, who has a long history with the group, promised
them a
seat at the table if elected. As Michelle Malkin described it, “Obama's
political DNA is encoded with the ACORN agenda.”Considering that strong connection there is
no way to know just how involved ACORN might have been in shaping public policy
over the course of the Obama administration if not for the work done by O’Keefe
and Giles.
Those defending the group, like ACORN chief executive Bertha
Lewis, claim the problems found at various offices across the country are
isolated cases of rogue employees.As
Mary Katharine Ham put it, “I love how Bertha Lewis
thinks it's exculpatory that only a handful of ACORN offices blithely help
pimps and child prostitution.” The
same was the case with the many incidents of voter registration fraud found in
ACORN offices around the country.
Congressman Mark Foley was just one out of hundreds of
congressmen, and one out of millions of Republicans, yet in 2006 the exposure
of his inappropriate sexually suggestive instant messages to pages was offered
as proof that Republicans were steeped in a culture of corruption. Those in the
media heavily covered the story and helped build that culture of corruption
storyline which played a large role in the huge losses experienced by the GOP
in that election. Yet in the case of improper and even illegal activity in
multiple offices of ACORN, they saw no reason to connect the dots and consider
the cumulative nature of the evidence.
Citizens should be very concerned and troubled by what went
on at ACORN, but they should be even more so by the way that activity was
enabled by Congress and the media over a period of years.
Part of the Department of Education’s suggested lesson plan to go
along with President Obama’s speech to school children this week was
for teachers to ask students, “Why is it important that we listen to
the President and other elected officials… Why is what they say
important?”
A better question might have been, “Why is it important that elected
officials listen to the people they represent? Why is what the people
say important?”
So much of the President’s current problem with his approval ratings
can be traced back to these simple questions. Whether it be the
stimulus package, the bailouts and control over private industries, a
growing deficit or the health care debate, many Americans believe those
in power don’t care what they think or what they have to say.
I
don't think most Democrats realize what a bad place they are in right
now. There is still over a year before the mid-term elections, but
unless there is a significant change in direction they are going
straight over the cliff. I'm not saying that. Charlie Cook is. In somewhat different words.
Listening
to two briefings -- one by a Democratic pollster who had just conducted
a survey for a group favoring health care reform, the other by a
Republican pollster more skeptical of the reform plans -- I felt as if
I were hearing a pair of reports by the National Transportation Safety
Board on the same plane crash. But in sorting through the problems
facing President Obama and congressional Democrats, focusing too
narrowly on their disastrous handling of health care would be a
mistake...
...With 14 months to go before the 2010 midterm election, something
could happen to improve the outlook for Democrats. However, wave
elections, more often than not, start just like this: The president's
ratings plummet; his party loses its advantage on the generic
congressional ballot test; the intensity of opposition-party voters
skyrockets; his own party's voters become complacent or even depressed;
and independent voters move lopsidedly away. These were the
early-warning signs of past wave elections. Seeing them now should
terrify Democrats.
"Terrify." I didn't say it.
Charlie Cook did. I really don't think Democrats are fully feeling it
yet though. I think they are in shock and denial. And they are so far
to the left that I don't know if they are going to be able to move fast
enough to the center to save their backsides. Obama has time, but all
those congressmen and women facing voters next year are going to have
to seriously boogie to get there.
Today I will join a couple of my favorite North Carolina bloggers, John
Hawkins and Scott Elliott, on the Bill LuMaye show on AM 680 WPTF.
This will be the first radio show I have done "in studio" so I am
looking forward to getting a behind the scenes look. If you are in the
Raleigh listening area tune in at 4:10 p.m. If you aren't you can go to
the WPTF website to listen online.
Fred Barnes has a nice tribute to his friend, Robert Novak, who passed away yesterday at the age of 78.
It’s not too much to call Novak journalism’s last honest man in
Washington. Ideologically, he was conservative, the more so the older
he grew. He was quite up front about this. But he didn’t cover for his
allies or mistreat his adversaries. If a conservative Republican
disappointed him, Novak would let you know.
He was unique in another way: his reporting. His column, which he
wrote for four decades with Rowland Evans, had a slant and plenty of
analysis. Its strength, however, consisted of big scoops or nuggets of
fresh reporting. No other columnist could match this. Appearing three
days a week in the Washington Post, it was a column that couldn’t be ignored.
The relentless, remorseless reporter -- the Prince of Darkness, as
he fashioned himself publicly -- was only one side of Bob Novak. The
other was a kind man, a patriot, a doting grandfather, a pal of liberal
and conservative journalists alike, and a mentor to many younger men in
the media, including me.
