Some Random Post-Election Thoughts

I don’t have much to add here, except to congratulate returning Dem U.S. Senator Bob Casey and returning Dem state house reps Steve Santarsiero and John Galloway on their electoral wins last night.

And while it’s a shame that Kathy Boockvar lost last night in her quest to send Mikey the Beloved packing and give U.S. PA-08 some decent representation for a change, I can’t say that I’m totally surprised. The PA Repugs redrew PA-08 in 2010 in a way that would make it monumentally difficult for any Dem to win that district (I also thought Boockvar was a little too “nice” for much of the campaign – there was plenty to go after in Mikey’s appalling voting record over the last two years, and she could have done that earlier on even with the corporate media tut-tutting about supposedly going negative, which she would have done well to disregard anyway).

To illustrate about how difficult it is for a Dem to win PA-08, let me point out that, in 2006, Patrick Murphy barely lost the Bucks County portion of the district, but won enough of the “slivers” of Montgomery County and Philadelphia to win the district overall. Well, when the district was redrawn in 2010, those silvers were removed and replaced with Repug strongholds, of course.

Think about that for a minute the next time you hear anyone point out how supposedly “moderate” Bucks County is. Patrick Murphy, an Iraq war veteran, was running when the Bush Administration was still in power, with the debacle in Mesopotamia becoming totally apparent (and Mikey the Beloved was totally tethered to it, as you might expect) and the Katrina catastrophe was still fresh in everyone’s minds, with Dubya’s approval numbers sinking like a stone as a result. And Murphy still lost Bucks (not whining about it, just stating the truth).

(Also, I think this was a rather hilarious commentary by the Philadelphia Inquirer, assuming that Mikey would honor his term limits pledge. This guy once made a term-limit pledge too, and after last night, he’s going back to Washington also…if past is prologue, then his main opponent Aryanna Strader did well in Berks and OK in Chester counties, but Pitts probably cleaned up thanks to those poor saps in Lancaster County once more).

Returning to Mikey, I honestly would like to know how he would have fared without the benefit of his full-page ads that, in typical fashion, ran in the Bucks County Courier Times for about two weeks prior to the election. I would say that that more than neutralized that paper’s lack of an endorsement (as well as the paper’s total failure to report on this stunning development).

And while I’m on the subject of the Courier Times, is there a bigger bunch of jokers than that paper’s editorial board, which, except for Santarsiero and Galloway, basically punted on many of its endorsements (including deciding to say nothing about Casey and “Teabag Tom” Smith)?

And while the paper had the right to endorse Willard Mitt Romney here, they did so in part for the following reason: “Social Security is on the cusp of insolvency”…

Uh, no.

Finally, the most hilarious notion I’ve heard yet is that the results of this election will make the Republican Party reach out to minorities and other demographics that helped propel President Obama to a second term, as well as achieving victory for other Dems.

Really? You mean we’ll actually be spared the sight of another clown show of GOP presidential candidate “debates” like what we had to endure earlier this year, which was aimed at ginning up support from the Teahadists and practically no one else?

That’s almost too funny for words.

Take a look at this chart. This is the future of today’s Republican Party, eventually sinking like a stone as elderly white conservatives shed their respective mortal coils and pass from this world into the next.

And take future GOP electoral prospects right along with them (Update 11/8/12: And take a look at this one too).

Update 11/7: By the way, in my prior comments, I didn’t mean to blow off Kathy Boockvar. I think she ran pretty much a common-sense, centrist kind of a campaign. And in a lot of places depending on which election cycle you’re talking about, that might have been good enough to win.

However, what I tried to point out above is that, for a Democrat to win in PA-08 anymore, you need to upset the proverbial apple cart to get attention from enough voters who would only vote for a Dem if they were thoroughly disenchanted with a Repug. As an example, Florida’s Patrick Murphy defeated the thoroughly odious Allen West in Florida, but even as bad as West is, he still garnered a huge percentage of the vote. I use that example because, based on my admittedly limited review, I think that district in FLA mirrors PA-08 in a lot of ways (and as I also pointed out, the fact that a just-about daily newspaper of a fairly large circulation carries the proverbial water of Mike Fitzpatrick on a continual basis doesn’t help matters, but I honestly don’t expect that to change).

Running as a Dem in PA-08, you’ve got to really “go big” on the issues and somehow get your message through the filters of the cable shouters, other commercial media including print and broadcast and the wingnutosphere directly to the people. And if I knew how to do that (and if I had enough money and the right pedigree, which I don’t), well, hell, I might even take a crack myself. And in PA-08, you’ve got to do that and also find a way to dismantle the “moderate Mikey” mythology perpetuated by the Courier Times as well as radio station WBCB, with its news director Pat Wandling also serving as one of Mikey’s biggest mouthpieces. And so far, as I said, that hasn’t been accomplished yet.

To be fair to Boockvar, though, you can’t pretend to be something you’re not. I had a chance to speak with her briefly while working the phones in Bristol, PA recently, and I found her to be engaging and thoroughly professional. She would have been a great rep, but we are where we are. I hope she and her family can now take the time to put all this noise behind them and reconnect with each other once again.