Democrat Don Cazayoux has won a Louisiana Congressional seat that has been in Republican hands since the 1970s. The very red district went 59% for George Bush in the 2004 elections. And according to the blogs I've been reading, the GOP tried to "smear" Cazayoux by running ads associating him with Obama.
But he won anyway.
"BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) 5/4/08 — Democrat Don Cazayoux has won a special congressional election, bolstering his party's majority status on Capitol Hill and taking a seat held by Republicans since 1974.
Cazayoux, a state lawmaker, beat Republican Woody Jenkins to cap a campaign that drew attention and cash from the national parties and from interest groups in Washington. The seat opened when Republican Richard Baker, a 20-year incumbent, resigned to take a lobbying job.
With all precincts reporting, Cazayoux had 49 percent to 46 percent for Jenkins, a community newspaper publisher. Three independents combined to take over 4 percent of the vote."
And just in case anyone forgot or didn't pay attention in March, this, too:
"CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) 3/9/08 -- A longtime Republican district fell Saturday to the Democrats when a wealthy businessman and scientist snatched former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's congressional seat in a closely watched special election.
Democrat Bill Foster won 53 percent of the vote compared to 47 percent for Republican Jim Oberweis. With all 568 precincts reporting, Foster had 52,010 votes to Oberweis' 46,988.
Democrat Bill Foster won 53 percent of the vote compared to 47 percent for Republican Jim Oberweis. With all 568 precincts reporting, Foster had 52,010 votes to Oberweis' 46,988.
"Tonight our voices are echoing across the country and Washington will hear us loud and clear -- it's time for a change," Foster told cheering supporters Saturday evening.
"This is going to send a political shockwave across the country in this election year," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Van Hollen said.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who made a TV ad praising Foster, said in a statement that voters "sent an unmistakable message that they're tired of business-as-usual in Washington."
The National Republican Congressional Committee downplayed the significance of the loss and said the back and forth between Democrats for the presidential nomination shows that one election doesn't indicate a trend."
Well, how about two in two months' time? Do two from two very red districts coupled with the gains the Democrats made in the 2006 elections where they gained seats in both the Senate and the House? Does that indicate a trend?
In my previous post about "Mission Not Accomplished" I talked about Karl Rove--y'know, the genius who was supposed to build a Republican hegemony beginning with George W. Bush going forward for the next 100 years.
Rove had hopes of marginalizing the Democrats so that the Republicans would hold the reins of power in every branch of government for generations to come. And one way he hoped to accomplish this was to use the Department of Justice to indict and imprison those Democrats who stood in the way of his plan.
How very Joseph Stalin of him!
Problem is that this country is better than Rove's small, venal, cynical and felonious vision of it. There will always be hacks like Rove who put party loyalty above loyalty to the Constitution, hacks who use people, like the Christian fundamentalists, to distract us from the very real problems we face.
The good news is that it didn't work. I've been reading about how the young people who are registering to vote are overwhelmingly registering as Democrats. This represents a whole new generation of voters for the party.
Let us hope we don't go down the same path as the Republicans when they were in full control of our government.
5 comments:
You know, I'm not so bothered by the Democrats sweeping up so many seats. Here's why.
Conservatism in my lifetime has really only been successful twice. First, there was the presidency of Ronald Reagan, where he managed to push much of his agenda despite overwhelming Democrat resistance. Then came George HW Bush. After betraying his promises, he lost to that governor from Arkansas. After two years of him, the GOP finally got a majority under Newt Gingrich, primarily on the promises of the Contract with America.
The reason the Democrats are snatching seats now and will win the White House is because the GOP machine stopped being conservative. Ohio has been in the Red state column since 2000. However, after getting saddled with a wholly incompetent governor (Bob Taft) and two Senators who were, at best, weasels (Voinovich and DeWine), with the added big-government tendencies of George W Bush, We started voting a little differently. DeWhine is out, Bob Tax is out on term limits and his secretary of state (Blackwell) got scandaled out of the race. And we will probably see the end of Voinobitch too.
The problem with Republicans is that they stopped being conservatives. So in the end, a Democrat will get elected this year, be it Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Or, for that matter, John McCain.
I somewhat agreed with Patrick... ...until that last line 8>)
Repsac: You guys can have McCain. Really. Please take him. Ideological battles are hard enough without pingpongs like him in the way.
Who knows, Patrick... Maybe McCain & Lieberman are the start of a trend, and ideologues like us, and the crazy notion that political parties actually stand for something, will become a thing of the past...
Perhaps they are our future...
Excellent news!! We can't rest on our laurels though. We can't let the Neo-cons have an inch. We need to hit back like Kerry didn't. When they slap us we need to hit back harder, punch 'em in the mouth.
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