Jokes and ironies
Jokes and ironies
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
With Democrat Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco battling to a virtual tie in last night's special congressional election - Murphy currently tops Tedisco in this Hudson Valley/Adirondack district by as few as 25 votes out of 154,000 ballots, with as many as 10,000 absentees yet to be tallied - the Washington message mavens decided it was fruitless to try to frame the ambiguous results as a triumph/defeat for the Obama agenda or a triumph/defeat for the national GOP. They simply threw up their hands and retreated into defeaning silence...
April Fool!
What, you thought maybe I was serious about the spinners willfully going mute? On the contrary, they clearly don't hew to the traditional view that a tie is akin to kissing one's sister. They're in full message mode anyway, seeking to maximize whatever they can from the very real stalemate in New York's sprawling, heavily rural 20th congressional district.
Here's what I got this morning from the Republican National Committee: "With over 5,000 absentee and military ballots still left to count, this race is far from over. We are confident that the Republican advantage in these absentee and military ballots can put Jim Tedisco over the top, and the Republican Party will do everything in its power to make sure all lawful votes are counted. We are proud of Jim Tedisco and his campaign. Together, and in partnership with the Tedisco campaign, the New York Republican Party, the Republican National Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee went toe to toe with the Obama Democratic machine that looked invincible in the Northeast just a few months ago, and showed that our party can and will be competitive in areas of the country where our party hasn’t won recently. President Obama, Senator Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Chuck Schumer all won this district, and a Democrat won the last two congressional races. The fact we are in a dead heat race in NY-20 means we are making progress as a Party standing firm for fiscal responsibility.”
Here's what I got from the Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee: "From 21 points down to securing a majority of the vote tonight, congratulations to Scott Murphy, who ran an extraordinary campaign focused on his record as a successful businessman who helped to create jobs and his strong support for President Obama's economic recovery act. As votes continue to be counted, we're confident that Scott Murphy will expand his lead. Scott Murphy's strong showing in this district, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 70,000, represents a rejection of the obstructionist agenda and scare tactics that have become the hallmark of House Republicans."
Parse those two statements, and it appears that the Democratic spin is a bit bolder. The Democrats claim that the results signify a "rejection" of GOP tactics - whereas the Republicans, while boasting that they are now "competitive," never make the assertion that the results are tantamount to a thumbs-down verdict on Obama. So it would appear that the Republicans are playing it cautiously, trying hard to steer clear of hyperbole...
April Fool!
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP arm that specifically targets House races, reportedly put out an email overnight, warning prospective donors that the Democrats might try to cheat their way to victory during the absentee tallies: "Don't Let 'em Pull a Franken...Democrats have almost succeeded in stealing the election in Minnesota and seating Al Franken. We cannot allow them to manipulate electoral results to seat another tax-troubled liberal."
One could easily make the argument that the GOP took the bigger hit in the New York race. Financially speaking, the national party invested in Tedisco far more heavily than the White House and the Democrats invested in Murphy. Tedisco, a veteran stateb legislator, had high name ID, whereas venture capitalist Murphy started the race as an unknown rookie. Tedisco also had a double-digit polling lead that dwindled to zip. And, as evidenced by recent history, Republicans generally win special elections when the Democrats hold the White House; they took three House races in 1977, during Jimmy Carter's first year, and they took a Senate race in 1993, during Bill Clinton's first year.
Nevertheless, a virtual tie would appear to deprive the Democrats of a resonantly triumphant story line - especially since the uncounted military ballots could erase their paltry lead. The Democratic spinners, while currently insisting that they'll officially prevail by a few hundred votes, might be better advised to ask their sisters to pucker up.
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Speaking of that unending Senate election in Minnesota, the increasingly bereft Republican, Norm Coleman, took yet another blow yesterday in his bid (well financed by the national party) to keep the seat away from Al Franken. After losing the statewide recount, and after staging a seven-week trial in which he failed to demonstrate why the recount was wrong, Coleman has now been essentially rebuked by the three-judge panel that presided over the trial.
In yesterday's ruling, the judges said that a maximum of only 400 new absentee ballots can be opened and counted. Since Coleman trails by 225 votes, and since many of the ballots at issue hail from counties where Franken did well, the math is overwhelming that Coleman will remain the loser.
So it's clear that the national Republicans will quickly fold their cards and urge that Coleman heed the verdict and bow out gracefully...
April Fool!
Coleman is now weighing an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, and, if spurned there, an appeal to the federal courts, possibly all the way to the Supremes. (This stance is a tad ironic, given the usual Republican complaints about "unelected" judges trumping the will of the people.) John Cornyn, who runs the GOP's Senate campaign operation, has indicated that the party might pursue this fight for "years" - notwithstanding the recent lament from Minnesota's Republican governor that the ongoing Senate vacancy has already "put Minnesota at a disadvantage."
On the other hand, if Coleman's election lawyers simply throw in the towel, maybe the national party can put them on standby for that overtime tally in upstate New York.
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A fascinating development in Washington this morning:
President Obama's Justice Department has just requested that a federal judge throw out the corruption verdict rendered last October against Ted Stevens, the long-serving Republican senator who was defeated for re-election one month later.
Although Stevens was convicted on seven counts of trying to hide $250,000 in gifts and free renovations to his Alaska home, Attorney General Eric Holder said today that "it is in the interest of justice" to shelve the case - and to conduct an internal probe into serious allegations of widespread prosecutorial misconduct during and after the '08 trial.
In other words, the Bush Justice Department went after the senior Senate Republican, and screwed it up, big time...whereas the Obama Justice Department has now essentially set the Republican free.
And that's no April Fool's joke. That one should be filed under Irony.
Jokes and Ironies: An apt decription of Polman's posts— camtheman- JGD84- If I may interject I think the reason liberals, independents, moderates have such a hard time taking a stand on the issue is because they spend so much time holding up their finger to the wind that the there is not enough blood flow to their brains. Which is why they are pepetually obsessed with public polling. there is no core and no courage of conviction. The minute the public polls change the minute their opinions change. This is why you have such feckless souls and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, John Edwards, and Harry Reid voting for the Iraq war when polls indicated the public was for but quickly changing their opinions as the polls changed. And this is why in quick order Obama's surge in Afghanistan will be quickly abandoned as the polls change.
- Yoda, I have to be honest... picturing your green little body w/ the pointed ears makes me laugh. I can never really read what your writing, w/o totally cracking up laughing. I've noticed that your writing style differs from your dialect... is that a 'Jedi mind trick'? Anyway, it's lent, so I'll try to read all your post going forward with my finger over your name on my computer screen. I need to do a better job of being on the 'right side' of the "force". Signed, Darth Vader (A Conservative, but that's a little redundant, don't you think?)— JGD84
- 'Swedesboromike', I agree with you. The only "principles" of the left, are to 'tax and spend' the public to death, keep 'holy the left's sacrament of Abortion', blame the U.S. first and never criticize someone's sexual affairs, unless they're a Republican.— JGD84
- GENERAL: Conservative Republican, the very flower of humanity!!!— Talvenada
- SMike: For someone who seems to take a lot of pride in being (the Right cheek of) a horse's rear end, your "lights out at the asylum when Olbermann's over at 10" comments earlier on really cracked me up. I also enjoy the turnabout from your bleating about the plunging Dow to (now that its going up) to the "who cares, there's all these folks out of work" concern for the everyman mantra you've adopted. Blog humor --- its a beautiful thing!— yobill626
- So, is the average Minnesotan glad or mad that Coleman continues in his quest to keep Franken out of the Senate?— yobill626
- And lastly, an example of "when good things happen to bad people" was on full display with Holder's dropping of the Ted Stevens case. Yet another example of the mess created at the DOJ by its poor management.— yobill626
- YO BILL: I thought I heard The Conse 'Pubs decided that Fraken will NEVER be a senator. That basically, if he cares about Minny, he should concede the election, or they'll tie it up in Federal Court until the clock runs out. Then, the people in Minny will get the drift, if they want 2 senators.— Talvenada
- swedesboro, I couldnt believe I read this "one eyed jack- The dow reacted to Barack's election starting in mid October.". Now I know the entire financial disaster is Obama's fault. Thanks for clearing that up.— PA_Dutch
- I think the largest Dow drop occurred in September,700+ points. Earlier in the month there were drops of 504 and 684 points. But this wasn't the fault of the president at the time (probably the Dem congress?) So, if the Dow goes down it's Obama's fault, but if it goes up, we need to focus on something else. Then, we then insult anyone who points out this discrepancy in thought. And it's liberals who change with the wind and resort to name calling. Sorry, but the moral high ground has a deep valley here.— JimR
- JGD84, As liberal as this area can be, look at the responses to news stories in the Philly.com site over a long period. The posters tend to be of a decidedly conservative direction. The writing is filleed with assertions that are sheer nonsense, semi literate rants, and are filled with name calling and outright hate. They too get to hide behind the pseudonym. If you ever get to talk to anyone who screens calls on a talk radio station ,they don't get too many lib callers, you will find their reason-to-be is the right wing full mooners who want to get the air time to explain how we all really need to think. There is no high ground for those who proudly claim to be conservative. If you choose to be identified with them, that's your business. Just don't stake a claim to being of the higher order.— JimR
- Talvenada, you're the exact type of person I was talking about! Don't you like calling yourself anything but a liberal? However, you'll go to great lengths to support almost everything that comes out of Obama's administration! Last point, Conservatives on this blog have secretly come up w/ a list of Obama's "illegal actions"... 101 at last count!— JGD84
- JGD84: you are going to use Ann Coulter to make the case that liberals resort to yelling and name calling? Please look up irony and get back to me.— still_independent
- A favorite tactic of conservatives to keep the majority of Americans from supporting a higher, fairer tax on the rich was to shout "class warfare" every time the reasonable issue came up (and while they practiced class warfare themselves by grabbing all the money and leaving the middle class with flat wages for a decade). Now, through their own greed, shortsightedness and incompetence, the rich have started class warfare themselves, real class warfare, not wherein they're taxed fairly, but where they have to wear disguises to go to work. Irony.— Djoko Pritza
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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