That train may have left the station.

I wouldn't be so sure. New Jersey remains reliably blue and the exit polling in Virginia seemed to indicate Obama was still popular among the moderates who voted for the Republican. Bottom line: as unpopular as Peloso and Reid are, they're nowhere near as unpopular as Boehner and McConnell. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing a couple dozen Club for Growth candidates crash and burn on the shores of this mandate in 2010.

I don't know Jack. Trying to rush his agenda "PDQ" may in fact be the reason for the backlash.

In reality, nothing unexpected happened, and there wasn't any shift of power.

In other news:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/03/bill-owens-leads-doug-hof_n_344776.html

In NJ Corzine was unpopular due to failure to curb high property taxes, his rep as a wall street guy (Goldman Sachs), and an affair w/a public employee union head (the old NJ corruption angle). His low poll #s preceded and were independent of Obama

In VA the democrat ran a horrible campaign.

Look at the 23rd district in NY where dems won a seat that the GOP held for over a century.

Why? because the tea bag types decided for ideological purity over electability and ran out the local state rep who was the GOP nominee. This showed that many voters, even reliably republican ones, don't want hard right wingers as GOP nominees.

I agree with Mike, the most significant event was a conservative party vs repub.party schism. Palin and her ilk came thru for Dems. Lets hope that was the start of a trend. Finally the right may have it's Nader to contend with. But rather than an individual to divide the vote, they have a movement. The "conservative" party may marginalize the republican "bounce back" in 2010. Let's hope.

Hoffman only lost by a few, or couple, percentage points. He was at only SINGLE DIGITS a month or so ago. So his showing was extremely impressive given the odds. And yes I am with a previous poster. Obama's problem is not that he is not pushing his agenda hard enough. Quite the opposite.

Governors are a strange bird. You see quite often a D leading a red state (Arizona) and a R leading a blue state(MN). What really mattered was NY-23.

This was a battle over the direction of the GOP and the far-right lost.

His agenda now is so starkly different from what he was campaigning on and getting new liberals and old dogs all excited about, he's turned them off -- especially with his Clintonesque nominations for executive branch posts.

See, e.g., Joseph Pizarchik: The Wrong Choice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAzfDvWWp7s

BUT, yesterday's elections were more about the economy and the budget horrors within the states (in NJ it was an anti-Wall St. (Corzine) turn-out turnout) on a smallish off-year election around the U.S. The NY 23rd Cong. Dist. race was a more telling outcome for national implications in 2010. Howard Fineman shared some excellent insights last night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/33612901#33612901

Independent voters are the key. Party politics are dying a slow death. Corporate politics continue to increase their dominance over our society.

P.S.: Maureen Dowd notes this week that Obama appears to be losing weight (and not just figuratively): The 48-year-old Obama is skinny and getting skinnier....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/opinion/04dowd.html

And there's this from Dowd's previous column:

Obama wants to be the cosmopolitan president of the world, and social engineer at home to improve the lives of Americans.

But what he had in mind for renovating American society hinged on spending a lot of money on energy, education, the environment and health care. Instead, he has been trapped in the money pits of a recession and two wars.

For now, the man who promised revolution will have to settle for managing adversity.

P.P.S. -- There's an anonymous Senator's hold on the Pizarchik nomination for Director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement:

Irreparable Damage: Senate Must Block OSM Nominee Pizarchik
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/irreparable-damage-senate_b_313450.html

Mystery Senator Blocks Obama Pick to Head Key Mining Office
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/10/coal-activists-senators-question-obama-pick-head-surface-mining-office

Will Sen. Merkley join in and block this bad choice, too?

Oregonians please take note:

While outsiders may think of Oregon as a green utopia, it's undoubtedly not that groovy when it comes to the issue of coal.

From "Will Oregon Close the State's Only Coal-Fired Power Plant?" By Joshua Frank, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/environment/143432/will_oregon_close_the_state%27s_only_coal-fired_power_plant

Over 40 percent of the state's energy comes from the burning of this precious black rock, half of which is pumped out of the Boardman Power Plant each year. No coal-mining operations exist in the state, so all of the coal set ablaze in Boardman is dug up and transported from places like the majestic Powder River Basin, which straddles the high-plains border of northern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

It's ridiculous to assume that every time a Republican is elected for county dog-catcher somewhere, that it is a rebuke of Obama. He's got his problems, but let's not get carried away.

The GOP has a long way to go to convince a majority of voters that their behavior from 2000 to 2006 was a fluke and that they're completely reformed just 4 years later.

And the conservative social-issue fire breathing is a loser and will only become moreso from here on out. They've lost that battle, and the harder they cling to it, the more they'll turn off moderate voters. Shooting down gay marraige by only 1% is a victory today - how do you think that vote will go 10 years from now?

The worm may have just turned. As a soon-to-be resident of Nevada I can tell you that Reid is in deep trouble in his own state. After 12 years in the US Senate, he's done little for his own state and even Las Vegas Democrats are ready to throw him under the bus in 2010. And that's not counting the large numbers of Republicans that simply want him gone next year.

Jack, you too-often brush 'it' off as 'crowing on radio' YET 'it' is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than that.

'It' is brain programming. (Because it is auditory and speaks the pitch/tempo/emotional :: visceral human voice, talking to the more primal basal brain stem; and it is NOT literary, being read through the eyes by individual 'interior voicing' and grasped by the cognitive brain cortex -- but let's set aside the physics(ology) of cause-and-effect for a second, although physics WHY:The-Reason is the absolute Truth argument to make.)

So the 'crowing' is not, CANnot, be understood, but is only recited. Brain 'programs' are reflexive, routine, mindless and habit(uated) 'in a rut' -- just like computer programs.

Not to think but simply to recite is the faster source of speech -- what we heard comes to mind first to say, before what we think can get its expression words together. So we see: the first earliest Comments in this thread being recitations of 'radio crowing.'

Indeed, the 'crowed' brain programming is the first thought, (the 'hook') in the first sentence of this Post itself -- Event happened, now what's the media gonna say (broadcasting to mass-mind everyone what words to 'think' with); instead of: Event happened, now what are MY thoughts based on what MY knowledged understanding is. You demonstrate my point, Jack, of the difference between consciousness focused in the media (mass mind) or consciousness focused in the mental / mentation / meditation. One is a hormone-jerk, the other is rational thinking. (And consciousness is, of course, life.)

- - -

Personally, I think voters and voting this time is all about 'show me the money' because lives are imperiled from the economy crashing down on so many souls. Then that relates to the media business crashing too, since it is part of the economy, (as much as broadcasts get money from commercial sponsors not yet bankrupt, more and more propped up 'in business' by public money tax bailout subsidy). The way it relates is that media business does NOT tell the news (i.e., the economy is crashing), and media business DOES tell messages to keep itSELF in business making money, i.e., the messages that paying sponsors like broadcast, (i.e., Buy Our Sh!t, Work For Sh!t Wages, Go Ahead Die Nobody Gives a Sh!t).

The tinfoil hat is slipping.

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"But it is wise to attend to deeds, NOT rhetoric. Deeds commonly tell a different story," he added.

"There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that we if can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," explained Chomsky.

-- Noam Chomsky: no change in US 'Mafia principle': Top American intellectual sees no significant change of US foreign policy under Obama, By Mamoon Alabbasi - LONDON, Published 2009-11-01

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Maybe a tad off topic, but if you want to see WHY US healthcare is so darn expensive, take a look at this report.(it even has pictures for the republican readers of this blog)

International Federation of Health Plans

It really is informative.

At least it's good to see two parties running against each other. Unlike Portland where the elected reps get percentages that would make banana republic dictators envious.

Nothing unexected in NJ or Virginia.

I want to hear folks opinions on the dumping of Royce pollard in Fort Vancouver.

Is it an omen for local pols in municipal elections?

The Portland Business Alliance endorsement was the kiss of death for Pollard. That was the moment when Levitt won.

Hey, Dems have now slipped to the same level of (dis)-respect as the Reps is what this means. Otherwise, I don't see it as a ringing endorsement of anyone.

Tell me when the approval rating of Congress gets above 10% . . .

Almost everywhere the Democrats made progress in Virginia, not just last year, not the last four years, not the last ten years, but the last 12 years, that progress was reversed yesterday by a Republican ticket that had a simple message of jobs first, transportation second and holding the line on taxes third.

There is a new GOP generation coming forward. The Republicans were gracious and inclusive. The Democrats were nasty and negative.

There were big Republican gains in the state house of delegates as well as a crushing sweep at the top of the ticket.

The young adults are frustrated and confused. They aren't getting what they bargained for. And when it does look like they will get some of what they wanted they are beginning to understand that one way or another they'll be footing the bill. They aren't accustomed to making hard choices so they didn't show up at the polls.

In one of the more arrogant editorials in a long and lustrous line, and a feigned effort at graciousness, the Washington Post said that it looks forward to Bob McDonnell proving it wrong. Actually, that is exactly what happened yesterday.

In my opinion, your analysis--and admonition--is on the money, Jack

Levitt won in Vancouver because he symbolized positions that the politicians on either side of the Columbia have not let the public vote on for quite some time.

1. Light Rail/Mass Transit: TriMet, Metro, Portland City Council, PDC have successfully prevented any true public input by voting on this issue.

2. The Columbia Crossing: Even though the mayor of any city has little to do with the decisions about the bridge, the symbolism of any position taken concerning the bridge was exhibited in the Levitt vote. But Sam, before his troubles, sure swung his weight around, and still tries to-and the Vancouver voters felt slighted that their positions were slighted, and Pollard's input had less weight than Sam's.

3. Unfair/Fair Taxation Differences of WA employees working in OR , or vice versa.

4. The "put-down" of Vancouverites by Portland politicians. Vancouver voters demonstrated their independence.

A Democrat winning a seat in a long time, historically Rep seat in upstate NY is a big, deal and it should send a signal to the party. Most of you reading this are far too young to remember the concept of liberal Republicans (fiscally conservative, and socially liberal) but Jake Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, and a few from IL whose names escape me as the mid-West never was my bailiwick. The NY state Assembly once perfected gerrymandering as a means of keeping upstate purely Republican. Though they never could stop one Conservative Dem. named Sam Stratton.

-- Noam Chomsky: no change in US 'Mafia principle': Top American intellectual sees no significant change of US foreign policy under Obama, By Mamoon Alabbasi - LONDON, Published 2009-11-01

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Posted by Tenskwatawa | November 4, 2009 11:02 AM

Tensky: Qouting Chomsky giving a speech,and noted in an ARAB paper..is like Qouting Hitler from "MEIN KAPFT"

If I spelled the Hitler book wrong...TS.