You know who's having a really bad night...The Philadelphia 76ers. With about 88 percent of their game with Boston Celtics completed, the Sixers have only tallied just over 39 percent of the total points. Attytood -- with no help from any of the Bush cousins -- projects that the Celtics as the winner in this contest. We're not ready to make a projection in the New Jersey governor's race, but incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine only did a tad better than Iguodala & Co. Minutes ago, here like Springsteen fanatic (yay!) and Mets fan (boo!) and corrupt (double boo!) overweight dude Chris Christie was projected as the next govenor of the Garden State. Ineed, it looks like a good night for Republicans across the board.
A repudiation of Obama? Yes and no.
Corzine's defeat is largely the result of his own unpopularity, which in turn is the result of continuing a generation of Democratic corruption in New Jersey, and of harsh economic measures that to some degree were necessitated by the recession (being from the evil empire of Goldman Sachs didn't help Corzine either). The early results suggest that the independent campaign of Chris Daggett collapsed in the last few days -- voters are smarter than people give them credit for, and apparently they realized that a vote for Daggett was a vote for Corzine. And people didn't want four more years of Corzine.
Obama himself seems fairly popular across the river, with an approval rating of 57 percent among those who voted in the New Jersey election. In fact, Christie even ran a Web ad that seeked to tie himself to the Obama phenomenon, hardly the mark of a failed presidency.
So how is the election a repudiation of Obama? Exit polls suggest that voter turnout tonight was low among people under the age of 30, as well as minority voters -- i.e., the people who gave the president his margin of victory in 2008. Some of that is just inevitable -- college kids are just not going to vote at the same rate as 60-year-old Glenn Beck watching couch potatoes in a non-presidential election, no matter who's on the ballot. But it would help if Obama and the Democrats would give young voters and the rest of the party's base something to get excited about; so far the White House's brand of incrementalism and its tail-chasing bogus pursuit of bipartisanism is simply not going to cut it.
For Obama, he's got three years to figure out how to recapture the spirit of '08. And now Jon Corzine will have plenty of free time to watch how he does it.
UPDATE: The worst thing to be tonight was neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but the party in power. While voters bounced the Democrats out of the statehouses in New Jersey in Virginia, incumbent New York mayor Michael Bloomberg -- whatever he is these days -- just narrowly won a third term after spending a whopping $100 million to ensure his victory. And in that hotly contested congressional race in upstate New York, the split between traditional Republicans and the Glenn Beck crowd is handing victory to the Dems for the first time in this seat since the 19th Century
Sweet! So you think Obama will wake up and stop spending trillions of dollars like Michele buys tacky designer clothing?— Mr. Smith
The Marxists lost big in NJ and Virginia...how will Will Bunch spin these two big losses for Mao Obama now?— Dr. Michael- If NJ goes Republican the blue dog dems will distance themselves further from the uber left wing tilt the Obamunists are trying to force the country into. This may spell serious trouble for Obama's attempt to nationalize 1/7 of the US economy and tax the productive folks to the bone....— RADDOCSJ
- Nice touch referring to Christie as overweight! Got any other thought provoking comments? You are a hack!— overtaxed
Comment removed.- so people only voted for christie because glenn beck told them to? nice generalization!— jlamb
- love the heading "keep it going" behind Obamessiah ... that's right, keep going right on out of NJ and don't come back anytime soon— jeanpennie
- This election had nothing to do with Obama, but with NJ Voters being tired of all the lies Corzine told, and his corrupt goons. We the Democrats of NJ congratulate the person we voted for, our Govenor-elect Chris Christie!— sjcruiser36
- If it had gone the other way, would Attytood be talking about how it's not really a factor in the debate over Obamacare?— Illiniwek
- iT was stupid for Obama to get involved at all, anyone who knows Jersey politics knows that the state goes back and forth between parties looking for a new Gov who can solve all theri problems like corruption (well only on the surface, they all want to be able to get tickets fixed and zoning variances), the state bankruptcy, the terrible property taxes, the never ending desire for more serivces without tax increases..... So they elect a lawyer who can't even do his own tax return corectly, good luck. They will hate this guy in 4 years the way they did all their Govs and will flip back to the other party again and again. Maybe next time they will try the Independent for a change just to break the pattern. What a waste of money it was to even have a campaign. This was a test of Obama only because the media declared it to be one.— atp2007
- The American Marxist Party (nee Democrat Party) gets CRUSHED in Virginia and embarrassed in New Jersey, which normally would vote for a pile of dog doo-doo as long as it had a "-D" somewhere on it or near it (by the way I mean that absolutely literally and with no hyperbole or exaggeration intended, seriously I mean it) and all hack/shill Bunch can muster wrt/analysis as it pertains to being a referendum on Obama's bait-and-switch ultra-liberal policies is "yes and no". News flash... Tonight was a resounding and total rejection of Obama and his Marxist cronies and their liberal policies. America has woken up and said "what the have have we done!" and begun to undo the big mistake it made a year ago by electing a community organizer/marxist/communist/light-weight/hack. Good-bye Cap-and-Tax, Government Healthcare, etc., etc. and good riddance....— 24601
- Looks like the overweight guy is the winner and the bald guy with the bad comb over is the loser!— downthemiddle
- Comment removed.
- What's NJ good for? Electing a Bush backer or make left hand turns in the right lane? Maybe with all these Republicans winning, we'll go back to the state that the US was in when Bush was running it.... back to debt. tsk tsk.— jt126
- Comment removed.
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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