Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Felicidades Menendez
It's ironic hearing the president who's done more than any other of my lifetime to promote partisanship & divide America & turn it into a one party political system now calling for cooperation with the people he's pissed on for 6 years. He sounds all shook up to me. Thought his party had a lock on the House. He's saying it was a "close election." Oh? He treated those elections in '00 & '04 as landslide mandates.
Watching the scene last night in the East Brunswick Hilton on TV, the feeling of sheer elation emanating from that place was something I'd never seen in a senate victory here before.
Senator Menendez gave a long-winded victory speech, but once he got going he wasn't the oratorical stiff he's been made out to be. His win was clearly decisive & he knew it. When Menendez switched to Spanish he brought tears to my eye as it suddenly hit me how significant this election was; a son of Cuban immigrants had beaten the son of one the most popular politicians in Jersey's history from one of our mansion-on-the-hill colonial-era families. & all those those years serving in a Republican-dominated House must have really frustrated Menendez. I don't think he'll be a backbencher in the Senate.
Linda Stender's loss in the 7th was a big disappoinment. I think Linda did overcome the advantages of Mike Ferguson's incumbency; what she couldn't overcome in the end was running in Kean Jr.'s backyard.
Last night, the TV talking head commentators were again echoing right wing talking points by claiming this was really a victory for a right-wing swinging Democratic Party. But the so-called "conservative" winners like Bob Casey, Jon Tester, & hopefully Jim Webb, are populists, not dogmatic flat earth religionists. When Menendez closed his speech by calling the United States "The greatest country in the world," it came from the heart - that wasn't just election night rhetoric. There's no contradiction, as Repugs would have it, between being for a strong national defense & also for a progressive domestic agenda. & how do you explain Bernie Sanders, an independent Vermont socialist who will caucus with Democrats alongside Nebraska's Ben Nelson?
I wouldn't vote for a Democratic candidate I perceived to be genuinely weak on defense. I live 20 miles from Ground Zero. How come, five years after 9/11, I feel no safer? It's certainly not due to the efforts of Dem senators like Schumer, Lautenburg & Clinton, who pretty regularly show up at area ports & shout at the White House, "C'mon, help us out some more here," & even had to stop Bush from selling our docks to the Arabs. They never forget. Nobody around here forgets the empty place in Manhattan's skyline. There's nothing "conservative" about what Iraq has done to our armed forces & preparedness. I see the deliberate waste of lives & money & more lives. The idea that there's some obvious either/or border anymore between conservative & liberal is ridiculous.
What a fucking mess Democrats have to clean up in Washington. Nearly everything is broken. I almost feel sorry for them.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Watching the scene last night in the East Brunswick Hilton on TV, the feeling of sheer elation emanating from that place was something I'd never seen in a senate victory here before.
Senator Menendez gave a long-winded victory speech, but once he got going he wasn't the oratorical stiff he's been made out to be. His win was clearly decisive & he knew it. When Menendez switched to Spanish he brought tears to my eye as it suddenly hit me how significant this election was; a son of Cuban immigrants had beaten the son of one the most popular politicians in Jersey's history from one of our mansion-on-the-hill colonial-era families. & all those those years serving in a Republican-dominated House must have really frustrated Menendez. I don't think he'll be a backbencher in the Senate.
Linda Stender's loss in the 7th was a big disappoinment. I think Linda did overcome the advantages of Mike Ferguson's incumbency; what she couldn't overcome in the end was running in Kean Jr.'s backyard.
Last night, the TV talking head commentators were again echoing right wing talking points by claiming this was really a victory for a right-wing swinging Democratic Party. But the so-called "conservative" winners like Bob Casey, Jon Tester, & hopefully Jim Webb, are populists, not dogmatic flat earth religionists. When Menendez closed his speech by calling the United States "The greatest country in the world," it came from the heart - that wasn't just election night rhetoric. There's no contradiction, as Repugs would have it, between being for a strong national defense & also for a progressive domestic agenda. & how do you explain Bernie Sanders, an independent Vermont socialist who will caucus with Democrats alongside Nebraska's Ben Nelson?
I wouldn't vote for a Democratic candidate I perceived to be genuinely weak on defense. I live 20 miles from Ground Zero. How come, five years after 9/11, I feel no safer? It's certainly not due to the efforts of Dem senators like Schumer, Lautenburg & Clinton, who pretty regularly show up at area ports & shout at the White House, "C'mon, help us out some more here," & even had to stop Bush from selling our docks to the Arabs. They never forget. Nobody around here forgets the empty place in Manhattan's skyline. There's nothing "conservative" about what Iraq has done to our armed forces & preparedness. I see the deliberate waste of lives & money & more lives. The idea that there's some obvious either/or border anymore between conservative & liberal is ridiculous.
What a fucking mess Democrats have to clean up in Washington. Nearly everything is broken. I almost feel sorry for them.
