The Pundits win

Wow. I was wrong. It is obvious that I do not know much about national politics. So after tonight, I may just have to shut my mouth about politics on this blog. However, I will make three comments. Two about national politics and one about local politics.

1. This election illustrates that the North and South are still quite divided in many ways. The Democratic pick-ups were in the north, traditional blue states. They took Rhode Island and Pennsylvania Senate seats, and several House seats from Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut and one in New Hampshire. They did not do so well in the south with Florida being a grand example. Democrats were hoping for 4 to 6 seats in Florida, but ended up with only two. They narrowly held on to two seats in Georgia. Plus, they are recounting a narrow possible senate victory in Virginia, where the Republican candidate ran an awful campaign embarrassing himself several times, and they failed to win a House seat they were hoping to win. The other big indicator of what a divide exists between north and south was the MSNBC coverage of those races. How many times the pundits and Chris Mathews called the Tennessee voters racist for not voting for Harold Ford made me sick. Yet, the people of Maryland were never accused of being racist, nor were the people of South Dakota who handily defeated a Native American candidate for the House. A divide in the minds of the MSNBC hosts existed and comments like Mr. Mathews made do nothing but promote the divide. Will Southerners ever like Northerners when they regularly defeat African American candidates for Senate with no name-calling, and then when the South defeats one the name-calling flies? Probably not.

2. The Republicans cost themselves this election. Several stupid scandals hurt them. They lost Delay’s seat, Ney’s seat, and Foley’s seat because of well-publicized scandals. Heath Shuler also won North Carolina House seat 11 because his opponent had some scandals as well. The state Republican party in Ohio had about five scandals running at once that probably hurt Senator Dewine, but the Democrats failed to capitalize doing much worse than many thought in Ohio. They picked up one seat when most thought they would pick up four. Mainly, however, I think Republicans can blame the President and Karl Rove for the loss. I am not talking about Iraq. I am talking about the ‘toe-the-President’s-line-or-else-attitude.’ This hurt Republicans especially because his line is not conservative at all. The President and the RNC abandoned the poor guy running for the Senate in Connecticut in favor of Joe Lieberman who votes liberal Democratic almost 90% of the time, but is strong on the war. Take what happened in Arizona for example. The Bush backed candidate in Republican primaries in AZ House seat 8 lost to a strong boarder defense candidate. The RNC publicly announced they would not support him with any money. I do not think they even endorsed him. That is giving away one seat because of a disagreement with the President. They did little to help J.D. Hayworth in AZ 05, who was also a critic of the President’s immigration policy. Both seats will now be filled by Democrats who will probably pass the amnesty plan Bush wants. I think that there is a giant rift in the Republican Party, and Bush’s Boys are running the show, and they maybe running it into the ground.

3. Locally here in South Dakota, the Abortion ban lost. It lost because I think the Republican turnout was low. I could be wrong, but I am quite surprised at the margin of defeat. This bill overwhelmingly passed the State Legislature, which at least indicates the State Representatives thought it would be popular. The Vote Yes pro-life group did a very bad job running the campaign. They seemed to concentrate on door to door, meet your neighbor, House Parties. That did not get the job done. They also did not campaign on being pro-life, but rather they spoke only about how abortion hurt women. A rather disappointing stance. About three weeks before the election the Vote No crowd bombarded the airwaves with lies and propaganda. It was never really answered. The Vote No group did not argue that abortion was wrong. They argued that it was wrong to make women of rape or incest have children, claiming there was no exception for those women. This was untrue. There was an exception. Those who suffered rape or incest could go to the doctor and take the morning after pill. Thus, they had about a 14 day window to get something done. By the way, I think the exception is bad. I do not think people that have rape or incest should be allowed abortions or morning after pills. Polls showed that if people had known about the exception they would have voted 63% for the bill. The other thing that I believe hurt this bill was the supposedly non-biased Attorney General’s explanation that appeared on the official documents put out by the state on the amendments and initiated measures. The Attorney General made sure to note that this law would be challenged, go to the Supreme Court, and possibly stick the state of South Dakota with a large legal bill. It was an underhanded thing to put on a ‘non-biased’ official explanation sheet.

So, I did not beat any pundits and showed my true ignorance. However, I did enjoy seeing what I hope to be the new face of the Democratic Party. Harold Ford impressed me with his open quoting of Scripture and discussion of Jesus Christ. Jim Casey promises to be a pro-life vote. While I find politics fun and entertaining, it is good to remember that the fortunes of political parties has nothing to do with the church.