2009 elections

An instant explanation has been advanced by the Left to explain away the beat-down they received in Massachusetts Tuesday.

Well, what do you expect? Martha Coakley was simply a bad candidate

I'm not going to pretend Coakley did a stellar job. Indeed, the last week of her campaign was so full of bizarre gaffes as to wonder if this was Joe Biden after doing really, really bad peyote. But, we are talking about a 100,000 vote clock cleaning.  Prior to Martha deciding to turn her footwear into snack food something had gone wrong for the Democrats in Massachusetts.

The prominent polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, offered this take on the Coakley collapse.

It’s not all her fault.  It’s the policies she supported that were more to blame.  She won the Democratic primary trouncing her opponents and was clearly the best candidate the party had to offer in the state.  She’d won statewide in convincing fashion.  She was a proven quantity.  And, yet this race wasn’t even close.

After watching Creigh Deeds, Jon Corzine and now Martha Coakley go down in flames, do you really think that the one thing they had in common was that they were below average candidates running sub-par campaigns?

The question I have is: when exactly did Creigh Deeds, Jon Corzine and Martha Coakley become "bad candidates"?

Certaintly not in the primaries. Deeds clobbered two better funded rivals (Terry McAulliffe and Brian Moran) in the VA primary.   Deeds had also faced Bob McDonnell before, and barely lost the 2005 AG race. He then lost to the same opponent for Governor in 2009 and the margin of defeat expanded by a factor of 1000.

 In New Jersey, Jon Corzine hardly broke a sweat dispatching his primary opponents. And while NJ Democrats may have considered swapping him out for Corey Booker, Richard Codey or Frank Pallone, in the end the completely venal NJ Democrats thought Corzine gave them their best chance of victory.

Now Martha Coakley. She was elected Attorney General in 2006 with 73% of the vote. In the Senate race ,she defeated a field of Democratic opponents --including a popular House member and a free spending businessman--convincingly.  

She entered 2010 with a million dollars cash-on-hand and an apparent wide lead in the polls.  So what happened to suddenly make her a "bad candidate"?

Seems the common denominator here is contact with the general electorate, now doesn't it?.

Once the calendar turned to 2010 and Martha Coakley couldn't fall back on the standard liberal bromides, well, she fell apart.  Perhaps she never expected  to be pressed in dark blue MA. But what part of the political environment this year won't inflict this damage on any Democrat whom the Republicans press hard?  

David Plouffe better have the "bad candidate" excuse on his favorites list this cycle. He'll need it. 

One final note. In all three epic losses the Democrats have pursued a strategy of victory by disqualification.  In Virginia, an ancient thesis was supposed to make McDonnell unpalatable; in New Jersey, the Corzine camp sought tp turn the election into a referendum on mammograms, and last week Coakley's thin straw was to allege Scott Brown hated rape victims.

I think even Ray Charles could see a pattern here.

Sure I know the argument about " well, we had to try and win ugly".  Message to Democrats: voters have noticed who's getting ugly. Perhaps that's why the results for your party have been...hmmmm, ugly.

Over the last few days I've traded a fair number of e-mails with folks very familiar with New Jersey politics.

The consensus is Jon Corzine will not be living in Drumthwacket in January 

Now I'm not saying that Chris Christie is an absolute lock to win--this is New Jersey after all. But Corzine already has lost and the power structure in the national and state Democratic party is going to have to hold a  "Barry Goldwater" meeting with him in the next few weeks. They will execute the old "Torricelli switch"

The internals of recent New Jersey polls are horrid for Corzine.  His job approval wasn't very high to start with, and now it's down to 33%.  He loses badly on handling the state budget and dealing with corruption. And , oops, looks like the corruption issue got back on the front pages in a big way.

The problem with Corzine is he sold his background as a former honcho of Goldman Sachs as evidence that  a) he would manage state budgets and the economy well and b) he was too rich to be corrupt.  Since neither  problem got resolved on Corzine's watch, all he has left is to try and trash Christie.  But that means that a rather large number( 17% +/-) of NJ voters who already have rejected Corzine will need to decide Christie would be even worse. That's a tall order even with unlimited resources. And now it may be simply impossible in the wake of the corruption dragnet.

Were this just about Corzine, the NJ Democrats might just let the chump lose and figure out how to make Christie a one term wonder.  The problem is that NJ voters think the State legislature is equally incompetent. They are now running at 28% approval. And yep, the Democrats control the legislature. Good for them only one house is up this year, and they hold a 48-32 edge.

But here's where Corzine kills the rest of his party. The Democrats took over the Assembly primarily by flipping seats in South Jersey. And Corzine is well on his way to getting crushed in all the counties south of Trenton; losing the Philly suburbs by 18 points and the shore counties by 35 points.  

A 10 point Corzine loss might look respectable if he can still win huge in Newark and Hudson County, but if he loses most of the state's real estate by high double digits the GOP could flip the four legislative districts they would need to oust the Democrats from Assembly control.

So the rest of the party is gonna want to find someone who gives the party a fighting shot at holding the Governor's office, or at least, giving suburban swing voters a reason to hit the reset buttom before sweeping the Republicans back in downballot. And an alternative is right in the wings, State Senate President and former Acting Governor Richard Codey. While Codey's proposals weren;t always popular, he left office in pretty good stead.

Codey would at the minimum force the Christie camp to relaunch their message as well; and might well serve to reduce turnout of apolitical suburban fiscal conservatives eager to spit in Corzine's eye. 

So, I expert Corzine to start getting veiled messages from his co-partisans in New Jersey that they would prefer an alternative. He may be getting them under the radar already; I suspect the visibility will increase so as to drive the point home. How many times can your allies say "no f**king way" before people stop believing you?

I then expect Corzine to be summoned to DC for a "strategy session" with Rahm Emanuel. The purpose of this meeting will be to determine what prestigious sounding economic post can be presented to Corzine so he can drop out "to serve the nation in this time of economic  crisis".  Maybe make Corzine yet another "czar" of something like Third World debt relief or what not.

The White House will not want to see both Democratic held governorships flip to the Republicans this fall.. They already probably have done all they can in VA to save the seat; but VA's demographics provide little room for error for even the best Democrat. NJ's clearly a better bet to hold; but not with a candidate the voters have no use for. 

Both parties have done this in New Jersey--swapped out an unpopular nominee right before an election. In 2002 the NJ Democrats swapped out sleazemeister Senator Robert Torricelli for the aging but respectable Frank Lautenberg. And the GOP had Acting Governor Don DeFrancesco step down for former Congressman Bob Franks; who still lost his primary to Bret Schundler.

The deadline here is whatever a pliable New Jersey Supreme Court will allow to be; so I suspect one more batch of bad polls will appear before the impetus to execute this reaches a boil.  My guess is this all comes to a head in the first half of September.

The NJ and national GOP needs to start thinking now about how it is going to react to a "Torricelli Switch". Forewarned is forearmed!    

Since I certainly couldn;t picture my Governor. Jodi Rell involved in anything less than proper.

Now, could I picture NJ's Jon Corzine being "Client # 10? . Sure. Sure I could.

Sadly, this would backfire on the GOP since it would give the DNC a chance to execute the well-traveled path of doing the "Torricelli Switch" and swapping out relatively popular State Senate President Richard Codey, who would stand a far better chance of defeating Republican Chris Christie..

Don't change this channel!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the title bout in this year's politcal lineup. In the left corner, wearing a host of tax and toll increases, a budget shortfall of more than $2.1 billion and scars of scandals with unions, ex-girlfriends and cabinet officials is Jon "Almost Gone" Corzine.

In the right corner, wearing a corruption busting image, over 130 successful prosecutions, and the hopes of millions who want to improve the quality of life in New Jersey………..Chris “You Can‘t Miss” Christie.

Many expect New Jersey's headline political battle to shape up this way. The incumbent governor is, as usual, expected to seek reelection and go unchallenged for their party’s nomination. In this case that is Jon Corzine. As for Republicans, Chris Christie is expected to run and win the Republican nomination for governor. Christie has finally made it clear that he will be declaring his candidacy and making it official in February. Many anticipate that he will ultimately win the Republican nomination for Governor and given the atmosphere and logistics, that may be likely.

Maybe.

The establishment is behind him and the money is being horded for him. Party leaders and elected officials have been lining up behind Christie like teenagers on line for Britney Spears’ latest CD. They are putting all their hopes on Chris Christie because he has some higher than usual name recognition when compared to other possible choices or at least more statewide recognition than most of them.

The thinking is that his name recognition will give us the best chance to defeat Corzine. New Jersey is a unique state, in that without its own media market, getting statewide name identification is very difficult. That is why most candidates have to run in at least one statewide election before they can win a statewide election.

Take McGreevey and Whitman for example.

To get name ID also takes a lot of money, more money than most campaigns in other states would. That is because a candidate has to invest in New York, the most expensive media market in the nation, and Philadelphia, the third most expensive media market in the nation. That makes it rough. So I undertsand the value in wanting a nominee for Governor who has some good recognition in New Jersey but I wouldn’t pin all of my hopes and my party on that alone.

Add to that the fact that Christie’s opponent for the nomination could actually prove to be more satisfactory candidates for the nomination to rank and file primary voters and you have the potential for an upset in the G.O.P. race for the gubernatorial nomination.

On the other side of the aisle you have Jon Corzine.

Incumbents usually do not get challenged and Corzine is no different here. However, many Democrats are not so sure that they want him to run for reelection.

Corzine himself is doubtful.

Not because he doesn’t want the job, but because he is not sure that he can make a case good enough for reelecting him to continue doing the piss poor job that he has been doing.

That is why he maneuvered himself for an appointment to President-Elect Obama’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. The hope was that he could avoid an embarrassing reelection loss by saying “sorry, I have to leave to answer a higher call to duty”.

Well, given Corzine’s dismal financial record in New Jersey, no one wanted him to do for America what he did for Jersey. So state Democrats are left with having to try to carry Corzine’s dead weight over the electoral finish line.

They are hoping that by linking Chris Christie to President George Bush, they could make Corzine more preferable. So despite the fact that Chris Christie has done his job successfully and put an end to the career of more corrupt politicians than anyone in recent state history, Democrats simply say he Chris Christie was appointed by George Bush.

Well duh………and he did his job better than most Democrats have done their own jobs.

So with little to go on, Democrats are scared.

They fear that Corzine is vulnerable and that they could lose to Republicans.

And they're right to think that way.

That is where things get interesting. POLITICS 24/7 understands that not only may Corzine not be up to reelection , he may not be up for his party’s nomination.

Senate President Richard Codey just might step up yet again.

Over the past several years years, Codey has been called upon to govern the state during several different times of crisis.

Those occasions included when disgraced Governor Jim McGreevey resigned amid financial, patronage and sex scandals and most recently after Governor Corzine almost died in a tragic accident that he encountered while speeding down the Garden State Parkway without his seatbelt on.

Putting Codey‘s political leanings aside, he is viewed as a steady hand at the helm, a wise sage of New Jersey politics who can be trusted. Whether this is true or not does not matter. That is how he is viewed and politics is perception. He has never sought the job of Governor but governed when called upon to do so. That kind of reputation is a good one to have. People do not see him as power hungry or ego driven. They see him as a reliable, trustworthy figure.

That is why there are rumblings to have him be the Democrats nominee for Governor.

The move would be a smart one for liberals in New Jersey.

It would be a smarter choice than opting to defend the abysmal record of Jon Corzine. With Dick Codey as their nominee, they will not have to defend against the stream of legal challenges that are pending in the courts against Corzine.

They will not have to defend against proposals to make the cost of driving on New Jersey’s roads so expensive that you need a part time job just to pay for the tolls that Corzine would be increasing for decades to come if he had his way.

Having Dick Codey as their standard bearer, Democrats will not have to explain why under his reign, the affordability crisis in New Jersey has gotten worse and why after raising taxes by as much as $2 billion dollars when his term began, we have a deficit of $2.1 billion dollars as his term ends. Of course Codey would have to answer to why he rubberstamped many of the Corzine led initiatives but at least he will not have to try to explain why he initiated them.

The most controversial part of the Codey nomination is how he will get it.

Insiders are hoping that it can be arranged so that late in the game, Jon Corzine will announce that for personal reason, he is not seeking a second term or that another responsible has called him.

That will allow Democrat party leaders to turn to Codey and say, with only a short amount of time left to nominate their party’s choice, they feel that they need Dick Codey to once again step in and save the day.

Is this likely?

Considering that Corzine has been looking for a way out of running for reelection and saving face, I believe that in a few months Corzine will receive a request to serve in the administration of President-Elect Obama. Not a cabinet position but a lesser position. One that Democrats can conjure up and provide Corzine with the excuse he needs in to save face.

So don’t expect this boxing match to be the one you expect. Not only does Chris Christie have yet to enter the ring as the G.O.P.’s official nominee for Governor, Democrats just might be putting the gloves on someone with more of a punch than Jon Corzine.

TO BE FILED UNDER THE "That's Just Wrong" CATEGORY

NO MORE BUSH - SHAVE THE DATE

Speaking of the upcoming inauguration, you can celebrate the end of Bush in a uniquely personal manner. Sex advice columnist Kristen Chase (also known as “Mominatrix”) is encouraging everyone to “Shave the Date”, or as she puts it “leave no bush behind”. She claims that it will give you a special tingle to realize that at the moment that this country gets rid of Bush, you will have gotten rid of yours.

Her column even includes advice on how to shave your pubes, for first-time Bush removers. She also has a Facebook event — shaving your bush is not required for participation, but is strongly encouraged due to sexual satisfaction and patriotism that will be enjoyed.

Be Sure To Sign The Petition To

REPEAL THE CONGRESSIONAL PAY HIKE

Sign the Online Petition - Repeal The Automatic Pay Raise That Congress Is Receiving

Pass The Link On To Family, Friends and Co-workers

http://www.gopetition.com/online/24301.html

AND DON'T FORGET.............

BE SURE TO SIGN THE PETITION URGING THE NOMINATION

OF SENATOR BECK FOR LT. GOV.

Republican Pat Herrity and Democrat Sharon Bulova are running in a special election to replace the Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors (Gerry Connolly, a Democrat who was elected to replace Tom Davis).  Fairfax county is often cited as proof the Republican wave crested in 2002 and has been in steady retreat ever since; but those of us who live in Northern Virginia realize the facts on the ground are more nuanced.  Many of the losses in NOVA over the past few cycles resulted as much from unbelievably bad campaigns as from a failure of conservative messaging. 

The county, with a population of 1,000,000 is as close to a microcosum of America as you will find at the local level.  It tends to lean somewhat right on fiscal issues, left on some social issues and has a fairly strong libertarian streak.  Social Conservatives can and have won here but they need to work hard to do so and focus more on parental control of what gets taught to children and less on intruding on the privacy of consenting adults.  Notably; Ken Cuccinelli (possibly the most conservative Republican in the state) was reelected in 2007 while Jean Marie Devolites Davis (who went up on radio to announce she was a RINO) was defeated.  Ken worked his district door to door and emphasized his fiscal as well as social conservatism.  Jean Marie preferred to distance herself from all things Republican and did everything short of changing party to drive home the point.

Pat Herrity is no RINO but he is also not a doctrainaire social conservative.  From what I have seen he will emphasize fiscal restraint and good management to focus the county budget on essential services and deliver them cost effectively.  I suspect (although I do not know) that he will also embrace a kind of libertarian social conservatism that respects traditional family values and strong parental control of influences on their children while acknowledging the rights of consenting adults to embrace alternative lifestyles and respecting their privacy.

Sharon Bulova appears to be your standard issue doctainaire liberal Democrat.  She supported expanding benifits for illegal immigrants, favors tax increases before spending cuts and has shown no opposition to PC based academics regardless of parental concerns about the messages being delivered to their children.

I believe that Herrity can not only win this blue trending county, he can do so in a way that heals some of the divisions between fiscal and social conservatives as well as delivers a Republican message the resonates with moderates.  Extreme messages of any type would be suicidal in this county.  No tax pledges, strong anti abortion or anti gay statements, government bashing etc will all backfire badly in Fairfax.  Nevertheless, Republicans can make a case for fiscal sanity that includes spending cuts before tax increases, an emphasis on private sector development with government intervention held to a minimum, and clearly articulate that traditional families and alternative lifesyles can coexixt if each will respect the others privacy and right to raise their children as they see fit.  These messages will resonate in Fairfax county.  If we can couple them with effective new media delivery mechanisms, this supervisors race could be the start of our climb back up.

It has been an unfortunate fact of the GOP's recent past that, by and large, we have remained uncompetitive in urban areas. Strategically, Republicans, and conservative republicans in specific, have viewed urban outreach as superfluous at best, believing that a coalition of rural and suburban voters would be sufficient to maintain electoral majorities. If this was ever true before, it is certainly less so now, and if demographics continue to change, will continue to grow less true in coming decades. Now, as we are reeling in response to Democrats capturing deep red districts, the GOP must start thinking about turning the tables, and this begins with candidate-building in America's cities. Some of the countries' largest cities--New York, L.A. and Atlanta just to name a few, will have mayoral and city council elections in 2009. I think it is imperative for state parties, and even the RNC, to target these races, setting measurable goals particularly in city council races. Before we leap-frog into 2010, let's ask--and try to answer--the following questions about 2009:

1. What positive steps can we take immediately to begin building party infrastructure and recruiting activists in urban areas?

2. What measurable goals can we set for local city parties in 2009?

3. What percentage of city council races in 2009 can the GOP reasonably hope to contest?

4. Can the RNC help create a national "contract with urban America" which proposes free-market solutions to urban problems and onto which city council and mayoral candidates can sign? What would such a contract look like?

5. How can the GOP compete with corrupt, one-party rule in the cities? Can we bring shady Democratic practices in such places as Philadelphia and Chicago to light in 2009 and other off-year elections, and if so, how?

I welcome comments and suggestions on these important questions. I don't think there are easy answers, but we need to start the discussion, and do it now.