Taking Note The Day After
[Posted by reader_iam]
Some scattered stuff:
Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice makes some excellent points in his day-after analysis, one of the better I've seen around the blogosphere this morning (or, for that matter, last night--what, you didn't really believe that I wasn't following the return last night like ducklings follow their mother, did you?). He's right about the independents, I believe, and the fact that Rove miscalculated in that respect. Joe also provides a solid roundup of opinion links.
I'm sad to see Rep. Jim Leach, of Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, out of a job. (Before redistricting a few years back, he represented my own 1st Congressional District, and I would have voted for him still if that's where he'd been running last night, even though we do have areas of disagreement.) He's an honest, good-government guy who, as the Des Moines Register points out, simply got caught on the wrong side of a trend.
My own district was going to be in new hands--and newbie hands--regardless this year, since Rep. Jim Nussle decided to abandon his seat to run for governor. (I'm not a Nussle fan and voted for Chet Culver as a consequence, so I'm crying no tears over Nussle's pending job search.) Given that both 1st Congressional District candidates were newbies--and that Mike Whalen isn't actually an eeeevil fascist, just as Bruce Braley isn't really an eeeevil commie--I honestly could not get all that worked up about the outcome of this race, as far as the individual candidates go. (The linked profile of Whalen, by the way, doesn't really do him justice. He's been a friend of the Quad-City community--on both sides of the river--for decades and has put a lot of work into seeing it through some hard times and working for its renaissance. Braley, too, is a community-minded sort.) When it came down to it, I couldn't know for sure how well or poorly either would do in a legislative environment, the congressional context. In the end, my vote went to Whalen, but I'm OK with Braley--for now. We'll see what he does in the next couple of years and go from there.
Did you see that voters in Michigan voted to ban affirmative action in government contracting and at public colleges? Go read the linked article and look at the break-out stats (no, not just the one about white men). Then come back and tell me what you think. Meanwhile, South Dakotans handily rejected the draconian abortion banrejected the draconian abortion ban that its governor signed into law last March, while voters in seven states decided to ban same-sex marriage (and, in some cases, civil arrangements involving "marriage-like" benefits--how silly). Arizona appears likely to be the first state whose citizens reject such a measure.
John J. Miller makes an excellent point:
I had that exact thought last night and early this morning--BEFORE I heard NPR's story on the topic as I drove my son to school. Heh. (And no--I'm not a knee-jerk NPR-basher; in fact I listen to public radio regularly and value it highly. I'm even FOR supporting it with public dollars. But anyone who thinks there isn't a particular cast to how it presents things in certain areas is either fooling himself or herself or is simply not very good at analysis.)
Anyway--enough for now. I've got places to go, meetings to attend, lots of work to do, and a daunting amount of laundry to tackle--that is, if I don't wish to attend a two-day convention in Des Moines au naturel, which would be a shocking thing even among Episcopalians.
Carry on!
Some scattered stuff:
Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice makes some excellent points in his day-after analysis, one of the better I've seen around the blogosphere this morning (or, for that matter, last night--what, you didn't really believe that I wasn't following the return last night like ducklings follow their mother, did you?). He's right about the independents, I believe, and the fact that Rove miscalculated in that respect. Joe also provides a solid roundup of opinion links.
I'm sad to see Rep. Jim Leach, of Iowa's 2nd Congressional District, out of a job. (Before redistricting a few years back, he represented my own 1st Congressional District, and I would have voted for him still if that's where he'd been running last night, even though we do have areas of disagreement.) He's an honest, good-government guy who, as the Des Moines Register points out, simply got caught on the wrong side of a trend.
My own district was going to be in new hands--and newbie hands--regardless this year, since Rep. Jim Nussle decided to abandon his seat to run for governor. (I'm not a Nussle fan and voted for Chet Culver as a consequence, so I'm crying no tears over Nussle's pending job search.) Given that both 1st Congressional District candidates were newbies--and that Mike Whalen isn't actually an eeeevil fascist, just as Bruce Braley isn't really an eeeevil commie--I honestly could not get all that worked up about the outcome of this race, as far as the individual candidates go. (The linked profile of Whalen, by the way, doesn't really do him justice. He's been a friend of the Quad-City community--on both sides of the river--for decades and has put a lot of work into seeing it through some hard times and working for its renaissance. Braley, too, is a community-minded sort.) When it came down to it, I couldn't know for sure how well or poorly either would do in a legislative environment, the congressional context. In the end, my vote went to Whalen, but I'm OK with Braley--for now. We'll see what he does in the next couple of years and go from there.
Did you see that voters in Michigan voted to ban affirmative action in government contracting and at public colleges? Go read the linked article and look at the break-out stats (no, not just the one about white men). Then come back and tell me what you think. Meanwhile, South Dakotans handily rejected the draconian abortion banrejected the draconian abortion ban that its governor signed into law last March, while voters in seven states decided to ban same-sex marriage (and, in some cases, civil arrangements involving "marriage-like" benefits--how silly). Arizona appears likely to be the first state whose citizens reject such a measure.
John J. Miller makes an excellent point:
Something tells me that news editors will ice all the voter fraud stories they had reporters working on. I can hear the anchors now: "The machines worked better than expected!" "Despite concerns, there were no major irregularities." Etc.
I had that exact thought last night and early this morning--BEFORE I heard NPR's story on the topic as I drove my son to school. Heh. (And no--I'm not a knee-jerk NPR-basher; in fact I listen to public radio regularly and value it highly. I'm even FOR supporting it with public dollars. But anyone who thinks there isn't a particular cast to how it presents things in certain areas is either fooling himself or herself or is simply not very good at analysis.)
Anyway--enough for now. I've got places to go, meetings to attend, lots of work to do, and a daunting amount of laundry to tackle--that is, if I don't wish to attend a two-day convention in Des Moines au naturel, which would be a shocking thing even among Episcopalians.
Carry on!
