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Andrew Romano
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Nov 3, 2009 11:52 PM
Well, what do I know?
Last Friday, I predicted on this blog that
incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine would defeat GOP challenger
Chris Christie in my home state of New Jersey--a "wildly reckless
prediction," as I put it, but a prediction all the same. I was wrong.
With 95 percent of precincts reporting, the fat man has defeated the
bald man 49 percent to 45 percent, returning Drumthwacket--that's our
endearingly Harry Potter-esque name for the governor's mansion--to
Republican hands for the first time since 2001.
How
did Christie
do it? Given that the final pre-election polls pegged the Republican's
lead at a statistically insignificant one percent, Corzine's defeat was
surprisingly broad and deep. He lost in swing counties, like
Gloucester, that he won handily in 2005; he lost Republican strongholds
like Monmouth by even larger margins than the last time around.
Independents preferred Christie to Corzine 58 percent to 33 percent,
and energized Republicans made up a three percent larger share of the
electorate (31 percent) than they did in 2008. Christie trounced
Corzine by 8 percent among voters aged 30-44, a group of New Jerseyans
that Barack Obama won last year by more than 15 percent. And most
importantly, Independent candidate Chris Daggett, who climbed as high
as 20 percent in the polls earlier this fall, ended up being something
of a non-factor. Heading into Tuesday, Daggett was still clinging to
about 10 percent of the vote. But on Election Day approximately half of
the voters who'd told pollsters they planned to pull the lever for the
Independent wound up in Christie's column instead--which pretty much
accounts for the Christie's margin of victory. Even if Corzine had
pocketed 75 percent of the remaining Dagget loyalists--an impossibility
given that Daggett was clearly siphoning off anti-Corzine voters from
Christie--he still would've lost.
CLICK THROUGH FOR THE REST OF THE STORY...
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Howard Fineman
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Nov 3, 2009 11:41 PM
Maybe I'm crazy, or just jealous, but my favorite—and I think most emblematic—contest this Election Day was the mayor's race in New York City. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, despite spending more than $100 million of his own money, ended up in the race of his life against a relative unknown named William Thompson.
What does that have to do with Republican victories in the governor's race in Virginia and New Jersey? Well, everything. Americans (and certainly those few who voted in this off year) are still mad at the Big Boys, whether they are in Washington or on Wall Street, or, in the case of New York City, down at City Hall.
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Howard Fineman
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Nov 3, 2009 11:29 PM
Election Day 2009 was not a repudiation of Barack Obama, but it sure wasn't a vote of confidence, either. Exit polls in Virginia and New Jersey showed that fewer than 40 percent of voters factored the president per se into their polling-booth equation. But the deep skepticism that the (shrunken) electorate showed toward Democratic candidates can't be interpreted in any other way than as a vote of not-quite-confidence in the man in the White House. The fact is, as the exits showed, voters are overwhelmingly worried about the economy—and the president has done little or nothing, it seems, to allay that fear. That presents an opening to the Republican Party next year, if they can take advantage of it.
Two gubernatorial elections do not a new national party make. Nationwide, the GOP currently has the allegiance of only one in five voters—the lowest percentage since Abe Lincoln was building the party a century and a half ago. If the Republicans are going to build on the momentum they acquired today, they are going to have to present credible alternative plans for economic revival. The national party might take a look at what Bob McDonnell did in Virginia. He had specific, detailed plans for transportation, education, and other bread-and-butter concerns in the state, especially in the swing-voter suburbs near Washington.
As for Obama, he needs to pass—and convincingly sell the virtues of—legislation that helps real people in real ways.
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Howard Fineman
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Nov 3, 2009 11:17 PM
This election was as much about who didn't show up as who did. Obama
World took the day off. As a result, the races in Virginia, New Jersey,
and New York were largely left to the old school—older white folks—and
they yanked the results back in their own (generally conservative)
direction.
If this was a rebellion we were watching, as some
Republicans suggested, it was a rebellion of an antique America—in
both the literal and figurative sense—against the dawn of a
demographically and perhaps philosophically new country.
I don't
have much exit-poll data in hand (they are very tight with such things
over here at NBC, where I am camped out), but from what I can glean,
the minority turnout in Virginia and New Jersey was relatively
light—certainly compared with the tsunami of 2008. (There are few
persons of color in the North Country of New York state, where a House
special election also drew attention.)
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Holly Bailey
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Nov 3, 2009 09:47 PM
A major story tonight is how independent voters turned out strongly for Republicans this Election Day, a not-so-encouraging sign that Democrats have lost touch with a voting bloc considered pivotal to Barack Obama’s win in 2008 and the party’s recapture of Congress in 2006. If exit polls are to be believed—and we know sometimes they aren’t—Republican Chris Christie trounced Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey 58 percent to 33 percent among independent voters. Ditto in Virginia, where Republican Bob McDonnell’s gubernatorial victory tonight appears to have been fueled in part by swing voters. According to exit polls there, McDonnell led Democrat Creigh Deeds among self-described independent voters 65 percent to 34 percent. It is a fluke? Not exactly. For months, national polls have been showing independents moving to the right. A recent Gallup Poll found Republicans leading Dems 46 percent to 36 percent among independents. One reason, according to a recent Pew Research survey, is that independents are increasingly unhappy with the Democratic-led Congress. And their single biggest issue appears to be the one driving election results today and likely in 2010: worries about the economy.
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Daniel Stone
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Nov 3, 2009 08:21 PM
With enough precincts reporting to make it official, Virginia Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds was handed a defeat Tuesday night, having lost his bid for governor by double digits. Of all the closely watched races of the day, it’s fair to say that the one in Virginia would have the most obvious outcome. Deeds trailed GOP opponent Bob McDonnell by an average of 10 points across several polls more than a week ago. Even after President Obama campaigned for him two weeks ago, the Democrat still couldn’t recover.
Pundits have tried for weeks to tie the Deeds-McDonnell race to a larger national significance, specifically a coast-to-coast referendum on President Obama’s first year since his election. And understandably so—editors and TV producers like it when you can turn local news into national headlines. But that’s nothing compared to how much the Republican Party, which won two other state offices in Virginia on Tuesday, wanted to frame McDonnell’s win as a public, national rebuke of Obama.
It might be good for ad sales and partisan politics, but it’s not the most accurate way to interpret McDonnell’s win.
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Holly Bailey
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Nov 3, 2009 07:55 PM
The Atlantic’s Chris Good has an interesting breakdown on who spent what on New York’s hotly contested
23rd congressional district race. The big news: the Club for Growth
spent more than $1 million in support of Conservative Party candidate
Doug Hoffman. That’s slightly less than the $1.1 million the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee chipped in behalf of Democrat Bill
Owens. Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent
roughly $897,000—mostly on ads directly challenging Owens, as opposed
to building up Dede Scozzafava, a moderate Republican who dropped out
of the race over the weekend.
With polls set to close around 9 p.m. ET, the big question is
whether the Club for Growth’s money and support—along with high-profile
endorsements from 2012 hopefuls Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty—was enough
to push Hoffmann over the edge. ***UPDATE: We now know
it wasn't.** But in Washington, many Republicans are already looking at
the bigger picture of what a Hoffman victory might mean for other
closely contested GOP races next year. It’s not just about a
philosophical war between moderates and conservatives over how the
party should move forward. It’s about money and manpower at a time when
the NRCC is trying to cut into the Democrats’ majority control of the
House. Will independent groups like the Club for Growth try to repeat
their methods in other tight GOP contests next year and what does that
mean for the NRCC’s own operation, particularly in terms of money? Cash
is already tight for House Republicans, who are being outspent and outraised
by their Democratic counterparts. The last thing GOP aides say the
party needs is an internecine war when Republicans should be focusing
their resources in fighting Democrats.
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Katie Connolly
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Nov 3, 2009 04:32 PM
A new Palin book hits shelves today, with lots of juicy details on the Alaska governor's accelerated ride to the top of the GOP. In Sarah From Alaska, Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, reporters from CBS and Fox, respectively, who covered her campaign, document Palin's rollercoaster rise and uncover more than a few interesting nuggets along the way. Perhaps their best score was getting their hands on a copy of the speech that Palin would have given on election night had McCain's campaign managers not barred her from doing so. Her desire to introduce McCain at the nationally televised event rankled the McCain campaign, who worried that she was trying to steal his moment or, worse, that she would go off script as she had done before and undermine the gracious tone they hoped to set. But the speech that was written for her was actually quite respectful and complaisant. Here are a few of her choice would-be lines:
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Robert J. Samuelson
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Nov 3, 2009 12:30 PM
Does the Obama administration ever plan to balance the budget? Apparently not. In a speech at New York University, Peter Orszag, head of the Office of Management and Budget, suggested that the administration’s goal was to reduce the deficit to a “fiscally sustainable level,” which he said is “roughly 3 percent” of gross domestic product (GDP). That would be much lower than the deficit of $1.4 trillion for fiscal 2009, which ended in September and totaled $1.4 trillion. But it would still be a lot of money, about $420 billion annually in today’s dollars.
The idea behind keeping the deficit to a “fiscally sustainable level” is to stabilize the outstanding federal debt as a share of GDP. In 2008, the federal debt held by the public was $5.8 trillion, or 41 percent of GDP. When the Congressional Budget Office estimated the prospective Obama budgets in June, it projected that there would be continuous deficits for the next decade and that by 2019 the federal debt would reach $17.1 trillion, about 82 percent of estimated GDP. Other estimates have put the debt-to-GDP ratio even higher. The annual deficits during this decade would average more than 5 percent of GDP, the CBO said. (The federal debt represents all the money borrowed to cover annual deficits.) In his speech, Orszag conceded that present deficit projections are “well above” fiscally sustainable levels. Orszag didn’t say when the administration would start curbing the deficits, except to indicate that the process might start once the economic recovery seemed well established.
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Katie Connolly
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Nov 3, 2009 09:24 AM
It's
Election Day, and although none of the contests has a real national
impact, political strategists will be analyzing every minute detail for
clues on national trends. As the results come trickling in, here are
five things to watch for.
1. In Virginia, things look pretty dour for Creigh Deeds. Although Obama won the state last year, Deeds has few of the traits
that excited Democrats to vote for Obama in droves. But Republicans
will quickly celebrate a poor showing by Deeds as proof that the
president's star power is waning. Watch for the White House to subtly
distance itself from the Deeds campaign, likely in the form of blind
quotes on Politico or in tomorrow's Washington Post.
2. In New Jersey,
incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie
will be duking it out till the bitter end. It's a close race, but as
the man formerly known as Stumper wrote last week,
Jersey politics is often decided by the strength of the Democratic
turnout machine. Tonight's vote will be an indicator of whether the
base there is politically motivated enough to vote for a guy they're
not that excited about just to prevent a GOP win. A Corzine loss would
be the most worrying outcome of the night for Democrats. That said, the
person who will decide tonight's race is really Republican turned
independent Chris Daggett, who has steadily chipped away at Christie's
numbers. Watch for Democrats to marginalize his impact on the race—they
won't want to admit that Corzine may have been trampled if Daggett
hadn't taken some of the vote. Speaking of third-party candidates . . .
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