“A year after Barack Obama’s election stirred broad hopes for change among American voters, persistent high unemployment and the spectacle of continued gridlock in Washington threaten Democratic dominance of the political landscape.
Tuesday’s defeats in gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey not only ended a decade or more of Democratic gains in those states but also signaled possible trouble ahead in the midterm elections at the national level.”

Sounds so familiar …

A good read on that score:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/dud-baby-dud-the-lesson-o_b_345049.html

Pardon me if I continue to favor 538′s fact-based analysis even in the face of this sort of tautologically cramped swipe at strawmen.

And for what it’s worth, the folks in Detroit elected a really decent and potentially progressive city council. A couple of the saner members who stood up to Mayor “Crime Wave” Kilpatrick – Ken Cockrel, Jr., Kwame Kenyatta, and Jo Ann Watson –were returned. That’s good. Two up and coming newcomers to keep an eye on –- Saunteel Jenkins and Charles Pugh — also were elected. Detroit’s a very big and important city to the overall economic health of the US. In that the residents there are putting together a serious elected body should be applauded. Here’s a reminder of the bad old days: http://www.freep.com/article/20091104/NEWS01/91104071/1318/Conyers-sentencing-postponed

Half-way to the full justice of it all, this was a pretty good outcome in Kalamazoo:
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2009/11/anti-discrimination_ordinance_1.html

Cheers!!

http://tinyurl.com/y92vgz7

As to the other comments, anyone who interprets last night’s results as Republican vindication is going to be a very disappointed individual over the next 10 years. That much is certain.

But any Democrat who believes the results to be purely anecdotal and refuses to see that they are –to some degree– an indicator of Democratic weakness and vulnerability, especially on a domestic economic agenda, is only kidding themselves.

The Repubs are without question the Living Dead, veritable Zombies. But if Democrats continue their lackluster performance or unless unemployment falls by 4% by last summer, there could be hell to pay in November. Purely unscientifically, I will affirm that given the proper state of disillusionment and disengagment, people WILL vote for zombies.

I have spent enough time in Italy to verify this observation. No one EVER admits to actually voting for a clown prick like Berlusconi but somehow he keeps getting elected. Same thing when I lived there in the 70′s. NOBODY every copped to be a Christian Democrat but the CD’s led 38 governments in a row.

Be careful.

Square Peg: Dems are evil, they tried to send me to
Vietnam when I wanted to get high and party.
I owe Obama my service forever for defeating
the evil Clintons.

Round Hole: Reality.

CCCRRRUUUNNCCCCHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

O.K., now that post has been written, it must be admitted
by those of us in the reality based community that even
Marc Cooper can’t blame Obamas lethargic performance on
The Party forever… well, Marc Cooper can, but few others
will. The popularity he enjoys will only deepen the sense
of betrayal many will feel if he doesn’t stop behaving like
the President from “O” magazine.

The pass Cooper and other Clinton bashing progressives
are giving Obama on torture, by the by, is about as ugly
as gets. It’s true, the moment to act may be gone. And
nobody squandered it but Obama.

http://tinyurl.com/ye75tyr

Anything we Dems can do to help ?

And using the the 20% Republican identification figure to argue for “an incipient Democratic implosion” is bad analysis fueled by an anti-DP ideology (if one can even call it that; more like a conceit). As analysts and pollsters have noted, change in party identity doesn’t imply change in political outlook — the reduction in RP identity is highly correlated to a rightward tilt among independents — many former Republicans simply don’t call themselves that any more, but they still evaluate candidates according to their political ideology — i.e., they tend to vote for the same people they would have voted for if they still called themselves Republicans.

Here: http://tinyurl.com/ygq88ru