Jolie Rouge

Ballot Watch: Waiting for the results that everyone tells us mean nothing; Update: GOP sweep in Va.; voting machine glitches in NY-23; Obama says he’s not watching; Update: GOP gov wins in NJ/Va; Update: Hoffman concedes

Guess it’ll be an early night for all the Democrat water-carriers in the media who have already filed their preemptive pieces downplaying whatever happens tonight after the polls close and the ballots are counting.

Here’s a bit of the Obama-as-a-factor-but-not-as-much-as-we-want-you-to-think analysis of exit poll results. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the...l?wprss=thefix

Politicker reports on the return of “It’s the economy, stupid:” http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...t-the-economy/

Here’s another Democrat screaming about GOP “extremism” in the NY-23 race.
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo...t-extremes.php

The Hill shows Hoffman ahead at the finish line: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign...s-finish-line-

Jim Geraghty jumps ahead of the pack and calls Virginia for the Republicans:
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.c...k2MTlhYjc1ZDg=


In NJ, pollster Pat Caddell blows the whistle on Democrat fraud:
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/n...03/281171.html

Stay tuned.

--

Here are the live-updated Va. governor’s race election results from the Virginia Board of Electionsv. https://www.voterinfo.sbe.virginia.g...cial/2_s.shtml

GOP candidate McDonnell wins in VA http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

With 80 percent of precincts reporting:
***

NY-23 election results will be live-updated here. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/

Watertown Daily News reports that four St. Lawrence towns suffered machine glitches that may delay vote tallying until tomorrow. http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/s...#2009911039965

In NJ, GOP candidate Christie is crushing among independents. http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal...christie_1.php

***

Update: 8:53pm Eastern. Via Lorie Byrd, Obama claims he’s not watching the election results. He’s watching basketball instead: http://wizbangblog.com/content/2009/...here-again.php
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...ction-returns/


Well, of course, since the results Don’t Mean Anything, there’s no need to watch!

Perfect symbolism: The American people speak across the country on Election Day. Obama switches channel from elections to…basketball. Deliberately not paying attention — just like he did with Tea Party protests.

***

12:23am Eastern. Hoffman concedes. Stand by for more post-race analysis.
http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/a...WS09/911039947

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Big governor victories in Virginia, NJ
By Liz Sidoti, Ap National Political Writer
10 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Independents who swept Barack Obama to a historic 2008 victory broke big for Republicans on Tuesday as the GOP wrested political control from Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, a troubling sign for the president and his party heading into an important midterm election year.

Conservative Republican Bob McDonnell's victory in the Virginia governor's race over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and moderate Republican Chris Christie's ouster of unpopular New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was a double-barreled triumph for a party looking to rebuild after being booted from power in national elections in 2006 and 2008.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Maine voted on whether to affirm a state law that would allow same-sex couples to wed. If supporters prevail, it would mark the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed gay marriage.

And Democrat Bill Owens captured a GOP-held vacant 23rd Congressional District seat in New York in a race that highlighted fissures in the Republican Party and illustrated hurdles the GOP could face in capitalizing on any voter discontent with Obama and Democrats next fall.

California Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, also a Democrat, won a special election to a vacant congressional seat, Ohio voters approved casinos and a slew of cities selected mayors, including New York, which gave Michael Bloomberg a third term.

The outcomes of Virginia and New Jersey were sure to feed discussion about the state of the electorate, the status of the diverse coalition that sent Obama to the White House and the limits of the president's influence — on the party's base of support and on moderate current lawmakers he needs to advance his legislative priorities.

His signature issue of health care reform was dealt a blow hours before polls closed when Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid signaled that Congress may not complete health care legislation this year, missing Obama's deadline and pushing debate into a congressional election year. Democrats in swing-voting states and moderate-to-conservative districts may be less willing to back Obama on issues like health care after Virginia and New Jersey showed there are limits to how much he can protect his rank and file from fallout back home.

The president had personally campaigned for Deeds and Corzine, seeking to ensure that independents and base voters alike turned out even if he wasn't on the ballot — and voters still rejected them. Thus, the losses were blots on Obama's political standing to a certain degree and suggested potential problems ahead as he seeks to achieve his policy goals, protect Democratic majorities in Congress and expand his party's grip on governors' seats next fall.

Interviews with voters leaving polling stations in both states were filled with reasons for Democrats to be concerned and for Republicans to be optimistic, particularly about independents — the crown jewel of elections because they often determine outcomes.

Independents were a critical part Obama's victory in Virginia, New Jersey and across the country. But after more than a year of recession, they fled from Democrats in the two states, where the economy trumped all.

The Associated Press exit polls showed that nearly a third of voters in Virginia described themselves as independents, and nearly as many in New Jersey did. They preferred McDonnell by almost a 2-1 margin over Deeds in Virginia, and Christie over Corzine by a similar margin.

Last year, independents split between Obama and Republican John McCain in both states.

In Virginia, McDonnell won by big margins in rapidly growing, far-flung Washington, D.C., suburbs — places like Loudoun and Prince William counties — that Republicans historically have won but where Obama prevailed last fall by winning over independents and swing voters. Republicans swept all three statewide Virginia offices up for election: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

"Bob McDonnell's victory gives Republicans tremendous momentum heading into 2010," declared Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association. "His focus on ideas and pocketbook issues will serve as a model for Republicans running next year."

Said Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee chairman and the term-limited Virginia governor: "We are disappointed."

In both states, the surveys also suggested the Democrats had difficulty turning out their base, including the large numbers of first-time minority and youth voters whom Obama attracted. The Virginia electorate was whiter in 2009 than it was in 2008, when blacks and Hispanics voted in droves to elect the country's first black president.

Democratic victories in both Virginia, a new swing state, and New Jersey, a Democratic stronghold, in 2005 preceded big Democratic years nationally in 2006 and 2008.

Tuesday's impact on Obama's popularity and on the 2010 elections could easily be overstated. Voters are often focused on local issues and local personalities.

Yet, national issues, like the recession, were clearly a factor, with voter attitudes shaped to some degree by how people feel about the state of their nation — and their place in it.

And, voter attitudes — particularly among independents — could bode ill for Democrats in moderate districts and in swing states like Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, should they remain unchanged when the party seeks to defend its turf next fall. In 2010, most governors, a third of the Senate and all members in the House will be on ballots.

It's also difficult to separate Obama from the outcomes after he devoted a significant chunk of time working to persuade voters to elect Deeds in Virginia and re-elect Corzine in New Jersey.

More than four in 10 voters in Virginia said their view of Obama factored into their choice on Tuesday, and those voters roughly split between expressing support and opposition for the president. People who said they disapprove of Obama's job performance voted overwhelmingly Republican, and those who approve of the president favored Deeds, the Democrat.

The Obama factor was similar in New Jersey, though there were slightly more voters who said the president did not factor into their choice.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_election_rdp

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Democrat wins House seat in heavily GOP area in NY
By Valerie Bauman, Associated Press Writer
13 mins ago

ALBANY, N.Y. – A Democrat won a special congressional election in a heavily Republican district in northern New York by exploiting a battle between moderates and conservatives for control of the GOP.

With 88 percent of the precincts reporting early Wednesday, lawyer and retired Air Force Capt. Bill Owens defeated businessman Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate, 49 percent to 46 percent.

Dierdre Scozzafava, a moderate Republican, withdrew from the race Saturday under pressure from the party's right wing because of her support of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. She still picked up 5 percent of the vote.

Hoffman conceded the race Wednesday.

Hoffman started at a distant third and was viewed as a spoiler at best, cutting away at Scozzafava and opening the door for Owens. But prominent Republicans such as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty endorsed Hoffman instead of the party-picked Scozzafava.

Owens' victory may signal renewed strength among Democrats, or at least reassure them of Republicans' perceived weakness. The seat has been strongly Republican for decades. The outcome leaves Republicans holding only two seats in the state's 29-seat congressional delegation. Republican John McHugh vacated the seat in September to become Army secretary.

"They're in a civil war over the definition of their party," said Paul Blank, a Democratic consultant. "And the extremists have won."

Republicans will be sorting out their identity as the party tries to strike a balance between growing its ranks and preserving the values that set it apart from the Democratic Party.

"I think that the Republican Party is broad enough to handle many different candidates, but the fact is that I'm a commonsense conservative Republican — I am not a radical," Hoffman said Monday. "The point is that Assemblywoman Scozzafava was not a moderate Republican. She was an ultraliberal Republican."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_ny_special_election

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Election Day primer

Joshua Culling at the National Taxpayers Union has a handy primer on the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, plus overviews of state ballot initiatives across the country.

Read and bookmark here. http://blog.ntu.org/main/

For NY-23, check 73wire http://blog.ntu.org/main/ The Other McCain http://rsmccain.blogspot.com/ Riehl World View http://www.riehlworldview.com/ and TCOT Report http://www.tcotreport.com/

Mark Blumenthal at Pollster.com has analysis on NY-23 polls and concludes:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/ny23_w...ay_morning.php


Tea Party movement? Doesn’t mean anything.

Nationwide government health care takeover revolt? Doesn’t mean anything.

Gallup poll showing “Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group?” Doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

Tomorrow doesn’t mean anything.

If they plug their ears, stamp their feet, and say it often enough, maybe they can wish tomorrow and the conservative surge all away.

***

Notice I said conservative surge. Not Republican. Read and send Doctor Zero’s excellent essay on the Stupid Party to every clueless GOP leader you know. Excerpt:

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Christie took a winding route to NJ governor post
By Angela Delli Santi, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 6 mins ago

TRENTON, N.J. – Chris Christie thought his political career was over 12 years ago when he was bounced from a primary election for a county board.

Christie, practically a born politician who campaigned as a teenager with future Gov. Tom Kean Sr., was president of his class at Livingston High School and of the student body at the University of Delaware.

He was a one-term incumbent on the Morris County Board of Freeholders when he lost the primary. But his political career was revived through an unlikely chain of events.

He became the lawyer for George W. Bush's presidential campaign in New Jersey. And after Bush won, he was nominated — and confirmed — as U.S. attorney for the state where he would build a reputation for busting corruption and convict 130 public officials.

By the middle of his tenure, he was seen as the Republican Party's best hope in New Jersey to beat Jon Corzine, the deep-pocketed, if unpopular, governor.

After holding on to win a close election in a heavily Democratic state against Corzine, Christie can look forward to plenty more battles.

In January, the new Republican governor-elect will take charge of a government dominated by Democrats.

It's a different kind of adversary for the 47-year-old Christie, who as federal prosecutor delivered morally certain speeches on the courthouse steps.

Instead of dealing with issues of right and wrong, he's likely to find himself in policy debates with a complicated mix of ideology, politics, pragmatism and unintended consequences.

Christie was elected Tuesday over Corzine and independent Chris Daggett by hammering home one message: He pledged not to raise taxes and to roll back several of them, including some increased by Corzine over the past four years.

He overcame criticism that he was not specific enough about how to accomplish his tax goals and still manage to balance a state budget in a precarious economic climate.

In some areas, though, he was specific. Christie says, for instance, he will not be bound by an agreement struck this year by Corzine not to lay off state workers. And he said he's willing to cut programs that aren't necessary for the state, even if they're popular.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_nj_gov...NocmlzdGlldG9v

Bloomberg wins 3rd term as NYC mayor
By Sara Kugler, Associated Press Writer
2 mins ago

NEW YORK – Billionaire Michael Bloomberg won a third term as New York mayor Tuesday in a closer-than-expected race against a Democratic challenger who stoked voter resentment over the way Bloomberg changed the city's term-limits law so he could stay in office.

Bloomberg, the richest man in New York and founder of the financial information company Bloomberg LP, defeated William Thompson Jr. 51 percent to 46 percent — a difference of less than 51,000 votes.

The mayor called it a "hard-fought victory in a very difficult year," and promised that New Yorkers "ain't seen nothing yet" from him.

"I'm committed to working twice as hard in the next four years as I did in the past eight," Bloomberg said.

In the days leading up to the election, polls showed Bloomberg with as much as an 18-point lead, an edge so big that critics accused the mayor of overkill in his strategy of bombarding the city with campaign ads.

His actual margin of victory was far smaller than the nearly 20-point blowout he pulled off in 2005.

When all the bills are paid, Bloomberg will probably have spent more than $100 million on his campaign, the most expensive self-financed campaign in U.S. history. Thompson, the city's comptroller, relied on donations and matching funds for his mayoral bid, and was on track to spend about a tenth of Bloomberg's staggering total.

"This campaign was about defying conventional wisdom. ... this campaign was about standing strong, standing tall and never backing down in the face of a formidable challenge," Thompson said after conceding defeat.

Thompson ran up huge margins in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, winning by a 3-to-1 margin in some districts.

He beat Bloomberg handily in predominantly black neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Jamaica in Queens. He won Harlem and East Harlem easily, along with other heavily Hispanic districts in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

By contrast, Bloomberg won easily on Staten Island, which has a much larger white population. He also fared better in Manhattan, particularly on the Upper East Side, where he lives.

The tiny margin could weaken his power and make his third term more difficult at City Hall, where Democrats poised to sweep into citywide offices indicated they would not shy away from disagreeing with the mayor.

"You'll see a lot of strong voices as checks and balances," said Democrat Bill de Blasio, who won the job of City Hall ombudsman Tuesday. "It will be a very different experience than what he experienced the last eight years."

Bloomberg is just the fourth mayor to win a third term, after Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Wagner and Ed Koch.

Bloomberg was a Republican but left the party in 2007 to explore a presidential bid, a dream he eventually abandoned. For his third mayoral run, he ran again on the GOP and Independence Party lines.

While Bloomberg was often described as having every advantage in the race, including his estimated $17.5 billion fortune and consistently high approval ratings, his campaign did have to overcome some obstacles.

The mayor, who has close ties to Wall Street and development, was running for re-election at a time when finance and real estate were falling apart and those relationships were not necessarily seen as positives.

There are also the numbers — New York City leans heavily to the left, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a ratio of 5-to-1. Democrats were also energized by their party's White House win in 2008.

And New Yorkers were angry that Bloomberg reversed his long-held support for term limits last year and persuaded the City Council, in a matter of weeks, to extend the law so he could run for a third term.

Thompson sought to stoke that resentment, but it was not enough. He did not make a strong, separate case for why he should be elected.

Many Thompson supporters said Tuesday that term limits was the single reason why they voted for him.

Jason Gerald supported Bloomberg in 2005 but voted for the Democrat this year.

"I didn't like the way he overturned term limits," said Gerald, a retired police officer. "He thinks he's the only person who can lead this city."

When Bloomberg announced last year his intention to change the law and run again, he said it was because the city needed his financial expertise to get through the economic meltdown.

He never revived that argument during the race, though, which grew increasingly negative as Election Day drew near and polls showed most voters still did not know much about Thompson.

The Bloomberg campaign saw its opportunity — it defined Thompson through negative ads and attacks before the Democrat could do it himself.

He will likely have spent more than $50 million on advertising alone, and millions more on his huge army of staffers, some of them the top strategists and consultants plucked from presidential-level campaigns.

The mayor was able to target each voter with unique messages using a database managed by Ken Strasma, who was President Barack Obama's national targeting director in 2008.

The data was crucial not only in shaping the campaign's messages, but also for Election Day operations as the campaign tracked voter turnout in every election district.

For example, campaign officials noticed lower turnout in some areas of the Bronx and Queens than the data had predicted, so the campaign changed its operations on the ground.

Field workers were rerouted to different areas in Queens to knock on doors and get voters to the polls, and Koch was summoned to record a last-minute robocall that began calling Bronx voters around 5 p.m.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_nyc_mayor

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Boston Mayor Menino elected to a record 5th term
By Bob Salsberg, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 3, 9:48 pm ET

BOSTON – Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has won an unprecedented fifth consecutive four-year term.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Menino had 57 percent of the vote to City Council President Michael Flaherty's 43 percent. Flaherty has conceded the election.

Menino has already been in office for 16 1/2 years, longer than any in the city's history.

History shows it's tough to unseat a Boston mayor. No incumbent has lost the seat in 60 years.

The last one was James Michael Curley, who was ousted by John Hynes in 1949 after a term interrupted by a five-month federal prison sentence for mail fraud.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_boston_mayor


Bing elected to full term as Detroit mayor
2 hrs 6 mins ago

DETROIT – Professional basketball Hall of Famer Dave Bing has been re-elected Detroit mayor.

The 65-year-old Democrat defeated accountant Tom Barrow in Tuesday's nonpartisan general election.

Bing's NBA career lasted 12 seasons, nine with the Detroit Pistons.

As mayor, he has laid off workers and demanded a 10 percent wage cut to help address the city's ongoing budget deficit.

It was the fourth time Detroit voters cast ballots this year for mayor.

Bing received the most votes in a February primary and defeated incumbent Ken Cockrel Jr. in a May runoff to complete Kwame Kilpatrick's second term. Kilpatrick resigned as part of pleas in two criminal cases.

Bing also received the most votes in the August primary.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_detroit_election_mayor


GOP wins Va. gov race a year after Obama won state
By Bob Lewis, Associated Press Writer
1 hr 52 mins ago

RICHMOND, Va. – Republican Bob McDonnell wooed Virginia's independent voters Tuesday to win a landslide election for governor just a year after the state bucked tradition and voted for Barack Obama.

McDonnell, a conservative former state attorney general, had about 60 percent of the vote with most precincts reporting. He takes back the governor's office after eight years of Democrat control.

The election largely turned on independent voters, who preferred McDonnell by nearly a 2-1 ratio over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, exit polls showed. It was a shift from 2008, when independents in the state split about evenly between the parties.

"I just got tackled by my five kids and my wife, and there are a lot of tears on my cheeks right now," McDonnell told The Associated Press.

The race, along with one in New Jersey, has been closely watched as a potential referendum on Obama and his policies. Obama was the first Democrat in 44 years to carry Virginia in a presidential race.

Virginia voters were split on Obama's job performance, exit polls showed. While many said the president was not a factor in their votes for governor, about a quarter said their vote for McDonnell was also a rejection of Obama.

"I hope this will kind of send a message to Congress that you better do what we want or we won't re-elect you," said Linda Doland, 60, a nanny in suburban Richmond who voted for McDonnell.

"You're supposed to represent us," she said. "I don't think the present administration is really listening to the people."

Voters expressed angst about major Obama initiatives such as health care, energy and stimulus spending. But McDonnell dominated the campaign's central issues: jobs and the economy.

In Associated Press surveys at polling places statewide, about eight in 10 voters said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy, and the majority of those favored McDonnell.

McDonnell, 55, never trailed in polls, even though his lead narrowed in September after news reports of a graduate thesis he wrote in 1989 that disparaged working women, gays and unmarried "cohabitators." He dismissed it as a forgotten academic exercise and said raising three daughters had changed his views.

Anne Beckett, 53, of Roanoke voted for Deeds, and said she feared McDonnell would advance a conservative social agenda.

"I don't like a Christian-based, pro-life attitude," she said.

McDonnell will succeed Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is barred by state law from seeking a second term. Kaine directed $6 million in DNC money into Virginia for Deeds and other Democratic candidates.

The vote was a rematch of the attorney general's race four years ago. Then McDonnell squeaked out a win with less than a 400-vote margin.

This time Deeds, a moderate country lawyer and state senator, never energized the party's liberal activists despite campaigning twice with President Barack Obama.

"We've got a whole pile of work in front of us, and just because we didn't get the right result tonight doesn't mean we can go home and whine," Deeds told a somber Democratic crowd.

Obama last year powered a political tsunami that swept three of Virginia's 11 U.S. House seats from the GOP. It also put both U.S. Senate seats in Democratic hands for the first time since 1970.

Republicans were in disarray after the 2008 loss, but took advantage of public unease over major Obama initiatives on health care, energy and stimulus spending legislation.

Not since 1973 has the party in power in the White House won the governor's race across the Potomac in Virginia.

The exit poll of 2,124 Virginia voters was conducted for AP by Edison Research in a random sample of 40 precincts statewide. Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, higher for subgroups.

In other Virginia races, Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling won re-election over Democrat Jody Wagner, and Republican Kenneth Cuccinelli was elected attorney general over Democrat Steve Shannon with about the same share of the vote as McDonnell. All 100 seats in the House of Delegates were up for election, with contested races for 69 seats.

___

On the Net: Methodology: http://surveys.ap.org/exitpolls

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_virginia_governor


Colorado ski town legalizes pot
1 hr 19 mins ago

DENVER – The Colorado ski town of Breckenridge has voted overwhelmingly to legalize marijuana.

Early returns Tuesday night showed the proposal winning with 72 percent of the vote. The measure would allow adults over 21 to have up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The measure is largely symbolic because pot possession remains a state crime for people without medical clearance. But supporters said they wanted to send a message to local law enforcement to stop busting small-time pot smokers.

The vote comes as communities nationwide are struggling with how to enforce pot laws at a time when medical marijuana has surged in popularity.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_marijuana_legalization

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Dems, incumbents get wake-up call
John F. Harris, Jonathan Martin
Nov 4, 3:31 am ET

RICHMOND, Va. — Eager to drain the 2009 elections of drama and import, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs claimed Tuesday night that President Barack Obama was “not watching returns.”

You can be sure that he is studying them closely now: The off-year elections were, in two big races, an unmistakable rebuke of Democrats, reshuffling Obama’s political circumstances in ways likely to have severe near-term consequences for his policy agenda and larger governing strategy.

Independents took flight from Democrats. They suffered humiliating gubernatorial losses in traditionally Democratic New Jersey, where Obama lent his prestige in a pair of eleventh-hour campaign rallies Sunday, and in Virginia, which had been trending leftward and just last year was held up as an example of how Obama was redrawing the political map in his favor.

Tuesday night’s trends were emphatically not in Obama’s favor. Among those paying closest attention are dozens of Democrats who won formerly Republican congressional districts in 2006 and 2008 and are up for reelection in 2010. Many of these pickups that powered the Democrats’ recapture of Congress came in Southern and border states, or in the Ohio River Valley, where political conditions are similar to those in Virginia.

Obama now faces a much tougher challenge persuading these mostly moderate Democrats to put themselves further at risk by backing such liberal priorities as expanding government’s role in heath care or limiting greenhouse gases.

It was a consolation prize — cherished by national Democrats urgently looking for some good news — that Democrat Bill Owens won a special election for the 23rd Congressional District in upstate New York.

What’s more, there is an argument that these off-year elections may not have produced an ideological or partisan verdict so much as revealed a deeply aggrieved electorate — ready to rough up incumbents of all varieties.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who previously had been perceived as a highly popular independent, barely fended off a listless and badly outspent Democratic challenge from City Comptroller William Thompson Jr.

The results in the New York House race — in a remote, historically Republican bastion — came after a bitter intramural fight among Republicans in which Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and his backers effectively ran GOP establishment pick Dede Scozzafava out of the race.

“I think all incumbents need to be on full alert,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told POLITICO in a telephone interview.

The election campaigns were followed swiftly by post-game campaigns to shape perceptions of the results. The Democratic line, from the White House on down, is to plunge into nuance — making the case that the big 2009 contests were effectively local races waged by two weak candidates in incumbent Jon Corzine in New Jersey, beaten by Republican Chris Christie, and state Sen. Creigh Deeds in Virginia, who was clubbed like a harp seal in his 17-percentage-point loss to GOP nominee Bob McDonnell.

It is true enough that both Democratic candidates had severe limitations — Deeds was a notably unprepossessing candidate compared with the polished McDonnell, and Corzine was deeply unpopular and at the helm of a state suffering through difficult economic times. Neither race should be viewed as strictly a referendum on Obama. But if there is a danger in overinterpreting off-year elections, it is also a mistake to underinterpret.

Particularly in Virginia, the rout of three Democrats running for three separate statewide offices, as well as the loss of several legislative seats, sent an unambiguous message. The independent voters who helped Obama in 2008 become the first Democratic presidential candidate in 44 years to carry the Old Dominion have swung wildly in a different direction. The swing from Obama's win last year to McDonnell's Tuesday: 23 points.

Exit polls showed Republican McDonnell won 63 percent of independent voters. Likewise in Democratic-trending Northern Virginia, the Republican carried the three largest suburban counties of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William — all counties Obama won handily last year.

In New Jersey, likewise, Christie won 58 percent of independents.

“This is a shot across the bow to the moderates and Blue Dog Democrats as they decide votes on health care” and other issues, said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine — who as current Virginia governor had previously won plaudits for making his state more competitive for his party — saw his reputation scuffed. But he cautioned against drawing national trends, saying opinion polls show Obama still winning majority support among independents nationally.

"These two races each had their own spin," Kaine told POLITICO.

Notably, one of Virginia’s most prominent Democrats, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder — the nation’s first elected African-American governor — sided more with Cantor.

“It’s a wake-up call for Democrats across the country,” said Wilder, who did not endorse Deeds.

He said independents are worried about what they see as careless spending by Obama and his Democratic allies in Washington, and he advised Obama to reorganize his White House to rely less on campaign operatives and focus more on governing.

Mississippi Gov. and Republican Governors Association Chairman Haley Barbour compared Tuesday’s results with 1993, when Republicans also won Virginia and New Jersey, saying the party’s success would spur more GOP candidates to run next year.

“It served as a springboard for the 1994 elections,” Barbour told POLITICO, alluding to the precursor to the GOP’s capture of the congressional majority. “We elected 73 Republican freshmen in the House of Representatives. More than half of them made the decision to run for Congress after the November 1993 election.”

Further, Barbour said, the wins Tuesday would boost the spirits of a party that has been deeply demoralized since not long after Bush’s 2004 reelection.

“It energizes and excites our volunteers, our organization people and our donors,” he said.

Christie ran in heavily Democratic New Jersey, faced an engaged and popular president, was badly outspent by the self-funding Corzine — who ran a barrage of negative ads, some suggesting the former prosecutor was too fat to lead — and also fended off a former Republican running as a third-party candidate who gave anti-Corzine voters an alternative to the GOP nominee.

Yet Christie still defeated Corzine by 4 percentage points — the largest victory by a New Jersey Republican in nearly a quarter-century.

Christie’s margin marked a 20-point swing from Obama’s performance.

The New Jersey race was especially painful for the White House, which, sensing a loss in Virginia, sought to prop up Corzine in the campaign's final weeks.

The president came to the state for get-out-the-vote rallies on the Sunday before the election, where he called Corzine his “partner” in an effort to fire up the Democratic base.

“We will not lose this election if all of you are as committed as you were last year,” Obama told a heavily black crowd in Newark.

Obama also appeared in an ad for Corzine aimed at Hispanic voters and recorded robocalls for the governor.

But if Democrats were disappointed in New Jersey, Republicans were elated by Virginia.

The landslide of McDonnell, a former state attorney general, appears to offer the GOP a model for victory in swing states. A graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University who made his name in the state Legislature as a social conservative, McDonnell downplayed social issues in the campaign and focused intently on winning back the Virginia suburbs that fueled the Democratic resurgence in recent years.

"He focused heavily on the issues that are on voter’s minds: jobs, transportation, taxes and spending,” said Barbour.

Democrats took solace in the Owens victory in New York’s North Country, where they picked up a GOP seat previously held by John McHugh, now the Army secretary. Republicans seemed to lock up the seat on Saturday when their struggling nominee, Scozzafava, dropped out, giving the Conservative Party nominee, Hoffman, a one-on-one race in a historically Republican district.

But Scozzafava endorsed Owens on Sunday, and some of her moderate supporters from her state Assembly district appear to have followed suit and delivered their votes to the Democrat.

Van Hollen held up their success in New York as indicative of what could happen in the future when the conservative and moderate wings of the GOP clash.

“The Republican Party spent close to a million dollars to lose a seat they had held since the Civil War, and in the process launched a civil war of their own,” he said.

Former Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, an outspoken moderate who is often frustrated by his party’s rightward tilt, said the message of the Christie and McDonnell wins — and the Hoffman loss — is that his party should own the center on economic issues.

But he said the lesson for Democrats is even more urgent. “Any Democrat from a border or Southern or even a rural district has got to take a deep breath and look for some ways to get some distance from from Obama,” Davis said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200...FjZXNnaXZlZGVt

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

White House: Tuesday's GOP wins not about Obama
2 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The White House says that Republican wins in two governors' races were not referendums on the president. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to work through "very local issues that didn't involve the president." The presidential spokesman said voters were concerned about the economy.

"I don't think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion," Gibbs said.

By contrast, Gibbs acknowledged that the 2010 midterm congressional elections will be more about the Obama agenda. Republicans turned aside Democratic candidates in both Virginia and New Jersey, raising questions about the limits of the president's influence on his party's base of support and on the moderate lawmakers he needs to advance his legislative priorities.

Gibbs noted that Democrats did win two special elections for congressional seats, in California and New York.

Gibbs said Obama telephoned both Democratic losers, incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine in New Jersey and candidate Creigh Deeds in Virginia, Tuesday night. But Gibbs said Obama has not yet called the two GOP gubernatorial winners because he wanted to let them celebrate with family and supporters.

The president had campaigned for both Corzine and Deeds in recent days.

The White House sees no need to recalibrate its legislative agenda or message based on the results of the governors' races or the swing of independents in this election toward the GOP, Gibbs said. And he expressed no concern that the election results will make conservative Democrats on Capitol Hill more skittish toward backing the president's agenda as they head toward their own re-election bids in 2010.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_elections



'Change has come' ... or has it?
John F. Harris
Wed Nov 4, 4:52 am ET

In the year since he was elected president, Barack Obama has revealed himself as one of the boldest leaders to occupy the Oval Office in the modern era.

In that same year, Obama also has revealed himself to be an innately self-protective, constantly calibrating and, in some surprising ways, supremely conventional politician.

So who is Barack Obama? The drama of this presidency — in sharp relief with Wednesday’s one-year anniversary of his 2008 triumph — revolves around how Obama navigates his own contradictions.

Obama turns out not to be a Bill Clinton-style centrist or a Paul Wellstone-style liberal. His plans for health care and his trillion-plus dollars in new spending have earned the ire of Rush Limbaugh for being too grandiose and of Arianna Huffington for not being grandiose enough.

Obama is the president as grand improvisationalist: a leader of epic ambitions who — when faced with a difficult choice — almost always pursues his aims with a pedestrian strategy and style.

This may be a shrewd approach to governing. But it manages almost by definition to defy and disappoint the huge — and wildly divergent — expectations Obama encouraged supporters to harbor for his presidency.

As the election anniversary approached, Obama several times in public remarks acknowledged the sense of letdown and pleaded for patience.

“‘Well, why haven’t you solved world hunger yet?’” Obama said in New Orleans the other day, mimicking the cries of critics. “‘Why — it’s been nine months. Why?’ You know? I never said it was going to be easy. What did I say during the campaign? I said change is hard. And big change is harder. And after the last nine months, you know I wasn’t kidding.”

Obama may not have promised change would be easy. But he did convey what now looks like a too-glib impression that he could unite opposites and reconcile contradictions by the power of personality — hard to do when his own personality has competing strands.

Obama has the soul of an ideologue. He wants to be a transformational president — unconfined by the limitations of conventional politics and determined to put a lasting mark on his era.

In his first year, he has presided over more new domestic spending than Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, did in eight years. The “big bang” agenda he laid out earlier this year on health care, energy and financial regulation unmistakably signaled his ambition to vastly expand the role of government in American life.

But Obama also has the soul of an operative. He and his West Wing team — dominated at the top by people whose expertise is in the world of campaigns and Washington maneuvers — have proved to be far more familiar political types than they admit to themselves or than was forecast by his insurgent campaign and the expansive, at times almost messianic, rhetoric that powered it.

“What surprises me most is the loss of Barack Obama as movement leader,” Malika Saada Saar, a human rights organizer, said on POLITICO’s Arena forum.

As Obama’s campaign reached its climax, in Saar’s memory, it conjured up echoes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now that he has entered office, she finds that spirit missing: “During this time of economic decline, two raging wars and an uncertain future for so many Americans, we need a movement-leader president who can call forward our courage and relentlessly move us toward making the difficult policy changes that we need.”

When it comes to policy, Obama is more willing than any Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson to propose expansive goals — but is insistent always on preserving flexibility in the name of realism or political self-protection.

On health care, it is clear that Obama’s team is more concerned with a victory — one his team expects by the end of the year — than with the programmatic details. On national security, he so far has offered far more continuity with George W. Bush on Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies than many of his most ardent supporters were expecting.

When it comes to politics, Obama and his team have proved more comfortable navigating within the Washington system that greeted them than with changing the culture of the capital. A West Wing that features skilled operatives like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs is no less politically obsessed than when Karl Rove roamed the same halls.

“I suppose what has surprised me most is how quickly the promises of comity, outreach and post-partisanship were abandoned,” James G. Gimpel, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, said on the Arena forum. “But maybe that’s because I was starting to believe the hype, and I should have maintained an appropriately skeptical stance all along. In this last year, we have again been reminded that governing is not campaigning.”

As it happens, the Obama team is never happier — as in its frequent public disputes with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or the insurance industry — than when it can adopt campaign-style tactics to frame an adversary for public advantage.


[continues...]

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

The logic of this approach is clear but also plainly at odds with Obama’s stated desire to unify Americans and drain politics of its anger and addiction to unproductive conflict.

In the year since Election Day, there is scant evidence that Obama remains a movement politician.

The legions of activists and volunteers — the people whose e-mail lists and social-networking skills were supposed to be a potent weapon in Obama’s arsenal during legislative battles — have not made themselves felt in meaningful ways since last year.

And what looked like a transformative result -- an electoral map redrawn by Obama’s ability to mobilize both the Democratic base and post-partisan independents -- now seems more tentative. In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in 44 years, based on massive turnout from African-Americans and big support from independents. In 2009, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate was routed in Virginia, largely because of lower African-American turnout and a flight of independents toward the Republican. If these trends are repeated nationally in 2010 and Democrats lose significant ground, Obama’s ambitions to be a transformational president most likely will be put on pause. Instead, he’ll be forced to practice a more defensive brand of politics, much like Bill Clinton was after his party was routed in 1994.

In terms of the culture of Washington, he has made it a bit harder for lobbyists to land government jobs (though there have been plenty of exceptions granted to lobbyists Obama happened to especially want). Yet few people in Washington still regard Obama — clearly at ease with establishment values and personalities — as a dangerous boat rocker. The capital remains a bull market for special-interest deal making. The pharmaceutical lobby, for instance, found Obama eager to do business in which drug makers’ interests were protected in exchange for backing health care reform.

This let’s-make-a-deal impulse isn’t pretty to watch sometimes, especially for Obama’s more idealistic followers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t pay off in the end. Obama stands a good chance of passing a health reform bill in coming months, a significant win for the president even if Congress passes only a watered-down version of the bill.

But as the year wears on, there’s a danger for Obama that all that improvisation could start to look feckless, not strategic but simply indecisive or lacking in principles. He has so far avoided falling into the same trap as Clinton, for whom “triangulation” became a defining character trait, an all-purpose explanation for every compromise or centrist impulse or second helping at the dinner table.

Obama’s backtracks are too fresh, and too discreet, to fully define him or become the narrative of his presidency, at least not yet. But he’s edging toward dangerous ground. Nowhere is that clearer than Afghanistan.

He has carried out his deliberations in public view — either an impressive display of confidence by a young president willing to question his commanders’ call for more troops or a slightly unnerving process of recalibration and second-guessing by a leader who set his Afghan strategy just seven months ago. Obama made finishing the war in Afghanistan central to his campaign claims of a muscular foreign policy, but that was before a war-weary public soured so completely on the conflict; and, now, even Obama is showing signs of doubt.

Other Obama lines in the sand are also getting blurred. A one-year deadline to close Guantanamo? It won’t happen. Pass health care before the August recess? Didn’t work out. Crack down on Israeli settlements to restart the Mideast peace process? Not anymore.

The tension between transformational ambitions and conventional instincts even carries over to Obama’s personal style. What happened to the new Camelot that was to dawn over the Potomac?

“I think that was writers planting their hopes on the first couple. I think that was fantasy,” said Carol Joynt, who writes on the Washington scene for the New York Social Diary. “They’re behaving like parents who travel a lot and live in a big house. ... I haven’t seen what some other people got all wound up about. I haven’t seen radical change in fashion. I haven’t seen radical change in the social scene.”

This sense of disappointment, of letdown — how can a campaign that shattered so many expectations have produced a presidency that already feels quite ordinary? — extends from the nearly cosmic to the nearly comical. What could be more conventional — more downright old-fashioned — than a president who likes to golf every Sunday, whose idea of sweeping change extends to lowering his own handicap?

“We thought we were getting a man of action. Instead, we got someone who’ll spend six hours chasing a white ball around a park,” Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said, with tongue planted only partly in cheek. “If voters had known about the golf, they would have been less surprised by his lack of urgency on many issues.”


http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200...x5c2lzb2JhbQ--

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

NYC mayor bruised by surprisingly close victory
Sara Kugler, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 41 mins ago

NEW YORK – Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg heads toward a third term bruised by a surprisingly close re-election battle that exposed lingering anger over his reversal on term limits and his prodigious campaign spending.

In the days leading up to the election, Bloomberg was expected to secure an easy victory, perhaps by double digits. But he won by just five percentage points — an advantage of less than 51,000 votes out of just over a million cast.

The mayor called it a "hard-fought victory in a very difficult year," and promised that New Yorkers "ain't seen nothing yet" from him.

"I'm committed to working twice as hard in the next four years as I did in the past eight," Bloomberg said.

Facing an underdog Democratic opponent who had little money and no name recognition, Bloomberg still waged the most expensive self-financed political campaign in U.S. history.

But city Comptroller William Thompson Jr. hammered the mayor relentlessly on term limits, saying Bloomberg went back on his word when he orchestrated a change to a term-limits law that voters had upheld by referendum twice in the 1990s.

Thompson also blasted Bloomberg as an out-of-touch elitist who abandoned the middle class. But Thompson gave voters few other reasons to support him.

Some voters expressed their discontent in the voting booth, even though they did not believe Bloomberg could lose.

Pedro Fuertes said he voted for Bloomberg in 2005 but abandoned him this year. A vote for Thompson, he said, sent a message to the mayor.

"He will know how people feel," Fuertes said.

Bloomberg is only the fourth New York mayor ever to win re-election twice. But the close race and the simmering voter resentment this year have energized the political opposition in City Hall, and Democrats suggested that Bloomberg's third term could be his most difficult.

"There will be moments where I'm going to have to be very aggressive in speaking up for people who aren't being heard," said Democrat Bill de Blasio, who won the job of City Hall ombudsman Tuesday.

Before this campaign, Bloomberg was mostly known as a nonpartisan, pragmatic philanthropist who turned the city around after the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

"He may be remembered as one of the greatest mayors in New York history," the New York Times said when endorsing him in 2005.

But then the mayor reversed his long-held support for term limits and persuaded the City Council to change the law.

The richest man in New York and founder of the financial information company Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg said his economic expertise was crucial to steering the city through the recession.

He then went on to pour millions of his personal fortune — estimated at $17.5 billion — into his campaign. He had spent nearly $90 million by Oct. 29 and could top $100 million when all the bills are paid.

"I didn't like the idea that King Mike thinks he can buy anything he wants, including my vote," said Democrat Kevin Anterline, a 56-year-old university employee who voted for Thompson.

Thompson, who will probably end up spending one-tenth as much as Bloomberg, gave the mayor a scare by running up huge margins in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, winning by a 3-to-1 margin in some election districts.

"This campaign was about defying conventional wisdom. ... this campaign was about standing strong, standing tall and never backing down in the face of a formidable challenge," Thompson said after conceding defeat.

He beat the mayor handily in predominantly black neighborhoods such as Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Jamaica in Queens. He won Harlem and East Harlem easily, along with other heavily Hispanic districts in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

By contrast, Bloomberg won easily on Staten Island, which has a much larger white population. He also fared better in Manhattan, particularly on the Upper East Side, where he lives.

Turnout was slightly lower than both campaigns had predicted — about 1.1 million New Yorkers cast votes out of nearly 4.5 million people registered.

Bloomberg's margin of victory was far smaller than the nearly 20-point blowout he pulled off in 2005, and only slightly larger than the three-point win he managed in 2001 as a politically untested businessman.

Bloomberg was a Republican but left the party in 2007 to explore a presidential bid, which he eventually abandoned. For his third mayoral campaign, he ran again on the GOP and Independence Party lines.

While Bloomberg had a huge financial advantage and consistently high approval ratings, his campaign still faced obstacles.

The mayor, who has close ties to Wall Street and development, was running for re-election at a time when finance and real estate were falling apart and those relationships were not necessarily seen as positives.

New York City also leans heavily to the left, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans by a ratio of 5-to-1.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/...WNtYXlvcmJydWk

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?

Jolie Rouge

Analysis: Election lessons will shape '10 campaign
Liz Sidoti, Ap National Political Writer
16 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Lessons 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.

Issues, from jobs to taxes to government spending, drive this center of the electorate, so candidates who talk about what independents care most about will win the middle and, thus, elections.

Democrats must figure out a way to bring independents back into their fold — or risk huge losses next fall.

Still, Republicans must be mindful of the volatile nature of public attitudes, for independents who have moved toward the GOP since last fall could just as easily move back to the Democrats by next November.

_INCUMBENTS BEWARE

This means you, Mr. President, as well as Democrats who control Congress and even Republicans in certain seats. If you're in office, voters are coming after you.

In the midst of recession, people vented their frustrations by ousting Democrats from power in New Jersey and Virginia. And Democrat Bill Owens won a House seat held for decades by Republicans in a special election in upstate New York.

Also, in New York City, independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg barely won a third term against a little-known, poorly funded Democratic challenger. Voters generally approved of Bloomberg's job performance but resented his aggressive effort to get the city's term limits law lifted and his spending as much as $100 million of his own money to stay in power.

Anger at both parties also manifested itself in third-party candidacies, including in New Jersey. Still, independent Chris Daggett faced traditional obstacles to becoming a serious threat: financial and organizational difficulties.

_ISSUES TRUMP IDEOLOGY; THE ECONOMY TRUMPS ALL

Voters have spoken: Issues like God, guns and gays take a back seat in a recession.

In Virginia, McDonnell proved that a socially conservative Republican can win in a Democratic-trending state if the focus is on pocketbook issues. Deeds went after McDonnell over conservative positions on so-called "values issues" but the Republican didn't take the bait. In New Jersey, Christie — a moderate Republican — found success by sticking to core local issues, taxes and jobs. Both winners de-emphasized social issues in favor of solutions for problems people were facing in their own backyards, jobs, transportation and taxes among them.

Voters rewarded them; Both McDonnell and Christie were seen as running more positive campaigns.

In polling-place surveys, a jaw-dropping 85 percent in Virginia and 89 percent in New Jersey said they were worried about the economy — even though there are signs of recovery. But jobs aren't yet returning, and trouble looms for Democrats if people still aren't feeling improvement next fall.

As the sign famously said in Bill Clinton's campaign war room in 1992, while there might be a temptation to focus on other issues, always remember, "It's the economy, stupid."

_2006 AND 2008 ARE GONE; REPUBLICANS CAN WIN

The warm and fuzzy feelings voters had for Democrats in back-to-back national elections are history.

George W. Bush as a political punching bag doesn't work anymore; Democrats tried to use him against Christie and failed.

And now, after riding a wave of change to power, Democrats are the incumbents facing an electorate rich with anti-incumbent sentiment.

Of course, individual candidates matter, too, and in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats ran candidates whom voters just didn't seem to like much.

Victories in both states have given Republicans a much-needed morale boost. And the wins proved that Republicans can find success if their candidates gravitate toward the middle and are responsive to the voters' mood. That approach allowed the GOP to successfully woo independents.

But the defeat in New York's 23rd Congressional District, after a nasty race in which the GOP-picked candidate dropped out under pressure from conservatives, served as yet another warning sign: The Republicans aren't out of the woods either.


EDITOR'S NOTE — Liz Sidoti has covered national politics for The Associated Press since 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_electi...x5c2lzZWxlYw--

__________________
Laissez les bon temps rouler! Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.** a 4 day work week & sex slaves ~ I say Tyt for PRESIDENT! Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?