Gordon Campbell US Election 2012 Blog - Update #8 6pm
Gordon Campbell US Election 2012 Blog - Update #8
Scoop Political Editor Gordon Campbell is live
blogging the US election results as they come in at:
GordonCampbell.scoop.co.nz
6pm
Make
of this what you will, but the Jerusalem Post is
reporting that 68% of Jews voted for Obama. In wrapping up
this coverage, what do we make of the Obama victory? As of
tomorrow, Obama has to gear himself up for the fiscal cliff
calamity that is now coming down the tracks, whereby on
January 1st, the US faces some very grim options on federal
revenues and tax hikes – in order to ward off a looming
catastrophe that otherwise may push the US into recession
again next year, even if Congress delays a final remedy.
Good luck with getting bipartisan co-operation from a
bruised Republicans in facing up to this problem, even if it
is in very large part a creation of the Bush-era tax
cuts.
In his second term, Obama now has to be made to deliver for the people on the centre-left who elected him in 2008 and again today. No one is expecting miracles from him any longer, but he faces a Republican opposition that has been badly bloodied by the Romney failure. History will be judging Obama by how he emerges from the mess that he inherited in his first term. He has a mandate now to lead, rather than to simply react to events at home amnd abroad that were largely not of his making. On foreign policy, the people who elected him – and that includes those 68 % of Jews who voted for Obama – will not for example be expecting him to go to war in Iran.
And where to for the Republicans? Let’s assume Mitt Romney did not actually mean the gibberish he espoused throughout the primary season, but said what he felt he had to say to the party zealots in order to gain the nomination and keep them on board. Clearly, what is seen to be needed to win the party nomination is then poison in the subsequent national election. In sum, the party’s recent spasms of extremism have been proven to be electorally self defeating. Thus, the Tea Party is finished, and will now go the way of Sarah Palin. In Chris Christie and Mario Rubio, the Republicans have moderate candidates who can win the Presidency in 2016. Hopefully, the party of Lincoln will be remade as a more moderate, less ideologically driven party than it has been in 2012, and 2008. Today, the US voted centre left, and rejected right wing extremism. That’s all good. Let’s hope that in 2014, New Zealand can find reason to do the same. Thanks everyone.
5.24pm
Thanks
to Mark Cubey for alerting me to the jaw-dropping comeback
win by Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin. She looked so far back
I’d lost interest, but she has defeated welfare reform
architect Tommy Thompson, in what Slate has called the
second biggest story of the election. Sorry for putting you
wrong before on Baldwin.
5. 15pm
Tim
Kaine wins in Virginia for the Dems, and the likely final
counts in outstanding counties in Virginia, Florida and yes,
even in Ohio make it very likely that Obama could sweep them
all. Which means that Politico’s 303 to 235 prediction
yesterday may be on the conservative side, and we may be
looking at a rout of McCain in 2008 proportions. Nice to see
that the Republicans veep candidate Paul Ryan failed to
carry his home state (Wisconsin) for Romney, and projections
now have it for Obama, thanks to that Milwaukee count I
mentioned before. New Mexico, Nevada (likely) for
Obama…the Latino vote is going to have cost Romney big
time when the Republicans look back sorrowfully at this
night.
CNN has just called the election for the president! Yay. Now we can go back to bitching about Barack Obama.
4.35 pm
Forgive the
skittishness before about Wisconsin. I’d forgotten
Milwaukee, which is still to come in. Turnout is really high
today in Milwaukee (around 73% says CNN) and though Romney
is doing extremely well in some of the suburban/rural areas
– as you might expect – I think CNN is right to say that
it’s hard to envisage Obama losing this state. Ditto with
Romney’s current lead in the popular vote. Populous
California can be expected to go strongly for Obama,
sufficient to erase that margin. So that’s all right then,
as they say on the 2012
show.
4.22pm
Hold the champagne – Romney is ahead in both Wisconsin and Virginia, and is only narrowly behind in Ohio. It still looks okay for Obama, but it’s not a decisive victory at this point.
More bad news for the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. From the Orlando Sentinel in Florida:
An unprecedented push by Florida Republicans to allow more state funding of religious programs, restrict abortion rights, ban the required purchase of health insurance and oust three Democrat-appointed [state] Supreme Court justices was headed for failure….Forced to wade through a historically long ballot with 11 legislatively drawn constitutional amendments, voters defeated an effort to give beefier property-tax breaks to new- and second-home owners and businesses.
Still, the TP may take some solace from the apparent victory in a Florida Congressional race of the flamboyant Tea Party favourite Allen West. After 91 % of the vote counted, West is narrowly ahead. Darn.
Oh, and Massachusetts just became the 18th state to legalise medicinal marijuana.
4.05pm
This looks like the
end game. With Pennsylvania and now Wisconsin being
projected for Obama – and New Hampshire as well! – most
of the alternative routes to victory for Romney are now
closing down, and making him totally dependent on a victory
in Ohio that looks highly unlikely. Elizabeth Warren is
being projected to take the Senate seat in Massachusetts,
too. She’s the originator of a now famous video that
enraged the Tea Party – wherein she made
the innocuous argument that even the most self-made of
entrepreneurs gets to drive down roads built by Big
Government, and to hire workers educated by Big Government,
so what’s the big deal about paying taxes? In response and
in denial, the TP frothingly launched the We Built It!
campaign. So yay for Warren. And for Claire McCaskill, who
is crushing another one of God’s emissaries, Todd
Akin.
CNN says Romney can’t win from here.
3.50pm
Obama takes Pennsylvania!
One depressing result from Wisconsin though is that in the
Senate race, the Dems’ Tammy Baldwin failed to get even
close to defeating former governor Tommy Thompson. Back in
the 1990s, Thompson was the godfather of the Wisconsin
experiment in welfare reform that Paula Bennett is now in
the process of implementing in New Zealand. In polls before,
Baldwin had looked like she had a chance of being
competitive. Fox is saying that the Republicans s look like
retaining the House and the Dems the Senate – which means
that Obama will have to negotiate his way back from the
fiscal cliff, with House Speaker John Boehner. Meaning: same
old, same old spirit of bitter non co-operation and
gridlock,
folks.
ENDS