Social conservatives have had better days at the ballot box than they did Tuesday, losing the abortion ban in South Dakota, the stem-cell research protection measure in Missouri and, for the first time in any state, a constitutional gay marriage ban in Arizona.
Of course, 20 other states already had passed marriage amendments before voters approved them Tuesday in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin. Michigan voters showed their disapproval of affirmative action in college admission and public employment. Arizona saw two anti-immigration measures pass. Nevada, Colorado and South Dakota chose not to decriminalize some marijuana use.
But minimum-wage hikes passed in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Nevada. And on other social issues, voters seemed to be placing the same order for more moderation that they issued Tuesday to the GOP-led Congress.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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42 Comments
Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the Democrat government, bought to you by the unaffiliated voters of America.Now let’s see what will happen to the price of oil.You know it is kind of funny how the price of oil goes way up when ever a Republican is in the Whitehouse….well it seems to be a coincidence, but now with the Democrats running the show we will probably see the price of medicine go way up….coincidence?
Or, it could be gasoline prices are just going to go up. And, there is no relationship to policitical variables.
Moderation in social issues as well as moderation in elections.
Is this part of a trend back to reason? Kline, who publicly espoused religious teachings yet didn’t “walk the walk” is history. Terry Fox has been dethroned, Connie Morris is out, and Jan Beemer couldn’t translate her anti porn rampage into votes.
Is it possible that the right wing extremists are losing their grip? Could this be a sign of a return to logic and reason?
Get used to it, the price of everything will be going up.
This is probably due to uncertainity , but probably more about Democrats promise to increase the tax on the rich.
And of course, you know who will be paying for the tax increase anyway, you…me and anyone else. Dems are so clever to figure out a way to raise prices to the little guy.
JM,
Yeah, and the GOP has done SO well at managing the costs of health care and college tuition.
The Republican revolution is officially dead. Over. Kaput. It’s been funny to watch conservatives try to spin this election as some sort of victory for them. It isn’t. It’s a complete repudiation by the electorate of the fundamentalist social agenda. And in the months and years to come, it’s going to translate into a repudiation of the conservative economic and policy agendas, neither of which have done a thing for average Americans who want to be allowed to live their lives in a dignified and stable way.
I anticipate that my taxes will go up. The reason - I am in that bracket that is likely to see an increase. However, if that means that the deficit will be eliminated and that Social Security and Medicare will be shored up then I am willing to pay it. It’s a lot better tha the way we have been squandering billions these past 6 years and running up the debt.
There is talk of the “moderate” tone sweeping the country. It’s all over the newpaper. Did you see the picture of Pelosi, Reid and Schumer on 6A?Not a moderate in the bunch. The top of the democratic party is left wing and partisian. Being a partisian is not bad, in my opinion, but don’t start believing the lie that partisianship will start happening now. Wishing does not make it so.
hotlick - remember, Pelosi will have to be able to lead her very diverse group. While she may be more liberal the group she will be working with is not.
Just because Bush went with the most extreme elements of his party does not mean that Pelosi will do the same. Also, just because the GOP chose to follow a path of hate and retribution when they got power in 1994 does not maen that the Democrats will stoop to their level.
Pelosi is an operator rather than an ideologue. She also is the despair of the more liberal voters in her district.
This whole “San Francisco liberal” meme is already pretty tired. Y’all Republicans may want to get some new spin before Representative Pelosi takes office as the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE.
hmmm-Remember, many dems got elected because they either switched parties or were on the conservative side of the democrats. Do I need to give you the list again of the democratic leadership? Kennedy, Dean, Feingold …. it does go on and on.Also, the “hate and retribution” line is just crap. You can do better.
And yet, given the facts in this editorial post, the wingers say it was THE WAR, not corruption and a backlash against the right wing social agenda.
How about all three?
How about most exit polls showed CORRUPTION was the number one issue?
Like hankie says, dont worry. The adults are in charge now and will take care of things for you.
Sleep well….
heheheheheheheheheheheh
I saw a great post yesterday on DU. Since some of you refuse to go there, let me bring it here.
“What? The DEMOCRATS won? In the last twelve hours I’ve gone gay, hired an illegal immigrant, forced a few women to have abortions, and hugged a terrorist.”
heheheheheheheh
Karma is such a bitch!
Based on the gnashing of teeth of all the Righties this must be the upcoming agenda:
All women are required to have 4 abortions before being allowed to have a baby.
To have that baby she must be in a lesbian marriage.
Heterosexual marriage is prohibited.
Churches are taken over and all Christian artifacts burned.
All ministers shall be sumarrily executed.
All citizens born within the United States shall be deported immediately.
Any person caught in a heterosexual relationship shall be jailed.
I really do hope to see more partisanship, and I’m pretty liberal for this area.
I do hope they hold the line on the matters that mean the most, restore the constitution, end the corruption, do effective means of protecting our country, establish better relations with foreign allies, and return to being the beacon of Freedom that we’ve always been.
As far as history shows, republicans have held power very briefly, we can still turn this back around.
When some here are saying “partisanship”, do you mean bipartisanship? We’ve had nothing but partisanship for some time now.
There will definitely be some partisanship as Pat Roberts and others continue to try to shield the administration from inquiry. After we get past that I hope the GOP will become willing to work in a bipartisan manner. the departure of Hastert from leadership will help. When he took over he made it clear that he considered the Democrats to be irrelevant.
hmmmm . . .
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that after ‘94 the Reps went on a “path of hate and retribution” (a conclusion I do not join, BTW), who do you think they learned it from? It’s the political game, and BOTH SIDES play it.
Pelosi may well attempt to enact HER agenda; personally, I would expect little else. Those freshmen conservative Democrats who were recruited may face a choice in Congress: go along with the leadership’s program, or be marginalized and muzzled.
Personally, I hope that Pelosi indeed tries tries to enact her view of “centrist” democratic policy - her “center” is San Franscisco, for God’s sake, hardly a place representative of the US in general. If she does, the Dem win will be short-lived.From CF:”a complete repudiation by the electorate of the fundamentalist social agenda. And in the months and years to come, it’s going to translate into a repudiation of the conservative economic and policy agendas”
Now that’s funny. It was Iraq. Period. The “social agenda,” unless you were in a state with a social issue on the ballot (i.e. S. Dakota) was hardly an issue at all. And Democrats won by razor-thin margins, running re-branded republicans (Webb, etc). That spells the end of the ideological battle? Hell - in many ways, Democrats simply came over to the other side.
No, the real issue is whether the move to the center by the Dems is real, or the party of Pelosi, Schumer, and Kennedy is simply the same old shtick in new makeup.
Many Dems candidates became, in all but name, Republicans. We’ll see if that was election rhetoric, or if the Dems have indeed moved to the middle.
With the death of the FDR coalition, Republicans had hoped to build a new long-term majority. If they hope to be that, they’d better learn the lessons in this election, and learn them well. Dems lost that majority because they overreached. We’ll see if the Republicans learn their lesson here.
And the lesson Republican should be learning is that they should govern as Republicans - not the drunken sailer spending of the last six years. The voters rejected the old Dem. coalition in favor of fiscal conservatism and holding government accountable. For the last 6 years, Repubs forgot that. It cost them. They lost because they weren’t true to what they were elected on.
As one writer put it, the Dems didn’t win so much as the Reps lost. There is some truth in that. This election was not an embracing of the old Dem agenda, it was a rejection of this administration.
Congrats to the winners, and good luck. See ya in ‘08.
GMC - I was referring to impeachment. Totally partisan and divisive.
GMC says:
“It was Iraq. Period”
Then he says:
“fiscal conservatism and holding government accountable. For the last 6 years, Repubs forgot that. It cost them. They lost because they weren’t true to what they were elected on.”
You cant have it both ways GMC.
Oops steven yes I did mean bi-partisanship.
GMC70,
It, whatever ‘it’ was, was absolutely, positively, not Iraq. If you’re going to say this election was ‘about’ anything, you need evidence from exit polls. And according to the exit polls, the election was about…corruption and ethics in government.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/07/election.exitpolls/
Your whole narrative doesn’t stand up to the slightest googling. No surprise, since I’ve heard it coming from Rush Limbaugh and Ann ‘The Man’ Coulter.
The real issue is how long y’all are going to cling to the fiction that the GOP represents the majority position in the United States of America. I hope, frankly, you never wake up to how far out of the mainstream your views have become.
Nearly 1/3rd of white evangelicals voted Democratic. 70% of Latino/Hispanic voters went Democratic. But if you want to go on pretending you have some sort of actual grasp of what the country thinks, much less a lock on their votes, be my guest.
If the Democrats govern from the centrist and don’t appear to be partisan and vindictive, then I think they should be alright.
If they don’t, then that is what 2008 election is for - get rid of the Democrats then - got it?
Frankly, I saw election results as the American people are tired of being controlled by one party. If the Democrats hold the Senate and the House - they might have just done themselves in for 2008 for president. I don’t think the country will ever want to go back to a one-party controlled government for quite awhile.
CF
Then you must listen to Rush and Coulter. I don’t listen to either.
And I pay no attention to exit polls. Liars, damn liars, and statisticians, and all that.
No “talking points,” etc. Just common sense. People didn’t vote ‘for’ Democrats as much as the voted ‘against’ Republicans.
If the country is so liberal, why did the Dems recruit Republicans to run as Democrats?
GMC - the country is neither liberal nor conservative. What the Dems did was to recruit centrists to run against extremists and corrupts. Note for example the moderate-conservative Morrison vs Kline.
We should never again have one party government by law or general political beliefs.
We saw it happen and became horrified. Crimes allowed because the majority in control of all three branches of Government.
White House should be diverse politicalluy, it has to hire administrations from both parties and independents. Congress can be one party or the other majority by Americans voting. Appointed jobs have to be from both parties.
A Washington post reporter mentioned McCain/Hillary ticket. I’ve said McCain/Obama ticket. Anybody cross party partnership for the voters to choose.
Obama/Spitzer is too soon in 08. Both guys, Senator Barack Obama andnewly elected Gov of New York Eliot Spitzer could try for a White House bid and their experience is “new” in those jobs. By 2012, both should be really ready to run.
Key to administrations is picking best people regardless of their political party.
Well, duh, Rhonda — Ray Charles (God rest his soul) could have seen this ! I know this may be a new concept, but how about something we DON’T know … it’s called NEWS !
hmmm
You’re right; unfortunately, a nomination system dominated by primaries (where the respective wings dominate) have created parties beholden to their respective bases. And their bases are extremists, on both sides.
Policy designed around compromise is anathema to the respective bases, and both parties need that motivated base to turn out and win in an electorate that largely doesn’t show up.
Ya know, when I think about it, the people we should be blaming for the extremism in the bases of the parties are the voters - not the ones who show up, but the ones who don’t, and by not showing up, cede power to those respective bases.
Thoughts? I’ll probably get in trouble (and say/write something stupid) thinking with my fingers like this!!!
Dems,Forget impeachment. Wait until ‘08, when you win the White House. Then Bush Cheney, their cabinet and staff can be quietly “disappeared” under the provisions Bush demanded and got! BushKarma!
GMC - in 1992 the Dems nominated a centrist governow of a small southern/midsestern state. If in 2008 they will go back to a governor they will win the White House.
Huh. That’s weird. I thought I posted a response to GMC70 in which I told him that his claim to be above the need for empirical data upon which to base his pronouncements about the meaning of this election makes his views circular and self-referential. It got eaten, evidently.
No matter. In a sequel to my argument that this election, absolutely, was not simply driven by voter disgust with the Iraq debacle, here’s Virginia Senator-elect James Webb, on why he ran on the Democratic ticket.
“There were a lot of misperceptions about why I got into this race. I was watching on election night some of the analysts and one of the frequent things that was being said about this campaign was that I came to the Democratic party purely on issues regarding the Iraq war.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I think I and a lot of people like me had aligned themselves with the Republican party on national security issues but were always concerned about issues of economic fairness and social justice.”
In other words, GMC70, you’re all wet. The mood of the country is very much at the center, and moving center-left. This election was a large-scale repudiation of the ‘conservative’ ethos. To pretend otherwise is spin by the losing side.
The winners, GMC70, are the ones who, for better or worse, get to write history. And we liberals won this election.
Wow. Digby over at Hullaballoo makes the definitive version of the point I just raised. Go read the post entitled “Southern Comfort.”
digbysblog.blogspot.com
Takeaway line: “the rest of the country likes southerners just fine. It’s southern conservatism we don’t care for.”
Correct, CF.
Reich-wingers want to say “well, the opposition party always wins the ’sixth year itch.’”
Not like this, they don’t.
Only once in 100 years–Wilson–did both the House and Senate shift away from the White House.
More fantasy-thinking from people that sold you flower and candy bearing Iraqis . . .
As for the idea that e-voting went “just fine” and “why aren’t the liberals whining about the computers now,” check this–
Jennings is running for Kathleen Harris’s old House seat.
SARASOTA COUNTY — A review of Sarasota County voting results shows that in almost every precinct a high percentage of voters didn’t cast ballots in the hotly contested 13th Congressional District, a trend that likely affected the outcome of the race.
Democrat Christine Jennings lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by 368 votes, making it the second closest congressional race in the country.
More than 18,000 voters who showed up at the polls voted in other races but not the Buchanan-Jennings race.
That means nearly 13 percent of voters did not vote for either candidate — a massive undercount compared with other counties, including Manatee, which reported a 2 percent undervote.
If the missing votes had broken for Jennings by the same percentage as the counted votes in Sarasota County, the Democrat would have won the race by about 600 votes instead of losing by 368, according to a Herald-Tribune review. Even if the undervote had been 8 percent — more than three times what it was in Manatee — Jennings would have won by one vote.
http://heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061109/NEWS/611090343
Yeah, that’s perfectly logical . . . 18,000 people voted for dog catcher but had no opinion on their Congress race.
Cap’n,
Indeed. The GOP electoral ratfucking goes on.
Once John Conyers has his Chairmanship, I expect there’ll be some looking into the electoral skullduggery that Republicans have been content to leave undisturbed.
Yada yada yada. The Dems are pleased as punch. However, their ticket has been “We can do better” and how poorly Bush is handling Iraq. Now y’all have control. Put up or shut up. Not that y’all “stole the show” lets see ya do something with it.
-the dem’s didn’t actually steal anything. that’s y it is in quotes.
CSPAN is doing an episode on Nancy Pelosi. 8pm eastern
Y’all dems go to bed EARLY!!!No, wait, I get it…. Y’all have lives & I don’t. Yup. That explains it. Y’all enjoy your evening (and controling Congress)
I am sure Bush, Cheney, Brownback, etc., are all very interested to hear what someone named “Hotlick” has to say in their support.
Why is it the recount problems always seem to be happening in Florida? Something is very freaking wrong with Florida.
The republicans need to just redo that entire election. I’m so glad I didn’t use a machine.
(This is in response to Capt America’s post)
And for the record, I’m not a Webb fan at all. He’s a member of the PNAC. He’s not a democrat at all. In light of that information, I would have rather seen Allen win despite his despicableness. The only positive about Webb winning that election was to bring the official democrat count up to take over the Senate.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.Bottom line here is to this conservative, this is where these issues belong, not in the courts and not in the federal government.Let the people choose at the state level and I’ll live with the outcomes.