A night of "comebacks" I guess. Not that many people "missed me" but I am back in between down time (thanks to the Gods, I have a lot of work and writing to do)
More importantly, once again Glenn Greenwald is right:
"It’s natural to want to divine broad national significance from off-year elections, because that’s the way to make them interesting and ratings-generating for the media. Such elections typically turn on local candidates and parochial issues, and historically have very little correlation to the national elections which follow...
There is no reason to believe this year’s will be any different. Still, there are some preliminary lessons that can be drawn. The defeat of Jon Corzine in Democrat-heavy New Jersey, the Democrats’ loss of the governorship in Virginia, and the surprisingly close win by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reflect substantial anti-incumbent sentiment."
More below the fold...
Greenwald explains:
"The defeat of Creigh Deeds, the Democrat in the Virginia governor’s race, offers a different lesson — one that Democrats should have learned long ago but simply refuse to recognize.
The crux of Mr. Deeds’s strategy was to distance himself from the core progressive agenda to secure independent and "centrist" votes. The predictable outcome was that the Democratic base in Virginia was unenthusiastic about his candidacy and simply stayed home."
Link to the original here:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.c...
My thoughts. Well, this is a wake-up call for Obama's political team, simply and frankly put. If they think that the other good wins elsewhere, invalidate Greenwald's premise, let's keep in mind that the Democratic winners ran on principle and attracted their core voting base, thus they won.
Play the "I am a centrist/moderate" game and you will lose in 2010.
Is that simple.