North Coast Online

Not Quite Purple Yet

I certainly don't blame the Democrats for attempting to maximize their electoral victories but, as they were quick to point out in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006; they've not really won a mandate.  57,000 votes meant the difference between a Republican loss or a Democrat victory.

Meanwhile, In Eliot's Empire

Just a few thoughts on the New York elections.

Reynolds/Davis

I wasn't surprised by Reynolds' victory.  But I remain astonished at the level of animosity towards him from the Buffalo media.  The big topic of discussion this morning on WBEN was that he played "Hit the Road, Jack" at his victory party last night.  I thought it was funnier than hell, but the morning news announcers were disgusted.

Hey, this was a nasty campaign and Reynolds didn't start it.  Neither did Davis, to be sure.  But when the media started smelling blood in the water over the silly Foley affair (that wasn't an affair, after all) Davis jumped in and I don't blame the Congressman for some fun at his own damned party.  And Davis's name-calling wasn't that attractive either.

Spitzer

Nothing remotely surprising here, he's been the governor-in-waiting for over a year now.  A co-worker asked me today if people will hold Spitzer responsible for his economic development promises and I could only laugh.  Democrats really do want economic development, but only if it's on their terms.  And those terms insist on tight government control and planning.  Spitzer will deliver on those points, but no net growth will come from them.

Spitzer will, I've little doubt, make good on his property tax reform promise but that will not lead to any economic development in New York either.  He claims that lower property taxes will enable more people to live here and that will be attractive to businesses.  That's rubbish.  Business determines where it can most likely make a profit and the housing of its employees is, and I know this is anathema to many of you, far down the list.

And any property tax relief will come only through Albany's pumping money to towns and cities to make up the difference.  Taxpayers will still be footing the bill, but only through the intermediary of the state.  I suspect that Eliot, barring any stupendous scandal, will remain governor as long as he wishes.  New York's population decline and economic stagnation won't change, though.

Hevesi 

And speaking of scandal, what can you possibly think about his victory?  The Democrats love to call themselves the reformers but yet they could not bring themselves to pull the Republican lever against a known, proven and admitted thief.  A thief of taxpayer money who, ironically enough, is the watchdog over the public purse. 

It's symbolic, I think, of the rot that infects this state's politics and anyone who voted for him should feel thoroughly ashamed.  I know, I know.  The Democrats will probably see him out of office and replace him with another of their choosing.  They'll all stand in front of the microphones and blubber about their hurt and dismay at his "mistake," and that'll be that.

But, hey.  They own New York and most New Yorkers like it that way -- evidently.

Lessons Learned?

OK, first the Congress, then the Senate and now Rumsfeld.  I've got a feeling that holiday sales may be down this year because Christmas for the left came early this year.  They deserve to enjoy it -- I only hope the Republicans will learn how to turn defeat back into victory much more quickly than did the Democrats.

And of course they do that by returning to what the party considers its roots:  cutting spending, cutting taxes and cutting government.  Maintain a strong national defense and continue the crusade to rid the federal courts of judges who prefer to make law rather than interpret it.  And, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, the GOP abandons its love-making with the evangelical right and returns to a mild flirtation.

We don't need to abandon the pro-life plank but as the vote in South Dakota demonstrated, a flat-out ban of abortion with no provision for rape or incest proved too much even for a conservative state.  Better to work on late-term abortion and measures to ensure minors have parental approval.

Anti-gay marriage initiatives at the federal level are a dead letter, now, too -- or should be.  Leave that matter to the states -- they're deciding it fine on their own -- that's a conservative approach.  The GOP now has two years during which it can, we hope, depend on the Presidential veto to rein in any Democrat overreach and try and remember how to play the responsible party.  If they do that and -- if -- the party nominates a real leader for the 2008 elections, our time in the desert may be relatively short-lived.

[UPDATE:] And, no, we don't pull out of Iraq before it's safe and stable.  As James Taranto points out, this election was not a referendum on Iraq.

One of the most pro-Iraq lawmakers in Congress, Sen. Joe Lieberman, ran as an independent and trounced anti-Iraq Democratic nominee Ned Lamont. Meanwhile, of the five remaining Republican members of Congress who voted against Iraq's liberation, three lost: Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.I.), Rep. John Hostettler (Ind.) and Rep. Jim Leach (Iowa). Only two anti-Iraq Republicans will return to the 110th Congress: Reps. Jimmy Duncan (Tenn.) and Ron Paul (Texas).

Voters on the right will not look kindly on their party if it endorses another surrender a la Viet Nam.

Pass The Paper Towels

I will spend the day wiping egg from my face and resume posting tonight. 

Three bright spots were the victories of Reynolds, Walsh and Kuhl.  The New York Post sums up my reaction to the other New York State results.

NEW York's Republicans just suffered their most humiliating rejection at the polls since the 1930s. It was a rough night for the party nationwide, but the local bloodbath can be laid at the feet of one man: George Elmer Pataki.

After years of Pataki's heedless leadership and his administration's mismanagement, arrogance, incompetence and pettiness, New Yorkers deserted the Republicans and Conservative ballot lines in droves.

Amen.

They Don't All Hate Us

On election day comes this uncharacteristically pro-American op-ed from the Guardian.

America thinks itself good at war and is bad at it. America thinks itself bad at democracy and is good at it, very good.

Every time I visit America at election time I am left exhilarated by the sheer, pulverising potency of its democracy. Nowhere on earth are the mighty brought so low, nowhere is power so tested by fire. Yet ABC news this morning could announce judgment day with the downbeat message that it was "the nastiest mid-term election in history."

Nasty is right. Within two minutes of turning on my television I hear "Andrew Cuomo is lying", Bob Menendez is supported by kickback hoodlums, worst calumny of all, Thomas Kean "supports George Bush". Almost everyone is in favour of killing babies, rupturing stem cells and torturing Iraqis. The corridors of power are awash in corruption, adultery, mendacity and sin. The torrent of abuse is relentless and, to those used to the bland hustings of European oligarchy, gloriously refreshing.

Above all the negativity is good. The Karl Rove strategy of identifying electoral difference rather than consensus inflames democratic choice as it should be inflamed. Voters cannot make that choice if, as increasingly in Europe, candidates are bland mirrors of each other. Only at an American election am I told what candidates stand for, because their opponents tell me so, in vivid technicolour. Voters are merely the residuum of democratic scrutiny of power. It is those out of power and craving it that are the real scrutineers. By hook and by crook, American elections deliver that requirement.

What If?

It's early and I'm not predicting defeat for the Republicans by any means, but if they lose I wonder if one more election-myth from 2004 may get popped.  That would be the vaunted GOP-GOTV (Get Out The Vote) machine of the Republican party. 

I think that the famous "values voter" of 2004 has finally been shown to be a construct of the liberal media struggling to explain their misjudgement of the electoral results.  It might just be that GOTV falls into the same category:  an attempt by the Democrats to explain an otherwise (to them) unexplainable loss.  Maybe it's simply the case that in 2004 the GOP just reflected the mood of the country better.  If the Dems win tonight, perhaps it's for the same reason.

Wow, wouldn't that be a revolutionary idea.  Voters just show up and vote when they're motivated.

Rage Against The "Machine"

An example of some possibly-premature voter angst today in Pennsylvania.

A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today's election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.

Michael Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police.

Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots. This is the first time electronic machines are being widely used in a Pennsylvania general election.

"He smashed it with the cat's ears," said volunteer Jim Govostis, who watched the incident unfold at Raker Center, a nursing home owned by Good Shepherd, around 12:30 p.m.

Young, who brought the paperweight with him, then sat down, hung his head and waited for police, who arrested him without incident.

No word as of yet if his beliefs would be counted as a legitimate vote.

Hoosier Polls Close at 7:00

One of the first states we'll likely see results from tonight will be Indiana where the polls close at 7 pm EST.  There are three GOP House seats in danger here.  Chocola's 2nd District, Hostettler's 8th and Sodrel's 9th.  Hostettler's is listed as Leans Dem at RealClearPolitics.com, the other two are toss-ups.

The results of these races may give us an indication of the evening to come.

[UPDATE:] One hour after the polls closed, Fox News declared Hostetteler the loser.  The other two are still too close to call.

Help America Vote, My Ass

If we learn anything from this election, it should be how foolish we were to rush into computerized voting.

The US Attorney for New Jersey has dispatched investigators to run down complaints of voting machine problems which are preventing voters from casting ballots for GOP Senate hopeful Tom Kean, Jr.

The counsel for the NJ Republican State Committee, Mark Sheridan, says he has four sworn affidavits and has received more than two dozen calls alleging that some of New Jersey's electronic voting machines were either "pre-voted" for Democratic incumbant Bob Menendez, or were otherwise inoperable when voters sought to cast votes for Kean.

Get a load of the "simple" instructions to change a vote on one of these things.

One problem, says Sheridan, is that voters apparently don't realize that in order to deselect a vote for a candidate on the new machines, they need to touch the icon for that candidate, and then touch the screen again to select the icon of the candidate for which they want to cast a vote.

Even so, Sheridan says that does not explain how the Menendez icon was selected on the affected machines, even before the voters attempted to use the machines to cast their ballots.

Voters do need to affirmatively lock in their votes on the machines before they reset, and there is a possibility that some voters aren't doing that, which could account for the problem, at least in some cases. However, Sheridan points out that if that were the case here, all of the icons for which a voter had cast ballots would be lit and the problem seems to be that only the Menendez icon remains selected.

Sheridan says there is no provision which would allow a poll worker to void an erroneously cast vote.

Bad move. I continue to hope that New York avoids these messes by going with paper ballots that are then counted by a computer.

[UPDATE:] Here's why we got the stupid Help America Vote Act in the first place.  Lefties like this one think that we're expecting too much from minority voters.

The nasty little secret of US elections is that three million ballots are cast in national elections but not counted — 3,600,380 not counted in 2004 according to US Election Commission stats. These are votes lost because a punch card didn’t punch (its chad got “hung”), a stray mark voided a paper ballot and other machinery glitches.

Officials call it “spoilage.” I call it, “inaugurating Republicans.” Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will “spoil” this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or “blank” are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP.

Now, I'm not at all sure how the writer has been able to determine that it's predominantly blacks and Hispanics whose votes are spoiled, I mean, after all, you don't indicate your race on the ballot.  Maybe he's just assuming they're less capable than whites.  But even if the percentages were true, why should we be worked up over it? 

Even though Doug Turner suggests voting drunk isn't any big whoop and not knowing who you're voting for is just fine, I still don't think it's too much to insist that citizens at least register their votes accurately.  In fact, this insistence by the left that we somehow make voting "dummy-proof" only exposes their target market.  I think the Democrats should raise their sights a little and try for the competent vote.  It would be a hard-sell, I realize, but in the end we'd be better off for it.

Time To Go Vote