New Jersey: Up north a little, there were less obvious connections to Obama’s popularity. Well before voters had begun to question Obama, they had soured on Jon Corzine. Corzine had failed to make good on his promises in the 2005 election. He was considered incapable of working with the legislature. He was tainted by scandals within the Democratic Party. Corzine himself blamed the recession, but other governors, including Virginia’s Kaine or Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, have managed to avoid voters’ ire while suffering from falling revenues and rising unemployment.
As the election began last summer, Republican nominee Chris Christie was well out ahead of Corzine--by ten to 15 percentage points. But Christie, like Deeds, ran an ineffective race, and proved vulnerable to a negative campaign waged by Corzine. By September, Corzine had turned what had looked like a Republican blowout into a close race. Christie still won, but largely because Corzine could never overcome the burden of his own unpopularity.
In early exit polls, Corzine suffered among independents and moderates--whom Obama won in 2008 and who hold the swing vote in statewide elections. In the PPP poll taken before the election, Obama was unpopular in the state among independents--with 39 percent approval to 50 percent disapproval--but they probably would have voted for Christie regardless of what they thought of Obama’s presidency. Corzine suffered from the worst of all possible outcomes: He failed to excite the state’s Democrats, including the local party machines, but he was seen by independents as a Democratic hack.
New York’s 23rd District: Republicans had certainly expected to inherit the seat in upstate New York’s 23rd district, which was vacated by Republican John McHugh when Obama appointed him Secretary of the Army. Congressional districts shift but this area had been Republican since the Civil War. Still, there were danger signs. Obama had won the district by 52 to 47 percent in 2008, and the Republicans who had held its seat in recent years were moderates like McHugh, who backed abortion rights, an increase in the minimum wage, and the expansion of the children’s health program. Dede Scozzafava was the choice of these moderate Republicans, but she was opposed on the right by Doug Hoffman, a dour accountant who was primarily interested in cutting spending and taxes, but who also courted the social conservatives that the pro-choice Scozzafava alienated.
National politics entered the race when the great rightwing conspiracy--which includes tea partiers, Richard Armey’s Freedom Works, the Club for Growth, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh--adopted Hoffman. These people don’t represent swing voter disapproval of Obama, but a sectarian mentality borne out of political frustration and marginality, out of a feeling that America is inexorably heading in the wrong direction and that they alone can stop it. They don’t want to defeat Obama, but to topple him, and they saw in Hoffman’s election, and the ouster of a moderate Republican, a chance to make a statement.
They helped pour money into Hoffman’s campaign. The Club for Growth alone spent $340,000 running ads for Hoffman. With their backing, Hoffman pushed Scozzafava out of the race. She lacked funds or impassioned followers. But Hoffman and his supporters misjudged the district. When Scozzafava endorsed Owens, many of those who would have voted for her backed Owens, and he won the race. Upstate New York, which used to be solidly Republican, now boasts a single conservative congressman. New York, like New England, has become solidly Democratic.
If the results of New York’s 23rd are placed alongside those of New Jersey and Virginia, there is a clear lesson for the Republicans. In New Jersey and Virginia, the gubernatorial candidates ran to the center. Christie is a moderate, and McDonnell at least pretended to be. And as a result, they got the swing vote of independents and moderates. In New York-23, a diehard conservative backed by rightwing groups repudiated the center and lost to a neophyte Democratic candidate who probably could not have beaten Scozzafava in a one-to-one contest.
Democrats have reason to worry about candidates like McDonnell--particularly if the unemployment rate continues in 2010 to undermine Obama’s standing among voters. That is the message that the Virginia election sends. But Democrats don’t have to worry about a party dominated by Armey, Beck, Palin, and Hoffman. That is the message of New York’s 23rd.
John B. Judis is a senior editor of The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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COMMENTS (13)
Such an exhausting analysis. And what did we learn. Nothing more than we would reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and all the rest of the same old same old liberal media. Dick Gregory and The Roundtable will sum it all up for us on Face the Nation Sunday.
In fact that's the point by and large. When you sound like everyone else that means you read everyone else who sounds like you. Thus you know you are all on the same page.
Alas, even Obama has done nothing to crack it. On the contrary, he [gasp!] embodies it.
Democrats. Republicans. Liberals. Conservatives. All the same narratives year after year. It just gets a little more predictable.
I say thank God then for Pa ... view full comment
Such an exhausting analysis. And what did we learn. Nothing more than we would reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and all the rest of the same old same old liberal media. Dick Gregory and The Roundtable will sum it all up for us on Face the Nation Sunday.
In fact that's the point by and large. When you sound like everyone else that means you read everyone else who sounds like you. Thus you know you are all on the same page.
Alas, even Obama has done nothing to crack it. On the contrary, he [gasp!] embodies it.
Democrats. Republicans. Liberals. Conservatives. All the same narratives year after year. It just gets a little more predictable.
I say thank God then for Palin, Beck and the Republican crackup. A new predictable narrative will now have to be generated.
Nail it, John.
; o )
gw
Without a doubt, elections these days are smack dab in the middle of "it's the economy, stupid" again.
But how will this play out?
An interesting point is raised by Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast today. Social issues and national security, he claims, have now given way to a new "culture war"---one revolving around the economy:
....we’re witnessing a new style of conservative activism: motivated, above all, by economic fury. It’s a bit like what happened during the Depression, when the cultural issues that had dominated American politics in the 1920s—Prohibition, immigration, the Ku Klux Klan—faded and the right coalesced around deep hatred of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Today’s ... view full comment
Without a doubt, elections these days are smack dab in the middle of "it's the economy, stupid" again.
But how will this play out?
An interesting point is raised by Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast today. Social issues and national security, he claims, have now given way to a new "culture war"---one revolving around the economy:
....we’re witnessing a new style of conservative activism: motivated, above all, by economic fury. It’s a bit like what happened during the Depression, when the cultural issues that had dominated American politics in the 1920s—Prohibition, immigration, the Ku Klux Klan—faded and the right coalesced around deep hatred of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Today’s shift also vaguely mirrors the early 1990s, when Ross Perot, who exuded indifference to cultural issues, won over large numbers of ex-Republicans by making the deficit a symbol of government run amok.
george:
But is this what's really motivating the outrage---anger at philosophical questions about "the role of government" in the economy?
Or, instead, is it anger at Wall Street for collapsing the economy, profiting from it while generating a great recession culminating in the loss of milions and millions of jobs---and with no end in sight?
Is the rage here really a display of principled "libertarian" disgrunglement from folks on Main Street? God help us if it is.
Instead, I suspect it it is rooted far more in the visceral existential reality of economic misery that has nothing to do with CATO and Ron Paul. The real tragedy unfolding here of course is that, once again, their misery will be taken out on the Democrats. They'll elect Republicans in their place.
And not a fucking thing will have changed.
george walton
I just hope Republicans take away the wrong lesson from this election and keep thinking that tea partying is the path back to power.
Next year's GOP primaries should be very interesting, indeed.
I just hope Republicans take away the wrong lesson from this election and keep thinking that tea partying is the path back to power.
Next year's GOP primaries should be very interesting, indeed.
In New Jersey, where I live, Corzine lost mostly because of voters' anger over our special blend of corruption and high property taxes. He is an intelligent honorable man who tried to restore fiscal order to state government but was stymied by opposition from the usual mix of anti-government Republicans and cowardly special interest Democrats. Most of the State House representatives from my county, Hudson, are just uncommonly stupid. Corzine's technocratic, uninspiring, inarticulate public persona didn't help with voters.
New Jerseyans don't want to make choices. If they want more efficient government, they'll have to consolidate some more of our 550 teensy-weensy towns, just as many school ... view full comment
In New Jersey, where I live, Corzine lost mostly because of voters' anger over our special blend of corruption and high property taxes. He is an intelligent honorable man who tried to restore fiscal order to state government but was stymied by opposition from the usual mix of anti-government Republicans and cowardly special interest Democrats. Most of the State House representatives from my county, Hudson, are just uncommonly stupid. Corzine's technocratic, uninspiring, inarticulate public persona didn't help with voters.
New Jerseyans don't want to make choices. If they want more efficient government, they'll have to consolidate some more of our 550 teensy-weensy towns, just as many school districts (many of them pointless), and other government entities. They'll have to raise our gas tax, currently the lowest or 2nd lowest in the country. They'll have to pay more attention to the details of our municipal, county, and state governments. Ex. I am told that one-square-mile Hoboken's police chief makes more than does Ray Kelly, NYC's police chief. New Jersey voters are lazy; they're not willing to do their homework and make choices. There's too, too much political patronage, dual-office holding, and overly generous public pensions. Instead the voters had a tantrum and voted in a Reagan-style conservative like Christopher Christie, who doesn't look promising as a rational good-guvvie typle.
Regarding the excessive number of government entities, NJ has 550 towns compared with comparably-sized Connecticut's 167. NJ has significant county governments, Connecticut's counties exist only on paper.
Good riddance, the Republicans can have NJ - they deserve each other.
Good riddance, the Republicans can have NJ - they deserve each other.
zardoz67, amen to that.
Christies primary opponent, Lonegan, was hard right. he said this: Lonegan proposed ending what he termed the "immoral" progressive income tax with rates up to 8.97 percent and replacing it with a flat tax of 2.9 percent.
When asked by a reporter whether his plan would mean a tax increase for the working poor, Lonegan replied that that was the whole point. He wants everyone, rich and poor, to pay the cost of government. Asked if that means giving a break to the wealthy, Lonegan again said that was his point, and it would keep rich taxpayers from fleeing the state. "Eight-point-nine percent of nothing is nothing," he said.
If Lonegan had won the primary, Corzine would ha ... view full comment
zardoz67, amen to that.
Christies primary opponent, Lonegan, was hard right. he said this: Lonegan proposed ending what he termed the "immoral" progressive income tax with rates up to 8.97 percent and replacing it with a flat tax of 2.9 percent.
When asked by a reporter whether his plan would mean a tax increase for the working poor, Lonegan replied that that was the whole point. He wants everyone, rich and poor, to pay the cost of government. Asked if that means giving a break to the wealthy, Lonegan again said that was his point, and it would keep rich taxpayers from fleeing the state. "Eight-point-nine percent of nothing is nothing," he said.
If Lonegan had won the primary, Corzine would have clobbered him.
To be honest, I like Christie and am not unhappy he won, especially with Corzine's reprehensible fat commercials. And, if I still lived in Jersey, I would have considered voting for him like I did Kean and Whitman. The only reason I would have voted for Corzine is to spite the national Republicans. I shouldn't think like that, I myself have said America needs two serious and mature parties.
Amidut, I used to work in Teterboro, the town that then had only 22 residents, not one of whom was a homeowner (the houses were owned by a company). It had its own town hall, mayor, city employees, etc. The town was essentially created as a tax haven for business. I can't even begin to tell you the crap that went on when they tried to evict the 22 residents. In the end since the residents controlled the town, they built themselves housing. The whole thing was insane.
Amen Blackton - Corzine lost the minute those commercials came out. They shone an ugly spotlight on Corzine AND brought Christie alot of positive publicity at a crucial point - who even knew who he was before that? Corzine deserved to lose for such a stupid strategy.
zarz, not to pick on your state - I'm a Californian and its hard to find a more screwed up set of voters in the land. They make New Jersy folks look like the First Congress.
Amen Blackton - Corzine lost the minute those commercials came out. They shone an ugly spotlight on Corzine AND brought Christie alot of positive publicity at a crucial point - who even knew who he was before that? Corzine deserved to lose for such a stupid strategy.
zarz, not to pick on your state - I'm a Californian and its hard to find a more screwed up set of voters in the land. They make New Jersy folks look like the First Congress.
Well, obviously I'm pleased with the guv races, but I'm not sure they and the Congressional special elections say much, if anything, about national politics. Yes, Obama won VA, but may not next time - it's still a pretty center-right place. He will win NJ again, Christie or no.
As for NY-23, I would not have voted for Dede, either. Repubs ain't for card-check, period. Most aren't for gay marriage, either. Oh, and I see that issue maintained its perfect record - every time people vote on it, gay marriage loses. Soon it won't, but not yet.
Well, obviously I'm pleased with the guv races, but I'm not sure they and the Congressional special elections say much, if anything, about national politics. Yes, Obama won VA, but may not next time - it's still a pretty center-right place. He will win NJ again, Christie or no.
As for NY-23, I would not have voted for Dede, either. Repubs ain't for card-check, period. Most aren't for gay marriage, either. Oh, and I see that issue maintained its perfect record - every time people vote on it, gay marriage loses. Soon it won't, but not yet.
I also would not read too much into this in terms of national politics. From a personal standpoint, I prefer a balance of power between the parties (as Blackton said above, we need two serious and mature parties). I suspect there might have been a few independent voters in Virginia and NJ who felt the same way.
I also would not read too much into this in terms of national politics. From a personal standpoint, I prefer a balance of power between the parties (as Blackton said above, we need two serious and mature parties). I suspect there might have been a few independent voters in Virginia and NJ who felt the same way.
This is a minor point in the article, I'll admit, but I disagree that the GOP suffered "minor losses" in '82. The Democrats picked up 27 seats. There may have been more dramatic midterm gains by the party out of power in the past, but remember that the Democrats already had 252 seats, which means that, probably, most of the remaining seats were gerrymandered in a way that they were solidly GOP no matter what the overall environment.
This is a minor point in the article, I'll admit, but I disagree that the GOP suffered "minor losses" in '82. The Democrats picked up 27 seats. There may have been more dramatic midterm gains by the party out of power in the past, but remember that the Democrats already had 252 seats, which means that, probably, most of the remaining seats were gerrymandered in a way that they were solidly GOP no matter what the overall environment.
Merci, Wandreycer, ma cherie! We will be glad to rid you of New Jersey, home of memorable tomatoes, the pharmaceutical industry and the world's finest hoagies.
I think the most interesting issue of the next year will be who works hardest to kill off the Blue Dogs: their liberal D colleagues or the conservative Rs who want to unseat them. If ever there was a time post-1932 in which the real political truth was "it's the economy, stupid" it was 2009, not 1993. But, youd never guess that from the actions of the most liberal president and congressional majority post-1932. Their attention is riveted on other priorities, and will stay riveted there, even though sizeable numbers of the voters wh ... view full comment
Merci, Wandreycer, ma cherie! We will be glad to rid you of New Jersey, home of memorable tomatoes, the pharmaceutical industry and the world's finest hoagies.
I think the most interesting issue of the next year will be who works hardest to kill off the Blue Dogs: their liberal D colleagues or the conservative Rs who want to unseat them. If ever there was a time post-1932 in which the real political truth was "it's the economy, stupid" it was 2009, not 1993. But, youd never guess that from the actions of the most liberal president and congressional majority post-1932. Their attention is riveted on other priorities, and will stay riveted there, even though sizeable numbers of the voters who put them in the catbird seat(s) have doubts about their priorities. They are counting on the Rs to disembowel themselves, and my crowd may not disappoint them. Of course, my crowd is hoping the Ds will disembowel themselves, and this is not an irrational thought either.
Moderates of the nation, unite (i.e., get off your dead asses). The zealots in each party are in control, and their passions and hatreds may be of interest to you, but not to the point of passion or hatred. Take back control!
I'm not convinced that these examples were due to candidates being centrists. It comes down to the matchups and who can turn out the base in an off-year election. I'd say the "center" was the best bet for McDonnell due to Deeds running a negative campaign and running away from issues that turn out the Democratic base. McDonnell was smart to keep Palin and the teabaggers out of sight while taking the high road and will have some momentum behind him as a result when he's sworn in. The Republicans have good reason to be pleased with McDonnell's win. They were desperate for some fresh faces at the governor level and they got one from a guy who ran a mostly positive campaign and won easily. ... view full comment
I'm not convinced that these examples were due to candidates being centrists. It comes down to the matchups and who can turn out the base in an off-year election. I'd say the "center" was the best bet for McDonnell due to Deeds running a negative campaign and running away from issues that turn out the Democratic base. McDonnell was smart to keep Palin and the teabaggers out of sight while taking the high road and will have some momentum behind him as a result when he's sworn in. The Republicans have good reason to be pleased with McDonnell's win. They were desperate for some fresh faces at the governor level and they got one from a guy who ran a mostly positive campaign and won easily. I can't remember the last time that kind of exposure occurred for them.
I don't think the same can be said about Christie. Corzine's campaign certainly went negative, but aside from criticizing Christie's weight, the shots were well-deserved. Christie was once ahead by nearly twenty points until it was shown how his overblown claims as a corruption fighter turned out to be false to say the least. Using his former position to circumvent hiring protocol in an effort to get people loyal to him into positions of power doesn't strike me as a break with the supposed corrupt business as usual NJ politics. I doubt he enters that job with much better approval ratings than Corzine and he has almost zero honeymoon. If even more of his past transgressions become exposed, he could wind up a lame duck very quickly.
NY-23? Hoffman couldn't answer any questions asked of him by local voters and that's never a good thing when the candidate already doesn't even live in the district as it is. He looked like Palin being asked to explain the Bush Doctrine. He knew less about the concerns of his would-be-constituents than I do, and that reflected badly on not just him but Palin, Pawlenty, Club For Growth and the rest of the fringe that tried to hijack a local election for their own transparent agenda. Being a centrist wasn't the deal-breaker in that one either.
I think whoever better walks the walk and talks the talk and drives the nicer car gets the girl. When things don't work out there's a divorce. In my estimation, it will come down to whether its time for another divorce.
I think whoever better walks the walk and talks the talk and drives the nicer car gets the girl. When things don't work out there's a divorce. In my estimation, it will come down to whether its time for another divorce.