For all of you who think the Republicans are going to win big this fall, this article says maybe not! Probably won’t see much media coverage because it was a Democrat who won.
Ted Deutch Beats GOP Challenger Who Staged Special Election Campaign as Referendum on Obama, Health Care Reform.
(AP) Republican backlash over President Obama’s health care overhaul had little effect in the nation’s first U.S. House race of 2010.
Florida Democratic state Sen. Ted Deutch handily won Tuesday’s special election to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler after his underdog GOP opponent attempted to make the contest a referendum on the massive health care bill.
“We’ve heard for months that tonight … is a referendum on health care, it’s a referendum on the (Obama) administration, it’s a referendum on what direction this country is going,” Deutch told supporters. “Let me tell you something, what we learned today is that in Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida, the Democratic Party is alive and well.”
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Deutch, an attorney, had 62 percent of the vote compared to 35 percent for Republican Ed Lynch. No-party candidate Jim McCormick trailed far behind with just 3 percent.
Lynch, a 44-year-old West Palm Beach contractor, sought to make the race a statement on the health care bill in District 19, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties. About 40 percent of voters are senior citizens. But Lynch had a tough task. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 2-to-1 – 234,000 to about 111,000.
“Obviously, it’s not the results that we wanted,” Lynch said.
Doesn’t look like the country has turned from socialist Democrats and Obama’s death panels (don’t forget his secret Muslim plans to put us all in concentration camps if we don’t convert to Islam) or whatever nutty thing Glen Beck has made up.
Turns out the wingnuts are just…nuts. In the first House race of the year, the Democrat won 62% to 35%. Now granted this was a very Democratic district, but MOST House districts are gerrymandered to protect one party or another, which is why the House has such a high re-election rate. If this holds true, not a LOT will change in November. The ruling party (Democrats) will lose seats if historic trends hold (the minority party almost always picks up seats after a Presidential election).
Never the less, 66% of this distract voted for Obama, and 62% still voted for the Democrat. Doesn’t look like a massive bleeding of folks to the Tea Bag party or whatnot.
Elections like this are really local and rarely “referendums” on vague national issues, despite all the billboards and little marches by Tea Bagers.
Now if the Democrat had LOST…it would be covered 24/7 on Fox News and talked up on the right as PROOF the public has turned on Obama and his death panels (when DO those take effect now? I’m trying to off my grandma.)
Remember, Virginia elected a Republican governor (more than half the time they do anyway). Mass elected a Republican for Kennedy’s seat, but he’s already tacking to the middle and refusing to even show as the Boston Tea Bag party (he has to get re-elected in a fairly liberal state in 2 years after all). And in update New York the Republicans LOST a seat they’d had for a century because the Tea Bag candidate acted as a spoiler (re: Ralph Nader) splitting votes from the Republican candidate handing the win to a Democrat. So this is all more complicated, local, and subtle than it seems sometimes.
Wow, in Florida, no less.
Oh Oh… Repugs better bring back those death panel, communist, birth certificate, grandma killing, Chavez ass-kissing, bowing instead of handshaking posters !!
John Cleese explains Extremism (to Glen Beck). Super funny. It’s also cute to notice how the lists of who the right/left don’t like are a LITTLE different than our own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLNhPMQnWu4
Good going Perkel. Thats how to make a blog entry.
As GHF states, this is a heavily Democrat district. It went for Gore 71%, Kerry 66%, and Obama 65% in the past elections, so the Republican really had no other choice than to try to make it a referendum on healthcare.
You know as well as I that districts like the Florida 19th are not going to switch easily. Politics is like baseball, its a game of 1/3s.
The best teams in baseball lose 1/3 of the time, the worst win 1/3 of the time. The key to the championship is winning the last 1/3.
In politics, maybe 1/3 of the districts are solid Democrat, another 1/3 are dependably Republican and the middle 1/3 decide the makeup of Congress.
Congrats on keeping the seat. The Republicans need to keep at it certainly. I don’t think the November elections are a foregone conclusion.
And to the Tea Bagers…no vague “I’m mad” protest. I want signs that tell me WHAT YOU WOULD DO! We spend too much? Sure!! And you’re mad at your taxes NOW? So I guess you want a tax CUT (again, Obama already gave you one). So that makes our deficit bigger AGAIN…so what do you want cut!?
To balance the budget we need higher taxes, or cuts in military and Medicare/social-security…the only programs big enough to save significant money. You have to pick one. The National Endowment for the Arts and midnight basketball programs aren’t going to make up $700 billion a year…so no “protesting”, tell us what you’d cut or raise?
That’s the problem, why no one can solve this, because we’re children…we all want stuff…we just don’t want to pay for it. We’re mad at our politicians if they tell us we have to give up something (Medicare benefits, social security) but also mad if we have to pay for them fully.
http://digg.com/d31OFxa
Of course he won. Florida is full of old people and they love free stuff from the government.
The leading Republican – that means the one with the mo$t money – for governor in my neck of the prairie is basing his whole campaign on what a great job he did in VietNam.
I expect it will work for him better than it did for Kerry. But, not by much.
So a Democrat was elected to replace a Democrat in a heavily Democratic district in a state senate race, and because the Republican made some hyperbolic remark about a national referendum, their loss proves that the opposite opinion is correct? Am I following you so far?
I need to spend some time on a greasemonkey script to filter out Perkel’s posts. In the mean time, go back to posting your squirrel videos and spare us. I don’t read this blog for partisan cheer-leading.
@dumbfounded
While you don’t read this blog for partisan cheer-leading; when this blog partisan cheer-leads I don’t read at all.
#6. Trillions in tax dollars missing and no accountability, no one seems to know where it went, and you want to give them more!
Please, may I be your accountant. Please?
The military option is off the table, Presidents don’t get re-elected for taking money away from the military or the industries that pay for him.
These are the same counties that couldn’t figure out how to use the ballots correctly during the Bush v Gore election.
Must be something in the drinking water or in the voters’ genes. I think it is the latter.
Well if Democrats run 7 points behind their partisan rating in November, that would mean a Republican pickup of 67 seats in the House.
Yes, yes, yes!
As a conservative, I would advise you liberals to view this election as a bell-weather.
You have nothing to fear in November’s elections.
The electorate LOVES Obama.
The electorate LOVES the health care bill.
The electorate LOVES Democrats, and their entire agenda.
Just keep repeating this to yourself for the next 6 months or so.
My bad, 67 seat pickup is if Democrats run even with their PVI, and lose the ties. If they run 7 points behind, it means they lose 123 seats.
“Probably won’t see much media coverage because it was a Democrat who won.”
that’s hilarious but you forgot the sarcasm tag under it!
My bad again. They average Kerry into the numbers, so that means this is 4 points behind average.
#6:
“tell us what you’d cut or raise?”
Well, there’s a huge crossover between the tea party and Ron Paul supporters, so I’m guessing a lot of them want to end the war.
#7 : Maybe old people have a better memory than young ones on drugs. Maybe they remember which party shipped our jobs overseas which caused the economic meltdown that the Extremists like to blame on the sub prime housing market. May, just maybe, there are some people out there that don’t have fried brains.
#7 : Maybe old people have a better memory than young ones on drugs. Maybe they remember which party shipped our jobs overseas which caused the economic meltdown that the Extremists like to blame on the sub prime housing market. Maybe, just maybe, there are some people out there that don’t have fried brains.