What Tuesday's Election Results Mean for the Bigger Political Picture: Nada

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 10:56 AM on November 4, 2009.

Partisans spin, and obviously political reporters have an interest in fabricating compelling "national story-lines" during dull off-year elections. So with this first supposed "test" of the Obama administration, the tea-leaf reading -- navel-gazing is probably a better metaphor -- is in high gear this morning. Is the right on the rebound? Has the GOP gotten its groove back? Was it all a referendum on the new president's policies? Oh dear, what is going on?

Below, Addie does a nice job following all the bouncing balls of yesterday's races, and I agree with her conclusion that the results signal that the Right is "organizing up a storm."

But I don't live in Jersey, Virginia or some rural NY district on the Canadian border, and I'm not interested in marrying some dude in Maine. So I find no meaning in these races, and there are plenty of good reasons why you shouldn't either (unless, of course, you're from Virginia or want to marry a person of the same sex in Maine -- in NY-23, Owens, a conservative Dem, will vote more or less like the mainline Republican Scozzafava would have had she been elected (he does support health reform, however), and New Jersey politics are so perennially screwed up that George Washington couldn't have governed the state effectively).

Let's look at some of the buzz floating around ...

The "red tide" of falling governorships is a referendum on Obama!

Nonsense. Here's the deal: University of Minnesota political scientist Eric Ostermeier went back and crunched some numbers from previous gubernatorial races in those states. He found that going back to 1989, New Jersey and Virginia have voted the same way in every election, and in every case, it was for the party that didn't control the White House. And over those past two decades, those votes have in no way correlated with various presidents' approval ratings.

Ostermeier:

Democrats swept the 1989, 2001, and 2005 elections in these two states - and were able to do so both when Republican Presidents were popular (George H.W. Bush at 57 percent approval on Election Day in 1989; George W. Bush at 84 percent in 2001) as well as unpopular (Bush at 42 percent approval in 2005).

Republicans, meanwhile, swept the 1993 and 1997 gubernatorial contests in the two states while Bill Clinton was in office - at both unpopular (in 1993, at 48 percent) and popular (in 1997, at 57 percent) periods of his presidency.

According to exit polls, 57 percent of New Jersey voters held a favorable opinion of Obama even as the electorate sent Christie to the Governor's mansion (and it was a less-than-apocalyptic 48 percent in VA). Let's also not forget that Corzine had been unpopular for a long time. Here's a report from April of 2008 -- just a few months into the Democratic presidential primaries -- headlined, "Study Says Corzine Popularity is Sinking", which found that only 38 percent of New Jersey voters approved of the job he was doing at that time.

Hoffman's insurgent tea-bagging campaign shows that voters are angry with out-of-control spending in Washington!

Yes, voters are always angry at Washington. This is America. And it's especially true when everything sucks.

But largely lost in the analysis of last night's results was the defeat of two so-called "tax-payer bill of rights" (TABOR) initiatives -- in Washington State and Maine. It's the corporate Right's signature wet-dream policy, essentially shrinking state governments until they can be drowned in a bathtub. So obviously, one can always spin Election 2009 as a victory for their ideological perspective.

Also, while the media focused on a conservative "uprising" on the right personified by Hoffman in a deep-red district in upstate NY, scant attention was paid to unabashed progressive John Garamendi's victory in California's highly competitive 10th. Garamendi takes a seat in a swing district previously held by long-time "centrist" pain-in-the-ass Ellen Tauscher, who grabbed it from a Republican in 1996.

Hoffman's challenge of mainstream GOPer Scozzafava represents a "civil war" among Republicans that will doom the party forevah! 

Look, if far-right followers of Glenn Beck's cult of personality start challenging old-school Republicans in races across the country, that would indeed be a story with truly earth-moving ramifications for our two-party system. One off-year race in one rural NY district? Let's just say Howard Dean's a bit premature in predicting the death of the GOP.

Marriage equality goes down in Maine -- oh no, have activists over-reached? Does gay marriage still have life as a wedge issue after all?

Two points. First: come on! It's an off-year, low turn-out election. Organizing among churches has a huge impact in that kind of campaign. And of course, passion matters more. Most people are straight, and straight proponents of gay marriage are a lot less motivated to go to the polls and vote for it than a lion's share of those who think the idea is an offense against all that's decent.

Second, it's no news at all that while gay rights have advanced by leaps and bounds in recent decades, when it comes to marriage equality the courts have been ahead of the voters (and with very sound reasoning). That's normal -- the majority never wakes up one morning and decides on a whim to grant a minority full and equal rights; minorities always have to demand them, and the courts are often the venue for doing that. The whole story is pure dog-bites-man.

The GOP is making a come-back!

Like everyone, I expect Republicans to make some gains in 2010, at least in the House. After two "wave" elections by Dems, there's a lot of purplish districts that should be low hanging fruit for the GOP. And, again, people are always pissed at the party in power when things are not going well and I don't expect them to be by next November.

But while it's Michael Steele's job to amuse us all by claiming credit for launching a "GOP Renaissance," the party's problems include not only a lack of policy prescriptions that haven't been widely discredited by events like the financial collapse and the various un-winnable conflicts in which we find ourselves, but also those of the structural variety -- problems deeply rooted in the decline of the very demographic groups that have long supported it.

Until something changes that, the real significance of all this is that political reporters need to churn out copy. Again, dog-bites-man.

Anyway, sorry if you're a political nerd, you've been jonesing for some action since last Fall and I'm ruining your buzz. 

And now, why don't I just leave you with some serious news?

KABUL, Afghanistan — A rogue Afghan policeman shot and killed five British soldiers in southern Helmand Province on Tuesday and escaped, the British military said Wednesday. It was one of the highest British tolls from a single attack since the Afghanistan invasion eight years ago.

About the same time, militants attacked on the other side of the checkpoint, and during subsequent fighting a fire broke out. As residents tried to put out the blaze, warplanes attacked the militants and killed five civilians. It was not clear whether the two attacks had been coordinated.

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, told the House of Commons that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack on the soldiers, which brought the British death toll in the Afghanistan war this year to 92, the highest single-year loss sustained by British forces since the Falklands conflict in 1982. Mr. Brown said insurgents may have infiltrated the rogue officer’s unit.

[...]

Concerns of infiltration and failed discipline in the Afghan security forces have been rising, even as Western powers are increasing their efforts to prepare them to take a broader role in combating the Taliban insurgency. The Helmand attack took place just a month after an Afghan policeman opened fire on American soldiers during a joint patrol in Wardak Province, killing two.

[...]

The violence began around noon on Tuesday, as a detachment of British soldiers was visiting a jointly run Afghan and British checkpoint near a health clinic in a village that the British Ministry of Defense said was about half a mile a mile southwest of the village of Shin Kalay. The village is in an area is in a richly irrigated part of the Helmand River basin and has been the scene of intense fighting between the Taliban and British forces over the past three years.

The British soldiers were on the checkpoint’s roof with some of the Afghan police officers responsible for protecting the clinic. The atmosphere was relaxed and the British were not wearing body armor, according to a spokesman for the provincial government, Dawoud Ahmadi.

Without warning, at least one of the Afghan troops began firing an automatic weapon in quick bursts at the British soldiers, according to Haji Barakzai, a local official. The British retaliated, killing one police officer and injuring two. It was unclear whether the gunman was hit, he said.

Mr. Barakzai said that the local police commander said the gunman was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban....

A provincial government official, who asked that his name not be used, said that the man had come to work in the police checkpoint just 15 days ago and had not been approved by the provincial police authorities.

The attack seemed to mirror at least two similar incidents in Iraq in which Iraqi Security Forces turned on American soldiers they were working with. The most recent instance was on Nov. 12, 2008, in Mosul when an Iraqi Army private opened fire on a group of American soldiers visiting an Iraqi base near an American base. One American soldier died and seven were wounded. In that case, it did not appear that the attacker had a connection to the insurgency.

The United States, Britain and other backers of the Kabul government against the Taliban have registered concern that their troops are in peril to protect a government racked with corruption and with scant political credibility. On Monday, President Hamid Karzai was declared the victor in the fraud-marred August presidential election, after his main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew from a planned runoff.

Britain is the largest contributor to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the United States, but has been struggling with increasing public opposition to its participation in the war. Kim Howells, a former minister in the Foreign Office and chairman of a parliamentary security committee, wrote Wednesday in The Guardian newspaper that they “years of military involvement and civilian aid in Afghanistan have succeeded in subduing Al Qaeda’s activities in that country, but have not destroyed the organization or its leader, Osama bin Laden.”

“Nor have they succeeded in eliminating Al Qaeda’s protectors, the Taliban,” he continued. “There can be no guarantee that the next seven years will bring significantly greater success and, even if they do, it is salutary to remember that Afghanistan has never been the sole location of terrorist training camps.”