If you’ve been wondering why Wendy Davis and the rest of the Texas Dems seem so cheery while getting drubbed, look at the average age of that crowd:
Bring the ruckus. pic.twitter.com/qZUuzx2IOB
— Wendy Davis (@WendyDavisTexas) November 4, 2014
Chris Ladd is a Texan living in the Chicago area. He has been involved in grassroots Republican politics for most of his life. He was a Republican precinct committeeman in suburban Chicago until he resigned from the party and his position after the 2016 Republican Convention. He can be reached at gopliferchicago at gmail dot com.
GOPLifer 
Big prediction here: Nothing much is going to change. There was gridlock before with both parties positioning themselves for the next presidential election. There will be gridlock now with both parties positioning themselves for the next presidential election.
I hope I am wrong but I doubt it.
You’re not wrong.
The nomination process will get even messier, but apart from that, I agree. All those ACA repeals will just die one step later if the GOP continues to waste time with them.
I’m just glad that The Engineer from Prometheus won his re-election down in FL.
Can we put the Apocalypse on hold for a spell now?
In the midst of the Senate triumph (for the GOP) or catastrophe (for the Dems) there were some interesting down-ballot results that aren’t really in line with the unfettered capitalism peddled by the TP and GOP. In Alaska, no pinko haven, 69% of voters supported a phased $2/hour rise in the minimum wage. In Nebraska, as conservative as they come, 59% voted for a similar rise. In Arkansas, 65% went for a $2.25 rise. These are big majorities that indicate some concern for rising inequality, even amongst those who work full-time. Alaska also voted to legalize pot, as did Oregon.
When you vote and earn minimum wage one would figure they would vote for a raise.
“Democracy will last until the people start voting their hands into the till.” Guess who?
Yes, yes. God forbid the minimum wage would start to catch up with the inflation of today.
Tell me buzz, was the economy of the US in shambles in the 1960’s when the inflation adjusted minimum wage was over $10 an hour in today’s dollars?
Does that include the rich people who own the till?
““Democracy will last until the people start voting their hands into the till.” Guess who?”
Tytler or De Toqueville? Do you know, Buzz? Amy as well post the one about “other people’s money”, too. Do you know who that was? (Hint: On that there is no ambiguity regarding ascription.)
I was not aware of the wins on the minimum wage. Very good stuff. There are some signs that this is not a “conservative wave” so much as a big win for a party. Democrats have moved the ball a little, even if we lost this particular game. Stuff to build on, for sure.
Nice try, Buzz. Of workers paid hourly, only 7% in Arkansas, 5% in Nebraska, and 3% in Alaska are paid at or below the minimum wage. The narrowest victory (in NE), was 18%, so people voting themselves raises is not the driving force.
But in buzz’s reality, that 7%, 5% or whatever percent voted over and over again. Also, a bunch of dead people and illegal aliens also voted for the increase in the minimum wage. Interestingly, those same pathetic people that buzz thinks are suckling on the government’s tit also apparently voted for the Republicans.
Kinda like the Twilight Zone.
ANSE, your comment is very good except for the inaccuracy. In 2000, democrat’s shouted “Bush stole the election” Alec Balwin and others said they would leave the country, etc.
When Obama was elected, I couldn’t believe it because I knew he is an inexperienced, empty suit (which he has proven with his detached behavior).
As for the results, I didn’t watch them. I also do not like the prattliing on of supposed predictions, etc. I went to bed confident the house and senate would go GOP as would Texas. Why? Because the people ALWAYS correct the course if the country is heading the wrong way.
Although Anse and others will not gnash their teeth, but I know the talking heads will which is why I am so glad I do not watch cable.
I am very proud of our state and the nation. The right thing was done, no pun intended.
Chris, in the next election cycle, please write more articles on how the TEA Party and conservatives are racist. Do it often.
Buzz…I appreciate the recognition that the country was going the wrong way in 2006 and 2008 and thus the voters corrected the issues, and I guess I’m surprised to learn you voted for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, since of course, the country was heading in the wrong direction.
Kabuzz, Bush did not steal the election. The Supreme Court and the state of Florida stole it for him. It isn’t worth lingering on, really, but it is a fact that Gore won the popular vote in Florida. But it is what it is. We carry on.
Obama has been a solid president. His legacy will be positive. He’s no more of an “empty suit” than Bush was. That’s a talking point that is as juvenile as it is baseless.
Just remember this: there is no such thing as a “permanent majority” in American politics. Enjoy the win, see you in 2016.
Homer, I did not support Bush during the last two years of his presidency. My votes go to those I want in and if there is no one for the seat, I don’t vote.
Anse, GW Bush had two terms of executive leadership totalling 8 years. Obama had NONE. A leader he is not.
Kabuzz, it is not a good time for nuanced debate, so I’m not surprised that you continue to believe this. I absolutely do NOT believe that you have ever voted Democrat in your life, but whatever.
I didn’t say I voted democrat. But I also wouldn’t vote for a republican I disagreed with. No complicated. Even you can understand.
Well Democrats, let us not engage in delusions; we got whipped. But we knew heading into it that it was bound to happen. There is no need for us to engage in hysterical wailing and gnashing of teeth. This is democracy, in all its messy glory. We will live to fight and vote another day.
Some small glimmers of progress: two anti-abortion “fetal personhood” propositions lost by wide margins in Colorado and North Dakota, an extremely positive signal that the ground we’ve lost on abortion can be regained. Pot is now legal in Oregon, looks like it may become legal in Alaska (53% majority in favor with 44% of polls reporting, last I checked), and Florida had a majority that voted in favor of medical pot but just missed the 60% threshold required. That issue is sure to come up again there.
Texas is disappointing. But hey, we’ve been here before. We pick ourselves up, we dust ourselves off, and we get back to work. It is what it is. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
What we cannot do, and will not do, is cry out in lamentation that this is the End of America, as our opponents so often do.
Exactly, sometimes we win sometimes we lose. The Democrats need to understand what they did wrong and what the GOTP did right and study it out. Americans Against the Tea Party put out a good article yesterday addressing the apparent mid-term loss. The last line of the article is my favorite addresses the GOTP voter suppression efforts and those that think their vote does not matter..
“If your vote didn’t matter, then these rotten sons of bitches wouldn’t be working so damned hard to take it away from you.”
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/11/retired-navy-officers-message-liberals-eve
Call a waah-bulance.
Why Buzzy, did your head finally refuse to exit Uranus?
Watching election results as they stream in is really dumb. It’s a long string of disinformation until sometime later you get the actual news. Why can’t I stop?
Because we can’t. I know that I will know tomorrow morning, but we all want to know right now, instant gratification. The difference is in understanding the difference between wanting instant gratification and knowing we have to wait and learn.
God, give me patience and give it to me right now.
FYI, I almost never watch cable news, but I am using the “last” button on my remote between CNN and FoxNews.
CNN just caled GOP winning the sebate, so they brought up Trayvon Martin. Go figure.
Senate. D’oh!
At least you did spell Trayvon Martin’s name correctly.
Gotta put it away. Spent the evening taking down campaign signs after being up at 5 to post them. Time to shut down.
There’s gonna be a lot of interesting data to look at over the next few days.
I stayed up alternating channels between Fox, CNN, and local news until I saw that the senate had gone Republican. Some of the senate races were incredibly close so I stayed glued to the set.
Lookin’ good for Rauner at this point, Chris!
Quarter of pcts reported in, but can’t tell which parts of the state. One big ugly bogey – Libertarian already at 26,000. They only took 34,000 total in the last election. Hoping they are sucking up frustrated Greens who don’t have a candidate, otherwise this is a concern.
Another concern, Tom Cross who is a really solid guy and the GOP candidate for Treasurer is under-polling Rauner (though still leading so far). Libertarian cutting even deeper into that race. Getting a Republican treasurer, especially a good one, would be really important for Rauner.
MSNBC just called Rauner the winner winner chicken dinner. That’s pretty definitive.
Seriously, though, God bless America’s youth. I have no kids of my own, so that may explain my distrust of them. I guess I don’t understand them and have only myself, a former kid, to compare them to. They are the future, and I wish them well.
I meet millennials through my kids, I have 18 nieces and nephews, I keep in touch with a assorted group of young people mainly via facebook, and believe it or not quite a few of the younger set will strike up conversations with me when I’m out and about. I’ll be at Office Depot asking a young guy where to find something and boom, he’ll be telling me about his girlfriend troubles for the next ten minutes.
Tutt, we have nothing to fear from America’s youth. Their number one concern is finding a good job, and hopefully, the economy can recover to the point to where this can become a reality.
Chris, take a deep breath and tell your doctor to increase those anti-anxiety meds. It will be OK. Here in New Mexico, I’m watching the race up in Colorado.
Here’s an interesting perspective on women voters:
“Intimate topics usually shared only with a gynecologist have become so much a part of this campaign that pundits have dubbed Udall “Mark Uterus.”
… The reaction depends on whether the fight is seen through a baby boomer’s eyes, or a millennial’s. A boomer remembers when abortion was illegal and her contemporaries marched and burned their bras; a millennial isn’t interested in ancient “herstory.”
What so far seems to have eluded both Senate campaigns is that there are other issues of concern to women:”
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/10/politics/women-midterms/colorado.html
People don’t stay young forever. People tend to be more liberal when young and turn more conservative as they grow older. Probably has a lot to do with the added responsibility, seeing what the government is taking, and government getting all up their personal business.
No, they don’t. With a few exceptions (like the great Dixiecrat migration) people remain deeply tied to the political attachments they formed with their first votes. It was particularly evident in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s as the Reagan generation came of age. Bush I over-performed heavily among voters under 30, the last Republican to do so.
The great Dixiecrat migration? You mean when they left the DNC and then all but three returned and stayed with the Democratic Party? The myth that they went to the Republican Party has been debunked many times over.
But I wonder, Lifer, if you so strongly believe that the GOP is now the slavery loving, rights denying, Dixiecrat Party, why are you part of the GOP? It surely seems that you are right up there with those slavery loving, rights denying folk, aligned with the GOP establishment and the DNC, according to your own admissions and accusations.
I mean granted, we in the tea party movement are working to infiltrate the GOP and change things, and we want nothing to do with such racism. We do not view “minorities” as inferior. But we are not GOP Lifers as you have described yourself in previous entries and comments. We are the disenfranchised, libertarian leaning fiscal, limited government conservatives that end up a mixed bag when it comes to social issues.
TThor is not in support of making abortion on demand illegal, Kabuzz has said he would vote against state recognition of same-sex marriage, while I am strongly anti-abortion but would vote in favor of state recognition of same-sex marriage. In fact, I have already done so in the past.
Sooo … why are you claiming to be aligned with the Dixiecrats?
Salutations!
One thing I like about those kids is that they call me ma’am.
While some of them may turn more conservative as they age in fiscal issues (although I have done the opposite frankly), I suspect that they are unlikely to become more conservative on social issues.
For example, if they support marriage equality now will the suddenly support the limiting the rights of gay and lesbian Americans? Unlikely.
Agreed. Most people do not change their ideological beliefs as they get older. For the most part my beliefs are the same as when I was 20 though I find that on some issues I became more liberal.
When I was young i was very liberal, full of myself, convinced I knew what was best for everyone. Now I’m afraid of youngsters who are just like my former self. “Don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself.”
When I was young, I was blissfully confident that I had it all figured out, then I learned how much I didn’t know, and I’ve bocame much more liberal the more I learned and the older I’ve gotten.
HT, the older I get, the more I realize how little i know, the more likely I am to question everything and less likely to commit to either side.
And the more likely i am to recoil from over-zealous activists from either side.
I went into university as an undergrad very naive of the real world. I was an economics and mathematics major. I basically thought the world could be broken down and understood in a very logical manner. I believed everyone was basically as rational and logical as I was and therefore the basic models of economics more or less could be trusted. I was a child of the 1980’s and 1990’s. I was investing (well, more like gambling), in the stock market when I was in high school. I was essentially a libertarian and believed that people were rational, level-headed beings and that the market was the best way to run about everything in society. Hell, back then, I would have called for the de-nationalization of the US military.
Then I went to law school. Then I started working in the real world with real people. I started working with real problems, not theoretical ones found in economics textbooks. I started to learn that, rather than being rational, level-headed beings, most people are emotional and often very irrational. People are prone to trends and assume that outcomes will occur when the basic laws of probability will tell you otherwise. Basically I grew up and started to understand that my very theoretical view of the world doesn’t work when the tire meets the road. That is why my views changed.
And not a cranky old buzzy type in sight.
I guess he has quite a small insular self affirming circle.
I’m shocked! Absolutely stunned!
Are they even old enough to vote?
I noticed the same thing, Tutt. Some of the younger ones don’t even look old enough to drive. I wonder where this rally took place.
University campus maybe? I didn’t own a car in college as an undergrad.
It’s a matter of keeping them in the fold, and encouraging them to resist the dark temptations of the Me First conservative mentality. It would help a great deal if Democrats would grow a spine and show some fight, and stop apologizing for the good work we’re striving to do.
Anse, they need to resist the dark temptation to stop caring, stay home, and not vote. It’s all about turnout.
Anse
Exactly, I am tired of Democrats running away from the the issues they support. Obamacare, the deficit reduction, job growth , and the push on civil rights should have been on the tongues of every Democrat running. Instead they pretend to be against the POTUS and his agenda.
Turtles, democrats have no credibility on any of those things. Obamacare destroys civil rights. They took a $161 billion republican deficit and ran it up to ten times that amount. The percentage of people in the workforce is at record lows.
You wonder why they are running away from such things? Well, I also wonder, because those are the things democrats stand for, fewer rights, less freedom, more government spending, more people dependent on the federal government.
Capitalists are not afraid of saying we are capitalists, but socialists are terrified of admitting they are socialists. If you and democrats believe so strongly in socialism, why hide you face from being honest about it?
The irony here is that you’re talking about something based on numbers, annual deficits, which is published and generally available, and somehow turning it into a bald lie. Bush inherited a surplus. Obama inherited the largest annual deficit in US history. Jesus, it’s numbers…
Bush43 did inherit a surplus, almost. The “surplus” was created by a republican congress in spite of a democratinc president. So what heppened? Well, there was the dot com crash and recession, and 9/11/2001 and following recession, but those were short lived recessions. And there are no excuses, republicans lost their way when they won the oval office, though for the first two years democrats controlled the senate.
The following four years showed that republicans lost their way. By the summer of 2001 I knew I wasn’t getting what I voted for in 2000. In 2002, 2004 and 2006 I voted straight LP ticket, filling in republicans where there was no libertarian candidate. In 2008 I voted against democrats. In 2010 I voted for the tea party movement, same in 2012 and now.
You see, Lifer, I am not beholden unto any political party. I am beholden unto the idea of individual liberty and rights, unto freedom, unto a constitutionally limited federal and state government, unto the idea of the soveriegnty of the people and the government as the servant. This is the idea behind the tea party movemnt. This is the idea behind the right to keep and bear arms, the right to vote, the right to trial by jury.
The surplus was created by a Republican congress? Seriously, what are you smoking? The surplus was created by tax revenue generated from the biggest economic transformation (the development of the internet as a linchpin of economic activity) any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes. At best you can argue that neither Gingrich’s GOP nor Clinton got too much in the way. How could they have? They were all too distracted by the definition of “is”.
There was never any real surplus, John, as the debt continued to grow. But the republican congress got very close to it in spite of Clinton.
Republicans won control of the federal government yesterday. They do not have the absolute control democrats had with a super majority and the oval office, but come January they will have the control that counts. Harry Reid got his walking papers as senate majority leader and will no longer be able to block the hundreds of bills passed by the house.
The republicans need to play this right, to show that it is the democrats that have been the obstructionist party, the party of “NO”. If they can do it right, the GOP takes the oval office and gains even more seats in 2016.
And remember the powers democrats have taken, that GOP federal government will have the power and authority to make you buy any goods and services they see fit, at the levels and amounts they see fit. Better hope the tea party movement stays strong, because we will want that pulled back, whereas the GOP establishment will look at that power with a gleam in their eyes.
Speaking of new powers, are you thinking of using the filibuster? Democrats have already shown they are capable of taking it away and stopping the republicans from using it. Guess what, the republicans now have that power and ability come January. Obamacare? Passed by a simple majority in the senate, and come January republicans will have the simple majority to do away with it.
Obama and the democrats are set to be in a very bad way for the next two years. Enjoy.
For such a constitutional scholar, Sternn, you seem fundamentally unaware of how our government works. Congress can’t do anything by itself. They can repeal Obamacare 47 more times and the President will veto it 47 times. They can refuse to fund it, but Obama can veto the appropriations bills until, inevitably after great drama they find a compromise. Obamacare is fairly popular with the people who needed it in the first place. It’s horribly unpopular with the people who didn’t need it (e.g., got insurance through their employer). The GOP will discover that when, like all victorious parties, they try to claim a mandate that is not there. Being slightly less unpopular than the other guys in half the states is not a very sound foundation for governance.