{"id":3599,"date":"2008-11-05T07:28:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T12:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3599"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:43:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:43:48","slug":"not-only-am-i-not-moving-to-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3599","title":{"rendered":"Not Only Am I Not Moving To Canada…"},"content":{"rendered":"

(…like some snivelling beeyotch liberals are always whinging about doing if their <\/em>anointed one loses)…<\/p>\n

…but I’m feeling pretty good today.<\/p>\n

Here’s why:<\/p>\n

Can’t Fight History<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m not going to say Barack Obama was “inevitable” – there is virtually no such thing in electoral politics – but the GOP hit a perfect storm last night:\u00a0 a popular (if skin-deep) candidate, a war, an economic crisis, the historical fact <\/em>that it’s very hard for a party to keep power after eight years even if <\/em>it’s doing its ideological blocking and tackling correctly, and the fact that the GOP and the conservative movement have pretty much blown most of their blocks and tackles this past four years.\u00a0 It would have been hard for any Republican to win; that Mac kept it within four and change defied the media’s “conventional wisdom”<\/a>.\u00a0 It was a win, and a mandate, for Obama – but it was not a landslide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One thing, by the way, I will not <\/em>do is countenance on the right is the kind of flagrant, whinging, infantile, and occasionally deranged and paranoid\u00a0disrespect that has befouled the once-noble American left this past eight years.\u00a0 The left gave us “smirkingchimp.com” and “democraticunderground.com”, and visits them constantly.\u00a0 I suspect if some conservative starts “jug-eared-fop.blogspot.com”, it will languish in obscurity.\u00a0 Let’s hope so.\u00a0 Even if you don’t respect the man (and Obama is a respectable person, wrongness about all things political notwithstanding), you respect the office.\u00a0 I do expect the Right to behave better than the left has; I doubt I’ll be disappointed.<\/p>\n

And here’s the kicker:\u00a0 Now The One-Elect has to go on and prove to the mass of people who came out to vote for him that he can, indeed, walk on water and heal the sick<\/a>.\u00a0 Some pundits say Obama needs to “lower expectations” – but while Chris Matthews can smear Anbesol on his leg to stifle the tingling, there are a whole lot of people who elected Obama with very <\/em>high expectations.<\/p>\n

So good one, Democrats.\u00a0 You won this one.\u00a0 Try (some of you, at least) to be a little less insufferable in victory than you’ve been in defeat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thanks.<\/p>\n

We Can Filibuster<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Democrats expected to get 60 in the Senate.\u00a0 Last night, Ed and King and I figured they’d come out with 57 or 58 – bad, but still filibusterable.<\/p>\n

As of this moment, it’s 55-41, with three races still out:\u00a0 Stevens will likely win in Alaska (and then be removed, and have a successor appointed by Governor, ahem, Palin); Smith has a decent chance of pulling an upset in Oregon (he’s up a point with 75% reporting), and while Georgia will need to do a runoff to get to its unique, mandated “50%+1” threshold, Saxby Chambliss will likely pull it off.\u00a0 It’s not a “victory”, but in a year like this, staving off annihilation is mighty fine.<\/p>\n

The Tics picked up 20 in the House.\u00a0 It could have been much worse.\u00a0 And Minnesota is a key reason I’m feeling good about both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n

Because…<\/p>\n

Purple, Schmurple<\/strong><\/p>\n

Presidential results notwithstanding, Minnesota got just a bit more red last night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You read that right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coleman pulled it off, against an utterly despicable Franken campaign.\u00a0 The polls just before the election showed either a Franken lead or a tossup – and the latter were right.\u00a0 Coleman is going to get by with a razor-thin majority when all the recounting is over.\u00a0 And if he could survive last night, Norm can survive anything.<\/p>\n

But much better was to come.<\/p>\n

Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District not only beat Elwin “E-Tink” “The 35W Ghoul” Tinklenberg, she beat Chris Matthews, the entire agenda media, funding from coast to coast, and a feckless GOP national apparatus that cut and ran when the media sodomized the context of her remarks on Tinglyball<\/em>.\u00a0 Conventional “wisdom” called it a toss-up to a slight edge for E-Tink.\u00a0 And yet again, the most unrepentant conservative in Minnesota Politics won, and won by way outside anyone’s wildest expectations.\u00a0 Her three-point win was misleadingly small, I think; the Ventura<\/strike> “Independence” Party’s Bob Anderson is one of the IP’s tiny minority of fiscal conservative\/social libertarians that the likes of Dean Barkley have pretty much driven back to the GOP; running unendorsed (the district’s V<\/strike>“I”P endorsed E-Tink, who’d “served” in the Ventura “administration”), he pulled an extremely <\/em>respectable 10%, indicating the Sixth District is redder than anyone on the left was willing to admit.<\/p>\n

Even better news?\u00a0 The conventional wisdom a few days back showed Ashwin Madia having an edge over Erik Paulsen.\u00a0 The Lori Sturdevants of the world declared it a fait accompli<\/em> that the Third District was “turning purple” – it has, indeed, been one of the statements of faith among the Metro’s chattering classes for years.\u00a0 And yet not only did the Third replace the very moderate (and fellow Jamestown, ND native) Jim Ramstad with the more-conservative Erik Paulsen, but they did it with a margin that absolutely crushed<\/em> any expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Almost eight points.<\/p>\n

Like Bachmann’s eight-point win two years ago (in a similarly difficult year), it’s proof that the “Minnesota is Purple” talk is a gross oversimplification.<\/p>\n

And while there was little doubt that Second District representative John Kline was fairly safe, his fifteen point win over Steve Sarvi should stifle the left’s wishful bleating that the Two is moving to the middle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Power Of Talk<\/strong><\/p>\n

What were the biggest surprises in Minnesota last night?\u00a0 Obviously – Bachmann and Paulsen’s unexpectedly-big wins, and the margin by which John Kline crushed <\/em>Steve Sarvi.<\/p>\n

A week ago, nobody <\/em>predicted this.<\/p>\n

A week ago, the Three Tenors of Talk came to town.\u00a0 They got out an avalanche <\/em>of the base; the Patriot expected perhaps 1,500 people, maybe; we drew almost 3,000, and were turning people away at the door by the time we were ready go get going last October 28.<\/p>\n

A conservative Republican electorate that was widely reported as “despirited” going into that week came out afterward and, to quote Minnesota’s great sage, “shocked the talking heads” at 425 Portland a week later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Where does the core of AM1280’s demographic live?<\/p>\n

In the Third, the Sixth and the Second Districts.<\/p>\n

I’d only “declare victory” this morning as a hyperbolic joke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But there is a big silver lining, folks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2010, if an Obama Administration can’t manage to actually walk on water, the Dems are going to bleed through the ears.<\/p>\n

And we will be there pounding on the sides of their heads (rhetorically speaking).\u00a0<\/p>\n

So be of good cheer, Real Americans.\u00a0 Not only is the tide going to turn – it’s going to whipsaw.\u00a0 And Minnesota is going to lead the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(…like some snivelling beeyotch liberals are always whinging about doing if their anointed one loses)… …but I’m feeling pretty good today. Here’s why: Can’t Fight History I’m not going to say Barack Obama was “inevitable” – there is virtually no such thing in electoral politics – but the GOP hit a perfect storm last night:\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-08","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22272,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3599\/revisions\/22272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}