Howie Carr had a sad little column in today’s Herald.
This is the nightmare: It’s the morning of Nov. 3, the day after the election. You awaken to a Republican sweep from coast to coast. Everywhere but here, in Massachusetts, a tiny island of blue in a sea of red…. Gov. Deval Patrick is re-elected with way below 50 percent (thanks, Tim!) and the anti-tax ballot questions, 1 and 3, are washed away….
The rest of the column is filled with laughable right-wing talking points that are readily rebutted if anyone thinks it’s worth doing. But what really struck me is how much it reminds me of a column Howie wrote almost exactly four years ago. It went something like this…
But the reality is, someone may be leaving town next Tuesday, and it looks like it’s the state Republican Party. The Massachusetts GOP has had a number of near-death experiences in recent years, but this time it really looks like the next stop could be Whig-ville, or maybe Federalist Junction….
The problem is, next Tuesday could be one of those tidal waves, like 1990.
When Howie goes from rousing the troops to licking his wounds with watery metaphors, it’s a bad sign for the MA GOP.
I am tired of this triumphalism, the Dems are going to get their asses handed to them across the country and the President’s agenda is seriously in jeopardy. I never thought I would say this but he is looking more and more like a one-termer everyday, and getting re-elected the same way Deval probably will, because his opponents are inept, is not my idea of a progressive triumph. Deval hasn’t won yet and Massachusetts might not be immune from the wave. Tierney has his troubles, recently polling is not looking good for Frank or Tsongas (they will probably win but a lot closer than people think). Because of West Virginia and Washington the GOP will be close to having 51, and who knows what California is going to do. So lets stop laughing at O’Donnell and Baker and start focusing on the candidates that are likely going to mae up the extreme right wing caucus that will derail a progressive agenda for the next two years and how to defeat it. Complacency breeds suprises, they thought a Republican couldn’t take Teddy’s seat either, but now is not the time to gloat and go on vacation. Deval got incredibly lucky and dodged a bullet, and he might still lose because he has been an incredibly mediocre governor, but this is not a guy winning with a majority of the vote and his victory will be nothing to celebrate. Since when does avoiding the lamentable count as a win?
Who is talking about complacency?? Not me, that’s for sure. My point, as I’ve said in other posts, is that at least in Massachusetts, all is not lost. To listen to some on the other side (though not Howie, apparently), you’d think they’d already sealed the deal. They haven’t. The voters are still listening, and if we work hard enough, we can win.
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p>A win counts as a win. Pretty simple.
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p>Can you really take any sign from Howie’s commentary or “feeling”? Really? I mean if Howie was speaking confidently about a race against Democrats, would you assign him “any” credibility or would you completely rebuke him as being “unscientific”, “detached from reality”…
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p>I have the feeling that he is hedging his bets in a very close race. I also think he is going over the top by saying the MA GOP is dead. We have come back from just about zero to mount a number of competitive races. Maybe we’ll win some and lose some. We’ll take our victories and quite honestly be happy that we even had people running since so many Dems are accustomed to running unopposed in MA. And maybe some of our “un-victorious” candidates will make a name for themselves and come back in two years and try again. You have to start someplace and we have. Clearly we are not “middle America” which has a far less entrenched base of Democratically leaning voters so who really expects MA to mimic the rest of the country.
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p>Either way November is going to be a great election cycle for Republicans and people should also remember that unless the economy improves over the next 2 years, 2012 could bring even more people over to the Republican side since there’ll probably will still be a Democratic Senate and certainly a Democratic White House. Projections from many “experts” don’t predict a real economic recovery until 2014. And if we change the balance of Governors in the US from 26 Dem/23 Rep to 31 Rep, we should remember that there will be voting redistricting going on in 2011… (not that politics ever enters redistricting decisions).
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p>Howie should thank you for elevating his opinions so high on your list!
Thats the Bill Clinton mantra. I’d rather we win AND have progressive principles defended. Patrick couldn’t even admit he was a liberal in the most liberal state in the union, thats not a progressive politician that’s a pandering one. And you gotta admit if Baker had run even a mediocre campaign and if Cahill had stayed out this would be a completely different race. Frankly Cahill would have been our nominee if he had the guts to stay in the party IMO.