TIME: 5 Myths About the Midterm Elections (Fact: Bloggers DID matter!)

[DeepModem Mom]

5 Myths About the Midterm Elections
Did the bloggers matter in the end? Are the Dems more conservative? Did Republicans lose on the war? TIME separates fact from fiction
By PERRY BACON JR., ANA MARIE COX AND KAREN TUMULTY

Posted Thursday, Nov. 16, 2006
MYTH: Joe Lieberman's victory proves the netroots don't matter.
REALITY: The netroots had some key victories.

Liberal bloggers and their readers helped to swing the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary to anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, raising expectations that the midterms would turn this new generation of online activists into kingmakers. Yet in the midst of a Democratic wave, the netroots candidates failed to sweep, causing some pundits to claim that the netroots' influence continues to be overstated: "The Netroots Election? Not So Fast," editorialized The Nation. When Rick Perlstein tried, in The New Republic, to claim the election as a netroots triumph, Ryan Lizza replied in the magazine's blog that in addition to having the netroots' support, winning candidates also had the national Democratic party to thank, as it "dumped tons of money, strategic advice, and fundraising assistance into their races." What's the real takeaway? Of the 19 candidates that three of the biggest liberal blogs (Daily Kos, mydd.com and Swing State Project) raised money for, eight of the candidates won. This improves on the blogs' record from 2004, when Daily Kos picked out 16 campaigns to strongly support and raise money for, all of which lost. This cycle, bloggers may have been most strongly linked to Lamont, but they actually donated more money to Jim Webb of Virginia. Bloggers also made "macaca" into a scandal that helped sink Webb's opponent, George Allen. The netroots' record is probably too short to be judged definitively, but instead of looking at pure win/loss records, an examination of where the netroots put their emphasis suggests that the online community is either becoming more sophisticated in picking its candidates or is helping push long shots over the top.

MYTH: Democrats won because they carefully recruited more conservative candidates.
REALITY: Democrats won because their candidates were conservative about their message.

Moderate Democrats have celebrated the midterms as a victory for their brand of fiscal conservatism, foreign policy "realism" and a version of "traditional values." Certainly, Washington will see an influx of unorthodox Democrats: congressmen-elect Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana are pro-life and pro-gun. But liberals won in some relatively conservative areas as well, and often after being largely ignored by national Democratic strategists. In the House, they include Kentucky's John Yarmuth (who supports universal health care and affirmative action), New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter (she was once escorted out of a Bush event for wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt) and Dave Loebsack (an anti-war liberal academic) in Iowa. The same is true of the Senate, where the new Democratic members include Vermont's Bernie Sanders, a socialist....Democrats told voters far more about what they were against — the Republicans who run Washington — than what they were for. "This is a campaign that was run explicitly to be devoid of issues," says Amy Walter, an analyst with the non-partisan Cook Political Report. "They never had to outline their own positions on the issues, which makes it very hard to know exactly where these folks are coming from."

***

MYTH: The losses Republicans sufferend this election were no different than what you usually see in a President's sixth year in office.
REALITY: Redistricting minimized what might have been a truly historic shellacking....

***

MYTH: The election was all about the war.
REALITY: It's the dishonesty, stupid.

Against traditional political wisdom, national themes did matter more than local loyalties and personalities in 2006. George Bush was far more likely to show up in a Democratic candidate's ad than a Republican's. Many Democrats have translated their victory into a mandate for change in Iraq; the day after the midterms, Sen. Harry Reid called for a bipartisan summit on the issue, saying "The President must listen and work with Democrats to fix his failed policy." But in the end, what appears to have mattered most was Congress' own behavior. Fully 74% of voters surveyed in exit polls ranked corruption and ethics as important in determining their votes; by comparison, 67% said that about Iraq. The lack of progress in Iraq helped nationalize the elections, but multiple scandals (Abramoff, Foley) appear to have driven home an urge for massive change. Mattis Goldman, who coordinated the campaign advertising for Democrat Sherrod Brown's successful Ohio Senate run, says that they chose to emphasize economic populism, change and fighting corruption. "If we had run a one-dimensional campaign just about the war," says Goldman, "I don't know how this election would have turned out."

MYTH: Republicans lost their base.
REALITY: The base turned out, they just got beat.

Right-wing pundits and some conservative politicians have argued that the midterms were, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, a "loss for Republicanism, not conservatism," and that genuine conservatives stayed away from the polls (or cast protest votes) to show their displeasure with a party that had strayed from first principles. Rep. Mike Pence (R-In.) is running for minority leader with a statement that posits, "I believe that we did not just lose our Majority — we lost our way. We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles." But, says the White House's political director Sara Taylor, the difference between base turnout in 2002 and 2006 is within the margin of error. And independent exit polls show the same percentages of voters who called themselves "evangelicals," "white born-again Christians," "weekly church-goers," "Republicans" and "conservatives" as in 2006 as in 2004. "The base turned out," says Taylor, "but independents made up a larger share of the electorate and they broke very heavily Democratic."

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1560212,00.html?cnn=yes

[MissWaverly]

1. Yes, let's fight the spin and the history rewrite

while it's still fresh in our minds.

:-)

[greeneggs708]

9. No One Is Claiming They Didn't

We are just asking them to shut up. The election is over, start doing something.

Week later and the blogs still are whining.

OK. YOU ARE ALL GODS. LIFE IN AMERICA WOULD NOT EXIST WITHOUT YOU. THE UNIVERSE WOULD BURN UP. WE WILL NEVER EAT A PIECE OF FOOD OR DRINK A GLASS OF WATER WITHOUT BOWING IN PRAISE OF THE GODS OF BLOGS.

Now shut up and do something.

[MissWaverly]

18. No, it's starting already, the dangerous spin

the American people didn't repudiate the war, they want to stay the course, no we don't.
John McCain said that w/o more troop, a significant number of troops, the war is lost,
staying the course w/o an increase in troops is just postponing defeat. If that is the
case and they refuse to raise the troops levels, then we should start to withdraw now.

[OzarkDem]

2. Not sure about winning "conservative" message

I can't recall a single winning conservative message during the last election.

Being anti-corruption isn't conservative or liberal.

Opposition to the Iraq War was an important issue, even if not the deciding one. Voters who were sick of the Iraq War were liberal, moderate and some conservative, too.

People voted their pocketbooks, too. They're tired of the slow economy, getting gouged by oil companies and high health care costs. Dems weren't offering conservative messages on those issues either.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. I think the article disputes that the message was conservative --

they give examples of some with conservative views being elected, and also some solid liberals elected, and then offer the opinion that the Dems were able to skirt liberal-conservative limits with their opposition to the GOP status quo. Like you say, opposition to the war was an issue that drew voters from across the political spectrum.

[lapfog_1]

4. Read that part again.

The author was trying to be "cute" with words, but what he/she meant was "Democrats won with a surprisingly small focused message" (conservative as to what the Dems ran on).

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Agreed -- the author used a confusing pun. nt

[lapfog_1]

6. There is a term for this... not a pun really.

It's a oratory trick, using many of the same words in two adjacent sentences to indicate vastly different or opposite ideas. Hitler used it a lot. But so did JFK...

JFK's famous example "Ask not what your country can do for you. Rather, ask what you can do for your country!"

It's a great speech making device, and I'm sure there is a name for this like alliterative simile or something, but it's been years and years since college English courses.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. I think you're right -- but I'm at a loss, too! nt

[garthranzz]

8. The term is CHIASMUS -

you're welcome, from an English professor.

:)

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Thank you!

:hi:

[lapfog_1]

11. Thanks! I knew there was a specific term.

Have to admit that I only got solid "B-"s in college level English courses. And to this day, my friends believe that I'm a "functional illiterate". Probably true. However, I do have a good vocabulary which counts for something.

Of course, then I see what passes for discourse on the net and I cry for humanity.

[garthranzz]

12. I'm working on the discourse, civic and otherwise, in class and on the net

And I can use all the help I can get - so thanks. (And a lot of my students would be thrilled, thrilled, to get a B-. I doubt seriously you are illiterate, functional or otherwise.)

[lapfog_1]

17. Let's just say I had high expectations....

National Merit Finalist... Class Salutatorian... insane SATs... the whole academic package.

But English was always the weak link...

Should have gone to Law School. I loved the undergraduate law classes that I could take. Oh well.

[OzarkDem]

13. Thanks!

I read it several times, trying to find the "chiasmus". It missed me completely.

[garthranzz]

14. Correction: it's ANTIMETABOLE - which overlaps chiasmus

"Repetition of words, in successive clauses, in reverse grammatical order.
This figure is sometimes known as chiasmus."

Chiasmus repeats and inverts either ideas or grammatical structures. Antimetabole repeats and inverts words. The two are related, but technically when the repetition and inversion involves only words, it's Antimetabole. (The term is Greek for "turning about")

[Donna Zen]

15. Parallelism

...or parallel structure.

There are those who are good at it, and those who try and fail. When it flops it is horrible.

[Arkana]

16. How about this?

NO ONE FUCKING CARES.

The point is, we won, they lost. However, the American people did not put Democrats in power so they could do a two-year victory celebration. We need to get down to business and shut the fuck up about who deserves credit for what--everyone had a hand in the sweep.