By off-cycle I mean the national-level 2-year cycle of Congressional elections/4-year cycle of Presidential elections. Anything going on here will be either state and local elections of import (Governorships of Virginia and New Jersey), special ballot initiatives (gay marriage in Maine and Washington State), or special Congressional elections to fill seat vacancies (New York and California).
There was especially some crazy stuff involving NY-23, so this year was more special than most. So let's head to the observations (I will come back later to edit in links, I'm currently juggling between this and my A+ class studies):
1) Every other pundit or blogger pontificating about the results - other than ME - will get the results completely WRONG. Heh.
2) The real consequence of these elections for Governor and/or Congress isn't about who's in the White House: it's about the actual candidates and how the state and voting districts liked/hated them.
3) The result in Virginia - Republican beating Democrat - wasn't about Obama: it was about the fact that the Democrat ran a mis-managed campaign from the get-go and that Virginia is one of those borderline states that shifts regularly between Republican and Democrat.
4) The result in New Jersey - Republican challenger overthrowing incumbent Democrat - wasn't about Obama: it was about how unliked the incumbent was. That the race itself came down to the wire - before the results came in with a solid victory for the Republican - was due to the fact the Republican was swimming upstream against a lot of anti-GOP sentiment and personal issues of his own.
In fact, there was polling for the VA and NJ elections where the exit polls specifically asked "Was Obama part of your decision-making on your vote?" Solid majorities in both states said Obama wasn't a consideration. So how do those results honestly reflect on Obama? Answer: they don't. It's just the Far Right wants to attack Obama on EVERYTHING so every GOP victory is a referendum that VOTERS HATE OBAMA and every GOP defeat is a referendum that VOTERS ARE REALLY CONSERVATIVE EVEN THOUGH THEY VOTED AGAINST US, OH AND THEY HATE OBAMA. /Headthump
5) The result in New York - A Democrat narrowly winning in a district/region that hadn't gone Democrat since the Grant administration! - was about Obama only as far as the outside agitators who hijacked the election from the established GOP candidate wanted it to be. Oh, but it's still about the VOTERS HATING OBAMA. /Headthump
6) Once again, a moderate Republican candidate stepped up to represent in a state/region where moderates are key to victory, only to have the Far Right Wingnuts from outside charge in, disrupt everything with their own extremist choice, and end up tossing the district/state to the Democrats. The Kos guy just sent the Club for Greed a big "Thank You" card.
And for some Godforsaken reason, the Far Right still thinks this is GOOD FOR REPUBLICANS to have their representation drop to levels that will make the party an ineffective minority party for now and the forseeable future. At what point will the Republican leadership look around and say "Hey? Club for Greed? STOP KNEE-CAPPING US! Our whole party is now small enough to fit in a Denny's banquet room!"
7) The Bucs unofficially have the first overall draft pick for next April, and they REALLY need to look at the BEST AVAILABLE DT coming out of college. I mean, sign him up in February for God's sake... oh wait, that's my football observation, my bad...
8) The gay marriage state referenda mostly split, with Maine narrowly shooting it down but Washington State passing their gay rights (everything up to marriage rights) package. Thing is, sooner rather than later this is gonna get to be a moot point... gays will get the right to marry. All it takes is keeping the pressure up, and recognizing the fact that the opposition to gay rights is a overly paranoid, overly selective reading of the Old Testament that won't stand up to scrutiny (ask the anti-gay people if they uphold EVERYTHING in Leviticus or anything else deemed Abomination in the Bible, and I guarantee you half of them won't even answer you).
9) What does this all mean? I'm going go against Conventional Wisdom of the Beltway and say it's ALL GOOD FOR OBAMA! IT'S ALWAYS GOOD FOR OBAMA! What? It can't be GOOD FOR REPUBLICANS all the time...
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