November 3rd, 2009
Â
 According to exit polls in today’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the vast majority of voters were not registering sentiments about President Obama.
 And those voters who did cite the president as a factor were fairly evenly divided between those who support him and those who don’t.
As CBS REPORTED:
Those who said Mr. Obama was a factor in New Jersey divided as to whether their vote was a vote for the president (19 percent) or against him (20 percent). In Virginia, slightly fewer voters said their vote was for Mr. Obama (18 percent) than against him (24 percent).
November 3rd, 2009
 
 Bob Shrum NAILS IT – and how!
 A few excerpts:
 The true believers claim they’re Reagan conservatives, but their politics are a betrayal of the leader they ritually canonize — a betrayal not just in strategy, but in spirit. Ronald Reagan didn’t just tolerate moderates in his party; he valued them. Reagan knew that to be a governing party, rather than an ideological faction, the GOP needed to run and win outside conservative strongholds. So Reagan’s GOP gave all-out support to pro-choice candidates like Pete Wilson in California…
 Even while bending history in a different direction, Reagan more frequently quoted FDR and JFK than any conservative predecessor. In announcing his presidential run in 1980, facing an America of gas lines, rising inflation and rising doubt, with U.S. diplomats held hostage in Iran, Reagan rebuked Jimmy Carter’s complaint that he couldn’t govern effectively due to a crisis of national spirit. With a sense of comfort and command, Reagan told the voters that it was time to renew “our capacity for dreaming up fantastic deeds and bringing them off to the surprise of an unbelieving world. . . . We still have that power.” He even retooled one of Roosevelt’s signature phrases: “You and I together can keep that rendezvous with destiny.” It’s stunning to rewatch that speech; Reagan seems less like today’s Republicans than like Barack Obama declaring: “Yes, we can.”…Â
 A GOP mired in anger and vituperation doesn’t begin to comprehend Reagan’s gift for respecting political opponents — or even diminishing them. Instead of dispensing with the opposition with Reagan-like humor, Republicans treat their opponents as mortal enemies, elevating them with paranoid fantasies about their immense power. To one of Jimmy Carter’s attacks during their debate, Reagan famously replied with a chuckle: “There you go again.” It’s impossible to imagine him sneering: “How dare you go Marxist.”
 Ronald Reagan was a proud conservative, but not an unthinking, unyielding, or uncivil one. He had an appeal that reached across party lines, not just to a withered and warped political base. The least Republicans could do, having named an airport for him, is to remember how he navigated the political winds — and found the route to a new political era. But it’s Obama who’s doing that now. The GOP has dumped the Gipper.
 I would bet the farm that Shrum’s contrast of Reagan’s political style to that of today’s right-wingers will be confirmed by contributions from wingnuts in the comments section of this post. Check it out.
November 3rd, 2009
 
 Lisa Wright over at Apoliticus.com EMUMERATES the talents of President Obama she finds most nettlesome.
 One of them involves his stated “affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.”
November 3rd, 2009
 
 Liz Sadoti of the Associated Press ANALYZES the dilemma facing the Republican Party.
 A few excerpts:
 For Republicans, an election win of any size Tuesday would be a blessing. But victories in Virginia, New Jersey or elsewhere won’t erase enormous obstacles the party faces heading into a 2010 midterm election year when control of Congress and statehouses from coast to coast will be up for grabs.
 It’s been a tough few years for the GOP. The party lost control of Congress in 2006 and then lost the White House in 2008 with three traditional Republican states — Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia — abandoning the party.
 So even if political winds start blowing harder behind them and even if they can capitalize on Democratic missteps, Republicans still will have a long way to go over the next year because of their party’s own fundamental problems — divisions over the path forward, the lack of a national leader and a shrinking base in a changing nation…
 [T]he GOP’s ranks are thinning: Only 32 percent of respondents called themselves Republicans in a recent AP-GfK survey compared with 43 percent who called themselves Democrats.
 Also, the party’s power center is mostly limited to the South, the one region McCain dominated last fall; Obama won almost everywhere else — including making inroads in emerging powerhouse regions like the West, although Republicans still solidly control several lightly populated states in the area.
 UPDATE: Early reports in locales holding state and local elections around the country suggest extremely light voter turnouts.
 But this pattern does not necessarily pertain in the 23rd Congressional District of New York. I’ve not yet seen any indications, one way or the other, of turnout in that area.
