Translating Way Off-year Election Results

In the run up to yesterday's off-year elections, conservatives sought to cast the high-profile contests as a referendum on President Obama's first year in office. "These are bellwether races -- not just as a referendum on this administration, but on our party as well," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. "

And it just gets worse from there....

So is this really a referendum on Obama, or is this just the political tide changing?" Fox News' Sean Hannity asked former Bush adviser Karl Rove. "Well, I think it's both," replied Rove.

However:

Despite the fact that Obama's party lost control of the governor's mansions in both Virginia and New Jersey, claims of a referendum do not pan out. While the two governorships have gone to the party not in control of the White House in every election since 1989, the results have not correlated with presidential approval, indicating that they are not a referendum on presidential leadership. "The Democratic losses of these two governorships should not be interpreted as a significant blow to President Obama," writes CNN Political Editor Mark Preston, noting that 56 percent of Virginians said in exit polls that the President was not a factor in their vote, while 60 percent of New Jersey voters said the same. In fact, "just under half the voters in Virginia, 48 percent, approved of the way Obama is handling his job, rising to 57 percent in New Jersey."

And Then There Is This:

Additionally, Democrat Bill Owens' victory over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd district -- where Hoffman's third-party candidacy became the vessel for a Republican Party civil war -- dealt "a major setback to conservative organizations."

Note from the Pelican Editor of the day: I don't see this as a set back for real conservatives. It may be yet another blow for the citizens of Wingnuttia, whose queen Winkidink swooped in by Face book and backed Hoffman, who, from what I can tell, is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Nevertheless, one can never right off the wing-nuts. Apparently they never grow weary of being used and abused by the other GOPers, like the real true believers; Capitalists-on-steroids or people who think they have enough money to be republican, until they are disabused of that notion by foreclosure, collapse of business or one of several hundred really bad nightmares caused by the really bad, but practically, unchallenged policies of the last administration, the Neocons, who can make some of the more hilarious jokes about the Zionist Christians and other religious whack-jobs, but remain no laughing matter, themselves. They haven't gone anywhere and, yes, they are ideologically dangerous.

What remains to be seen is if the results of this little congressional race in nowhere N.Y. will be enough to stop the republican civil war in its tracks. It may well do just that, making the demise of the GOP and all of its constituents greatly exaggerated by a number of commentators.

Still, while yesterday's election was not a referendum on the President, the tea leaves do highlight challenges for the administration going forward as "a vast 89 percent in New Jersey and 85 percent in Virginia said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy in the next year."


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Let The Sun Shine In......