WASHINGTON – What we learned from the off-year elections: The president’s influence is limited, independents rule, incumbents beware, issues trump ideology and, once more, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Also: Republicans can win — even if they lack a leader and their base is cracked. And this certainly isn’t the Democratic-friendly political environment of 2006 and 2008 when the party captured control of Congress and the White House.

The first Election Day of Barack Obama’s presidency was a big night for Republicans, who recaptured governorships in the swing state of Virginia and the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey. Democrats won two races for vacant congressional seats, including one in upstate New York that had been long held by Republicans and that exposed a GOP divide.

So, what did we learn about politics, people and their priorities from the handful of races on Tuesday? And how will those lessons shape the maneuvering of Republicans and Democrats ahead of 2010 midterms, when Obama’s prestige will be put to the test across the country?

The results don’t seem to bode well for Obama and his party heading into a high-stakes year as they look to advance an expensive domestic agenda while protecting the Democrats’ grip on House, Senate and gubernatorial seats nationwide. They’ll try to win over people in a country clouded by a job-killing recession, divided over war and, as Tuesday’s results showed, fed up with the powers that be — no matter the political party.

Among the lessons learned:

_OBAMA’S POLITICAL POWER IS LIMITED

“Yes, we can!” has turned into “Yes, we can — if we feel like it!”

The broad coalition — minorities, young people, first-time voters, Republican crossovers and independents — that fueled Obama’s victory was a 2008 phenomenon; it can’t be counted on if the man himself is not on the ballot. Even though Obama personally implored his supporters to turn out in droves, voters rejected incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey and Democratic candidate R. Creigh Deeds in Virginia.

That could be a problem for Democratic lawmakers in swing states and conservative-to-moderate districts next fall because Obama won’t be on the ballot to drive up turnout. Candidates carried into office in the Obama wave will be vulnerable in 2010 — with no lifeguard to help. And that could influence how those lawmakers vote in Congress in the meantime — perhaps threatening the president’s priorities.

With Obama unable to guarantee their political survival, what’s the incentive for them to back his legislative agenda?

_INDEPENDENTS ARE KINGMAKERS

Voters who don’t claim a political party again proved their value by propelling Republicans to victory in Virginia and New Jersey one year after carrying Obama to the White House.

Independents are, well, truly independent — and, thus, are extraordinarily fickle.

Last year, hope and change tilted them toward Democrats. This year, anger and frustration tilted them to Republicans. They broke 2-1 for GOP victors Chris Christie in New Jersey and Bob McDonnell in Virginia.

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CAMDEN, New Jersey – Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia face possible defeat in November, despite strong showings by President Barack Obama in those states last year, in elections that could render the first judgments on the Obama presidency.

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, a close Obama ally, is struggling to win re-election in the face of a strong challenge by Republican Christopher Christie.

The Obama administration has turned out in support of Corzine, a wealthy former Goldman Sachs executive.

In Virginia, the only other U.S. state with a gubernatorial contest this year, Democrat Creigh Deeds has been losing so much ground in the polls to Republican Bob McDonnell that he has blamed the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan for his low popularity.

A Washington Post poll published on Friday gave McDonnell a commanding lead of 53 percent to 44 percent, with less than a month to go until election day.

“Frankly, a lot of what’s going on in Washington has made it very tough,” Deeds told Politico newspaper. “We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending.”

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RICHMOND, Va. – Last year, 23-year-old Rashida Hill watched the presidential debates, visited the college political party meetings and put a Barack Obama bumper sticker on her townhouse door. She voted for Obama because she felt like the election was about “being a part of something.”

But on Tuesday, the Virginia Commonwealth University student didn’t bother voting in the governor’s race because, she said, the candidates didn’t give her anything to get excited about.

“The simple fact is, unless you put it in front of somebody, they’re really not going to seek it out,” Hill said.

Many of the young, first-time voters who propelled Obama to the presidency stayed home this year, a glaring absence that helped Republicans win governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey. More than 3 million voters who cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election — many of them minorities — failed to show up at the polls in either state.

Obama carried Virginia with 52 percent of the vote last year, but only 43 percent of voters surveyed in Associated Press exit polls Tuesday said they had voted for him.

Another group that solidified Obama’s victory — independents — turned their backs on Democrats this year.

In Virginia, independents in 2008 helped make Obama the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1964. But on Tuesday, they voted 2-1 in favor of Republican Bob McDonnell, who easily defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds. About one in 10 Virginia voters switched their support from Obama in last year’s election to the Republican candidate for governor this year.

In New Jersey, independent voters who narrowly favored Obama last year strongly supported Republican Chris Christie for governor over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine. Christie won 49 percent to 45 percent.

“A lot of this had to do with the collapse of the economy and future prospects for the nation and the state,” said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

Independent voters “are very performance-oriented. They just want to know what have you done for me lately or what have you done to me lately,” he said.

Outgoing Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who also serves as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said the Democratic losses in Virginia and New Jersey had more to do with local issues than Obama’s first-year performance.

Exit polling showed support for Obama remained steady despite the Republican victories.

The president campaigned hard for Corzine, making three visits to the state, including one on the last weekend.

The president’s appeal worked for Roger Johnson, a 50-year-old restaurant employee from Cherry Hill, N.J., who said he had qualms with Corzine but voted for him, anyway.

“I went in to help the president. I wasn’t going to vote for Corzine,” said Johnson, a registered Republican who usually votes for Democrats. “But I did.”

About 60 percent of voters in both states said their feelings about Obama were not a factor in their vote in the governor’s race, exit polls showed. In Virginia, a quarter of voters said their vote for McDonnell was in direct opposition to Obama. In New Jersey, those who said he was not a factor were evenly divided in their support.

Even some of those who did not support Obama last year said they feel like he’s doing the best he can considering the circumstances under which he’s serving.

Linda Doland, 60, of Chesterfield, Va., said she thinks Obama is way off the mark on health care and Afghanistan, but “I think he has the best interest of our country at heart.”

Still, many just chose to sit this one out.

Mark Dorroh, 58, of Richmond, has not missed an election since he turned 21. He voted for Obama last year, not because he was particularly inspired, but because he said the Harvard graduate “seemed like he would be competent and able.”

Neither of the candidates impressed him, so he skipped this election.

“I just wasn’t in the mood to vote,” he said.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-twelve-months-on-the-star-falls-back-to-earth-1811148.html

Last year he could do no wrong. Now he is on the stump in a desperate bid to avert a Republican fightback. David Usborne reports

Thursday, 29 October 2009

AP
President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown walk from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington

If there was a degree of déjà vu for fans of Barack Obama crammed inside a university athletic arena in Hackensack, New Jersey, the other evening, it was entirely deliberate. They only had to close their eyes and listen to the deafening chants of “Yes We Can” to imagine they had been transported back to the heady days of a year ago when their candidate was on the verge of seizing the White House and making history.

Even with open eyes they could have felt some of that old frisson. Event organisers wandered the hall wearing shirts proclaiming “Yes We Can 2.0″, as if they were selling the latest Windows update, and a giant banner stage-right gave top billing to Obama. The name beneath his, Corzine, might almost have been an afterthought.

This was not a re-election rally for Mr Obama – not yet, please – but for Jon Corzine, the former boss of Goldman Sachs and now governor of New Jersey. He had invited the president to speak because, when Jersey voters go to the polls next Tuesday – New Jersey and Virginia are the only states where governorships are in play this year – it is not at all clear that they won’t ditch him in favour of his Republican opponent, Chris Christie. The latest polls say it’s too close to call.

That’s better than in the summer when Christie had a double-digit lead. But, in the final stretch, Corzine needs to remind Democrats of the fervour of 12 months ago when they overwhelmingly chose Obama over John McCain. “One more time”, the disco beat booms before the two men arrive on stage in front of a crowd of about 3,000 eager supporters. “One more time. We’re going to celebrate. Oh yeah. Alright.” Once at the microphone, Corzine promises to be brief. “I know who you came to see,” he says.

Obama does what is required of him with his usual eloquence, speaking for 30 minutes. He looks happy to be campaigning again, relieved of Oval Office responsibilities for an afternoon, his stump oratory uncaged. But selflessness and politics do not go together. He is in New Jersey because what happens here next week will matter to him. This is an off-year for congressional races, so, rightly or wrongly, the outcome of these two gubernatorial races will be viewed by some as a first referendum on his presidency.

The President has already suffered a slow, but steady, decline in his approval ratings, so it cheers no one in the White House that the outcome in Jersey is so uncertain. In Virginia, where the President campaigned this week, the outlook is worse with most polls suggesting that the Democrat candidate, Creigh Deeds, will be walloped by his Republican rival, Bob McDonnell.

If Republicans seize the governors’ mansions in both states, the embarrassment will be acute. That is just what happened in both New Jersey and Virginia back in 1993 before the Republicans seized control of the US Congress the following year, dealing a crippling blow to the newly minted Democratic president of the time, Bill Clinton.

But even losing one of them next week will scratch the sheen of President Obama, who seems, one year on from his election, to be hovering in the view of most Americans between competent and fumbling, notwithstanding the high esteem in which he is still held abroad and, of course, in the minds of the Nobel committee.

What is certain is that the almost-mad expectations placed on Obama that unusually warm night in Chicago’s Grant Park when he delivered his victory speech last November, have given way now to a general unease about his performance in office. For sure, he has mostly avoided calamity. Not getting the Olympics for Chicago doesn’t count. Nor is his administration in disarray or anything close to it. (Mr Clinton had barely arrived in office before he was instantly engulfed in mini-scandals.) But the Obama magic that should be working to protect Democrats like Corzine and Deeds seems mostly to have leaked away.

New Jersey is a state that naturally belongs in the Democratic column. Moreover, since 1947, only two Jersey governors have failed to win a second term. But Corzine is unpopular in the state, thwacked by raising property taxes and the effects of the economic recession. “The New Jersey governor’s race is going down to the wire,” predicted the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Virginia had been a red state – as far as the presidency was concerned – since 1964, but it turned blue for Obama and Democrats hailed it as a s

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Obama is the nation’s first African-American president.

“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments,” Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

“I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda.”

Reid remained neutral during the bitter Democratic primary that became a marathon contest between Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Obama tapped as the United States’ top diplomat after the election.

Reid’s comments are included in the book, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press and set to be published on Monday. “Game Change” was written by Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin and New York magazine’s John Heilemann.

The book also says Reid urged Obama to run, perceiving the first-term senator’s impatience.

“You’re not going to go anyplace here,” Reid told Obama of the Senate. “I know that you don’t like it, doing what you’re doing.”

In another section, aides to Republican nominee John McCain described the difficulties they faced with their vice presidential pick, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Steve Schmidt, a senior member of Sen. John McCain’s presidential team, is quoted telling Palin’s foreign policy tutors: “You guys have a lot of work to do. She doesn’t know anything.”

The authors also quote Obama’s initial reaction to McCain’s selection of a little-known governor: “Wow. Well, I guess she’s change.”

Vice presidential nominee Joe Biden was direct. “Who’s Sarah Palin?” the book quotes the then-senator as asking as they left the nominating convention in Denver.

Reid, facing a tough 2010 re-election bid, needs the White House’s help if he wants to keep his seat. Obama’s administration has dispatched officials on dozens of trips to buoy his bid and Obama has raised money for his campaign.

Recognizing the threat, Reid’s apologies also played to his home state: “Moreover, throughout my career, from efforts to integrate the Las Vegas strip and the gaming industry to opposing radical judges and promoting diversity in the Senate, I have worked hard to advance issues.”

Even before his ill-considered remarks were reported, a new survey released Saturday by the Las Vegas Review Journal showed him continuing to earn poor polling numbers. In the poll, by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Reid trailed former state Republican party chairwoman Sue Lowden by a 10 percentage points, 50 percent to 40 percent, and also lagging behind two other opponents.

More than half of Nevadans had an unfavorable opinion of Reid. Just 33 percent of respondents held a favorable opinion.

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Accordingly, this is former President Bill Clinton’s argument against Barack Obama, as well. Clinton, during “An hour” interview with Charlie Rose, questioned voters being “prepared to roll the dice” with a Barack Obama Presidency. As Clinton puts it, “When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the senate before he started running?” Clinton, further, said: “If you listen to the people who are most strongly for him they say, ‘basicly we have to throw away all those experienced people…And we want somebody who started running for president a year after he became a senator because he’s fresh, he’s new…and we’re willing to risk it.” However, Clinton, said: “I think a president ought to’ve done something for other people and for his country when you pick a president.” see http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2007/12/14/1/an-hour-with-former-president-bill-clinton .

In short, that describes Sarah Palin. She would make a wonderful vice president and/or president (not to say that the others wouldn’t make an okay president or vice president).
What’s your political party and gender (or sex)

sarah palin fox news show

Something similar happened to Trent Lott and you called for him to resign. Why the double standard?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100111/ap_on_go_co/us_obama_reid_32

Trent Lott’s:

Lott had cheered the 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond — a segregationist Democrat opposing President Harry Truman — during a 100th birthday tribute to Thurmond, by then a longtime Republican senator.

Lott, R-Miss., eventually apologized but resigned nearly two weeks later after a growing number of Republicans questioned his effectiveness, especially after he told Black Entertainment Television he supported affirmative action, no longer opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, and would back programs aimed at minorities. He resigned from the Senate in 2007.

So why can Democrats make racist remarks and be forgiven but Republican’s cannot? Can someone explain this to me?
Democrats defend Stinky Reid’s comments.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/10/top-democrat-defends-reid/?feat=home_headlines

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In a jaw-dropping appearance on MSNBC Thursday, McCain aide Nicole Wallace told Time’s Jay Carney that the press wouldn’t get a chance to take shots at the hockey mom turned McCain running mate.

According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don’t care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace — in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough’s show — the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin’s scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads.

sarah palin fox news show

The latest Fox News poll shows Palin with a 54-27 favorable/unfavorable ratio, which compares well with Barack Obama’s 57-36, John McCain’s 60-33 and Joe Biden’s 51-29. (Of the four, she’s the most popular).

Why do Democrats feel so threatened? They’ve even stopped attacking McCain and President Bush to launch a vicious and sexist barrage at her that would normally make a feminist angry and a Democrat blush.

Basically, it’s this: John McCain only endangers Democratic chances of victory this November, but Sarah Palin is an existential threat to the Democratic Party.

She threatens a core element of the party’s base – women.

When an African-American like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell or Condi Rice rises to prominence as a Republican, he or she endangers the Democratic coalition. So would a Republican labor leader.

And so, above all, does the woman Republican running for vice president.

Democrats can’t stomach seeing the feminist movement’s impetus for greater female political participation and empowerment “hijacked” by a pro-life woman who espouses traditional values. They must obliterate her, lest her popularity eat away at their party’s core.

So the Democrats are hysterical in their attacks on her. South Carolina’s Democratic Party chairwoman, Carol Fowler (wife of a national party chairman), said that the only qualification Palin had for vice president was that she hadn’t had an abortion. Tabloids are digging up dirt on Palin’s children. And liberal bloggers have suggested that Palin would neglect her children if she were elected (while the Democratic candidate has young children at home, too).

That liberals would resort to such blatant sexism shows their desperation.

But the Fox News poll of Sept. 8-9 indicates a deeper reality of Palin’s popularity. On the question of which of the four candidates best understands what day-to-day life is like in America, Palin finished first, with 33 percent. (Obama drew 32 percent, McCain 17 percent and Biden 10 percent.)

She’s not popular because she’s a radical feminist or pro-choice advocate. It’s because she understands what it’s like to be a woman in 21st century America.

She’s never ascended to the elite, so she doesn’t need to stoop to conquer as most well-heeled feminist leaders must. She lives far from the plastic pseudoreality where a fossilized ideology substitutes for human compassion and empathy. As such, she rises above the slogans of both the left and the right and proposes to bring to Washington a dose of reality – a taste of real life.

She may become the first woman in national office – yet the Democrats, feminists and liberals can’t control her, and that burns them up.

Elections come and go, but Palin is a far more fundamental threat to the Democratic Party. And that’s why they fear her so.

sarah palin fox news show

Positively, Alaska’s Governor and Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has done this. Sarah Palin, like former President Clinton, “has no experience in the Senate” but has experience developing “solutions at a State widel level” for other people and her country. In fact, one such instance was made clear in the Thursday, October 2, 2008 VP debate, when Sarah Palin spoke about Barack Obama’s 2005 vote on a “energy plan that gave” “big tax breaks” to “the oil companies.” She had to “undo” this, she said, because “those huge tax breaks aren’t coming to the big multinational corporations anymore, not when it adversely affects the people who live in a state and, in this case, in a country who should be benefiting at the same time.” Accordingly, Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden, said: “I agree with the governor.” She imposed a windfall profits tax up there in Alaska. That’s what Barrack Obama and I wnat to do. We want to be able to do for all of you Americans, give you back $1,000 bucks, like she’s been able to give back money to her folks back there…and I give her credit for it.” See http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/02/debate.transcript/ .

So if Joe Biden can give Sarah Palin credit for what she has done in Alaska why can’t you? Moreover, Recently, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren said to Sarah Palin: “Now, I’ve been up in Alaska, went up and met a lot of your friends, a lot of people you worked with. And it’s a beautiful state. You have a very high approval rating up there. See http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,434944,00.html .

Senator Biden and Barack Obama learned from Sarah Palin and want to impliment her policy across the United States. You can’t learn from her then say she’s not qualified that is just dishonest.

sarah palin fox news show