Primary Thoughts

First of all, the reasons the Beltway pundits and bloggers are concentrating on O’Donnell’s defeat of Castle is that it’s in their backyard, the margin was huge, and those idiots really didn’t expect it because they have no fucking clue how much we hate their elite corporatist butt-kissing asses.

But if you really want to do a little celebrating I’d like to draw your attention to two less covered and more positive victories last night.

The first is Ann Kuster’s 42% margin over Katrina Swett in New Hampshire’s 2nd District-

Kuster  handily defeated self-styled Blue Dog Katrina Swett, who co-chaired Joe Lieberman’s 2004 presidential campaign. Kuster, a lawyer, community activist and women’s health expert, had the support of progressive groups like MoveOn, Democracy for America, Progressive Campaign Change Committee and EMILY’s List. Swett ran hard to Kuster’s right and tried to paint Kuster’s progressive supporters as an electoral liability.

The second is the abject FAILURE of Mike Bloomberg’s hand picked Wall Street Representative Reshma Saujani in her race against Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 14th District.

There is some really twisted logic behind the notion that Obama would be vulnerable in 2012 if the economy’s bad, and yet the country would look to a creature of Wall Street like Mike Bloomberg for salvation.  Of course, it’s equally twisted that the tea parties exploded in response to the bank bailouts, and yet Bain Capital billionaire Mitt Romney is their favorite for 2012. Maybe that gave them hope.

But it didn’t work out so well yesterday.  The millions that Wall Street pumped into Saujani’s campaign at the behest of Team Bloomberg cast her irrevocably as a tool of Wall Street in the eyes of voters who have had quite enough from the financial oligarchy.  She wound up with only a pathetic 19% of the vote.

Michael Bloomberg and his proxies couldn’t even orchestrate a serious challenge to a congressional seat in a year of unprecedented dissatisfaction with incumbents.   If 19% doesn’t qualify as a public rebuke of their organizing abilities, I don’t know what does.

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  1. beat conservative-Democrat, and former Republican, Kathleen Rice who was backed by the establishment. The NY Attorney General is perhaps one of the most powerful AG’s in the country since that office determines who and how to prosecute on Wall Street. Schneiderman will be an aggressive prosecutor of the financial malfeasance by the banks and Wall St.

  2. Bon Apetite

    Amanda Terkel

    DNC Chair Tim Kaine Compares The GOP To Cannibals: They’re ‘Turning Their Energy And Ferocity On Each Other’

    Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tim Kaine and DNC Vice Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) went after Republicans today for their threat to shut down the government in the next session of Congress, telling reporters in a conference call that the GOP is “playing politics with the lives of the American people.” They also commented on the fractions and infighting in the Republican Party, with Kaine comparing the GOP to cannibals.

    “What we’re seeing in the Republican Party is that they invited the Tea Party in and it’s turning into the Donner Party, in some instances, because they’re turning the energy and the ferocity against each other,” said Kaine in response to a question by the Huffington Post, referring to the infamous group of 19th-century American pioneers who eventually had to turn to cannibalism to survive. He added that the divisions have given Democrats “some great opportunities in races that we wouldn’t have absent the Tea Party candidates.”

    If you thought that the Democrats were split, the Republicans continue to out do them. First it was the crazed Christian Right and the “Moral Majority” and now it is the really crazed Tea Party. The problem for Progressive/Liberals is that the conservative Democrats try to appease them, alienating the Democratic base even more.

  3. to say. So basically every body right left and in between hates the pols and the giant bamboozle they present as politics. I loved seeing Nate Silver and Esra so confused that they conceded nobody can figure out who the likely voters are. Sure the teabaggers will vote and the bots will vote so our fate is decided by the bots who haven’t a logical brain in their collective heads and the teabaggers who think killing moose’s good, masturbation bad. Well i just can’t get too tweaked as they all, the pols, have got it rigged one way or another, coming and going God knows either way were screwed. A case of your voter who doesn’t gives a shit at this point blues. guess I’m lucky my states ballot looks good as people here seem to be looking to local state for some relief. kind of shoots down the conservadem’s are needed baloney if New Yorkers have rejected these banksters. Thanks for the story, another piece of the puzzle that they present as unsolvable, shot down by the people who are neither scary nor smart just human and not quite as stupid as the pols think.    

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