Mean of me to note the bad spelling in this let’s-just-screenshot-this-now Craigslist post from NY’s Working Families Party advertising for… well, it’s actually a bit hard to figure out just what open job position WFP is advertising for. Many people are assuming (or at least speculating ) that it’s for warm bodies for the Occupy Wall Street protests themselves, but I’m not buying that: when you can get people to defecate on police cars for free , why pay them? No, what’s actually happening here is just another example of the Democratic establishment* working to consolidate its control over the OWS leadership in order to keep pushing it in more acceptable directions (i.e., directions more in line with the desires of the Democratic establishment). In other words, it’s in line with the DCCC doing fundraising off of OWS, or former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s bid for regaining relevance in a world where she’s routinely (and deservedly) ignored. And it’ll probably work, at that: by all accounts, the movement is trapped in precisely the sort of free-falling organizational nightmare that can be easily exploited by well-heeled outsiders who at least look like they know what they’re doing. And, honestly? If the OWS organizational model is sufficiently confused as to exclude hearing from Rep. John Lewis , and include hearing from accused terrorist Tarek Mehanna , you can see why the (barely more) adult contingent of the Left wants so badly to get the leash back on… Moe Lane ( crosspost ) * It’s not exactly a secret that the WFP is designed to give progressives a socially-acceptable reason to vote for Democratic candidates (while telling said progressives that they’re actually ‘pushing the party to the left,’ or some other plausible-sounding nonsense). As this look at the 2010 NY state Assembly elections shows , the WFP routinely echoes the Democratic line.
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WFP wants you to “MAKE A DIFFERNENCE” for #OWS?
Maybe : Several influential New York state lawmakers have received threatening mails saying it is “time to kill the wealthy” if they don’t renew the state’s tax surcharge on millionaires, according to reports. [snip] The email references terminology that has been used in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement — that the1 percent, the super rich, are exploiting the remaining 99 percent of Americans. The angry message demanded that Albany politicians “stop shoveling wealth from the lower 99 percent into the top 1 percent” and “set aside your ‘no new taxes on anybody’ pledge.” By ‘maybe,’ of course, I mean ‘Of course they are, unless it’s a hoax.’ Which possibility you’re expected to always have to take into account, in these cases… at least, if you’re expected to if you’re a conservative or a Republican. If somebody sent a death threat that referenced Tea Party rhetoric the media and other Democrats would fall all over themselves in their haste to be the first one to call for scalps. In a metaphorical and nonviolent way, of course. (Via Hot Air Headlines ) Moe Lane ( crosspost )
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Are these the first #occupywallstreet -inspired death threats?
A little bit of a relapse today, so let me just grab three pretty-good analyses of yesterday’s NY-09 results* from RCP and go with them . First off: Michael Barone’s “ NY-9: Stunning Repudiation of Chuck Schumer .” After noting that disgraced Congressman Weiner was a protege of Schumer, Barone points out: In January 2007, just in time for the new Democratic majority in Congress, [Shumer] published a book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time . It is a thoughtful essay on how Democrats can win the votes of the kind of voter Schumer himself has won over in his career as a congressman and senator, with specific policy recommendations as well as public relations advice. As one of the three Democratic leaders of the Democratic majority in the Senate—and by common reckoning the one who outshines in intellect the other two put together—Schumer has played an important role in fashioning Democratic policies, including but not limited to the 2009 stimulus package and Obamacare. This vote is a startling repudiation of those policies by just the voters Schumer was hoping to win over. As well it should have been: I respect Michael Barone and everything, but ‘smarter than Gillibrand & Reid[**]‘ isn’t precisely hard and I suspect that voters have a bit longer memories about statements like ‘ porky little amendments ‘ than Schumer might wish to admit. Personally, I still think that Schumer was vulnerable in 2010 – oh, well, that ship has sailed. It’s certainly true that the Democrats have a problem with blue-class workers these days. Which segues us to Josh Kraushaar’s “ Rethinking the 2012 Landscape .” Josh looked into what is the increasingly-frantic conventional wisdom of the Online Left – 2012 will be an anti-incumbent year – and finds it, well, not supported by the most recent special elections: Tuesday’s special elections for two House seats, one in New York and one in Nevada, are starting to put the picture in clearer focus—and it’s not good for Democrats. Democrats lost a deeply-Democratic New York City district that had been in party hands for nearly a century, and they lost by over 20 points in a congressional race in the battleground state of Nevada, a contest that once promised to be a bellwether because of the GOP’s positioning on Medicare. Put simply, Obama and Republicans in Congress are both unpopular—and voters are taking out their anger on Democrats—even in a reliably Democratic district. One thing to note here is that Josh does go into the NV-02 election a bit, which is probably best: the NY-09 special election must inevitably be compared to the NY-26 special election, which I am starting to suspect teaches a false lesson to Democrats about using Medicare as a wedge issue. Not to get into it too deeply, but NY-26 may have been more on the issue of the dangers of fusion tickets, not to mention the dangers of letting your party’s former Congressman go shirtless on Craigslist and advertise for adultery. Judging from the results from NV-02 as compared to NY-09, not having the second problem wins you elections; not having either wins you elections big-time . Lastly, we have a picture from Sean Trende’s “ New York-9 and the Democratic Coalition .” It’s a pretty picture. It’s a picture of NY-09, which is what you get as a side-effect when you have to draw majority-minority districts. The color scheme: Red for white neighborhoods; Green for Latino; Blue for African-American. Stu Rothenberg floated a rumor yesterday that the Democrats pumped money into this race because it was worried about having to find another district to put on the chopping block; that sounded weird at the time, but look at that map and you’ll see why it may not have been. To put it simply: hack up this district, and you have to contort the surrounding ones even more . Ain’t racial gerrymandering grand? Moe Lane ( crosspost ) *From what I can tell, the unspoken consensus about the NV-02 results were “Man, but the Democrats pretty much were completely useless there. I mean, they didn’t even try , really.” [**I have had it pointed out in comments here that I read this wrong; Barone was referencing the Senate leadership in general, not the NY Senate leadership and the Senate Majority Leader. This is true... but "smarter than Durbin and Reid" is no more of an accomplishment for Schumer, so (luckily) my point remains valid.]
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Some round-ups on NY-09.
But before we start talking about implications, let’s review the situations. NY-09 . This D+5 seat was vacated by Anthony Weiner after pictures surfaced… and I don’t need to end that sentence: it’s never good for a politician’s career when the phrase ‘pictures surfaced’ is used to describe his or her situation. The race thus is between Republican Bob Turner and Democrat David Weprin… and Democrats are even now going frantic . They’re going frantic because an independent pollster now shows Turner in the lead (which has been consistent with other polling trends ); they’re going frantic because Tuner has picked up several key endorsements from prominent New York Democrats (over Weprin’s – really, President Obama’s – Israel policy); and they’re going frantic because the entire Weprin campaign effort seems to be infected with incompetence, starting at the local level * and working all the way up to the DCCC itself . The Democrats have dumped half a million dollars in this race , and are right now grimly contemplating the possibility that this half a million is buying them bupkis . NV-02. Meanwhile, this R+5 district is increasingly looking like a retention for the GOP. Dean Heller vacated the seat after being tapped to become Senator John Ensign’s replacement (Ensign, as you probably remember – and you probably were happy to forget – left office under what we shall charitably call ‘under a cloud’); Republican Mark Amodei will be facing Democrat Kate Marshall. The DCCC has essentially written this district off, at this point: their primary strategy, if you’ll pardon the pun, was to get Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller (elections have consequences , people) to sign off on a winner-take-all election (which would have splintered the Republican vote), only to be told no by the courts . Since then, Marshall hasn’t been able to make anything stick – including linking Amodei with Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan – and Amodei is favored to win. Incidentally, the Right has put about 750K into this race, including about $500K from the NRCC. …and that leads to a couple of points that I’d like to make. Democratic operatives have been busily trying to argue that the amount of money that the GOP has dumped into the Nevada race – which by all accounts is a healthily-Republican district – shows the weakness of the Republicans (for an example of this argument, see this Washington Post article ). This argument may be less seen over the next three days, seeing as the DCCC is currently trying to put out the fire in NY-09 by throwing money onto it and hoping that it’ll smother, but it’s still there. Another argument – see FireDogLake ** for that example – is that NY-09 is just representative of the ‘anti-incumbent’ sentiment that’s supposedly out there. No doubt we’ll all hear other excuses for failure in the next two days, not to mention the classic “GOTV will save us!” line that traditionally comes as a harbinger of DOOM. However. If both NY-09 and NV-02 go Republican on Tuesday night – and I think that the odds are good that we’re picking up both – then those arguments are going to collapse utterly. Yup, the GOP spent a lot of money to keep NV-02 away from the Democrats, who wanted that seat badly. And ? The Democrats did the same thing in NY-09. Money spent in a successful defense may or may not have been wisely spent; money spent in an unsuccessful defense was rarely wisely spent. And as for anti-incumbency sentiment… well, there is definitely that mood out there . But if it’s still only going to end up biting Democrats on the rear (remember, Mark Amodei is just as much, or as little, an ‘incumbent’ as David Weprin is), well… Moe Lane ( crosspost ) PS: Mark Amodei for NV-02 ; Bob Turner for NY-09 . *It is cruel of me to link to this video , I know. But politics ain’t beanbag. **I suggest that people start taking FDL a bit more seriously, by the way. While a Hard Left site filled with unpleasant people, it has nonetheless started to realize that merely boot-licking the Democratic party leadership is not a viable long-term survival strategy for the netroots. Its increasing willingness to criticize its own party openly and with heat may not be making an impact now , but if 2012 turns out to be the Great Shellacking 2 for the Democrats, they’re going to be in a position to eventually do to the Democrats what, say, RedState does to the Republicans now. Which is to say, growl, and have their growls taken seriously by the party leadership. What? I certainly hope that they’ll be offended by the implication that I think that, someday, they might be the RedState of the Left. But it’s not my fault that they want their own version of what we have.
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Democrats facing electoral disasters in NV-02, NY-09?
Below is a video put together by our own Ben Howe, showing what a difference that six months makes in the life of Chuck Schumer, senior Senator from New York and thoroughgoing lying hypocrite. For those without video access: the first half shows Senator Schumer in January taking advantage of the Gabby Giffords shooting to make the pious statement “I think that violent discourse in political life, right, left or center, is wrong and should be rejected. But I do think we, as elected officials, have an obligation to try and tone that down. If we tone it down, then maybe the media will be less vociferous.” Which is a nice sentiment: a real pity that Schumer clearly doesn’t mean a word of it, because the second half shows the aforementioned Senator and hypocrite using the bipartisan debt ceiling agreement to querulously use violent rhetoric for partisan purposes, complete with hand gestures : It’s the issue of hostage taking. It’s as if someone puts a gun to your head and says ‘give me your money’ and then you say, ‘why won’t you give them their money?’ You leave out the whole context that there’s being a gun held to your head and that is not fair and that is not right and yet and Harry is right, we keep getting that situation… Well, the issue that is we are here today about is you cannot run government – because the other side, our side can do it too; we can each say we will hurt innocent people to get our complete way instead of sitting down and negotiating as the founding fathers intended this government to be. And for the media to say that, ‘oh, we’re ignoring the gun held to your head now, why don’t you give into them and let the thing go’ is just not fair and not right and not even handed. Makes you wonder just how much more cloying and insincere Schumer would have been in January if that madman who went after Rep. Giffords had had slightly better aim. Because a contrast like this makes it fairly obvious that Chuckie’s concern for Giffords begins and ends with Giffords’ utility as a mobile prop for the Democratic party apparatus that is Schumer’s true passion… Moe Lane
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Chuck Schumer (D, NY): hypocrite on violent rhetoric.
