John Batchelor writes on his blog:
Speaker Boehner
Michael Steele makes a coy and not unuseful misspeak this morning re the health care vote and Mrs. Pelosi’s ferocious whipping of the Democratic caucus and the 2010 election campaign now underway.
“Speaker Boehner…” is the moment.
What the health care vote showed on Saturday was that the Democratic majority has retreated to three votes, one of them a Republican rookie from Louisiana (right, freshman Joseph Cao in the Jefferson seat from New Orleans) and another, Bill Owen from the 23rd New York.
Thirty-nine Democrats ran and hid from Mrs. Pelosi and her enforcer Jack Murtha, and those thirty-nine will now send out their resumes for future employment opportunity in the local GM dealerships. Murtha did find a handful of Blue Dogs who failed to escape the threats (or just hid badly) and each of those members are now on the endangered list as well.
What is the sum? The GOP needs 41 seats to take the majority and elect Speaker John Boehner. The last briefing I heard of the Democratic fears is that they expect to lose 28 seats — that number is for public consumption, that number is meant to make the Democratic contributors feel better. The difference between 28 and 41 is immaterial in a runaway train, a tsunami, what is called a wave.
Forty-one Seats
The first place the Democrats must defend is the districts won by McCain in 2008, and of the 39 Dems who voted “No” last evening, all of them were from McCain districts. This means they face a primary challenge from the Left and a general challenge from an electorate that will not have the name Obama to vote against or for on the ballot.
You have to imagine a Republican district that voted for the ironic double-talker John McCain and his mysterious wife that will now vote for a Democratic freshman (woman) who speaks well of Nancy Pelosi and the stimulus package and the 10% plus unemployment. Hard to imagine. My memory is that there 49 of those districts nationwide. The next batch of most vulnerable are the Blue Dogs from Democratic districts in California and the East who will be facing primary threats and then will come up against a GOP candidate with cash who keeps pounding on taxes and jobs. Jobs especially. Health care and cap and trade are hors d’oeuvres. Taxes are iced tea. Jobs are the barbecue.
Jobs and 11%
The jobless official number is now 10.2% for the trailing month of October 2009. The projections now get iffy, but in 1982, it went from 10.2% in October to 10.8% in January before it moderated.
We are now watching a death run for politicians, because 10.8% for December, reported on the first Friday of January, will be a pall for the Congress returning. More critically, Charlie Gasparino, author, “Sellout,” reported Saturday 7 that the official jobless number is critical after all, because the market gamblers are betting on it. The bet is simple. If it gets to 11%, all the wagers they have placed on recovery then blow up. Eleven percent is the fail point. The fail-safe point is about 10.8%. We are going to make this a near thing. The pols know it, especially the Dems.
The Obama administration projections are for joblessness to remain at or above 9.5% through Spring 2010. The brutal months will be July and August. If the number declines to under 8.5%, then the Dems can protect the majority in the House. If the number stays above 9.5%, prepare Mrs. Pelosi’s private cruiser for escape. The Senate is another story and not profound. The House is the battlefield. Every remark, every health care backtrack, the next debate about abortion and health care, about immigration and health care, all will be opening ploys to get the GOP to winter 2010 and the jobless number. Eyes on the jobs prize.
Thirty-Nine Democratic Names for the House Gallows 2010
Right, Time cover November 1994
Adler
Altmire
Baird
Barrow
Boccieri
Boren
Boucher
Boyd
Bright
Chandler
Childers
Artur Davis
Lincoln Davis
Chet Edwards
Gordon
Griffith
Herseth-Sandlin
Holden
Kissell
Kosmas
Kratovil
Kucinich
Betsy Markey
Marshall
Massa
Matheson
McIntyre
McMahon
Melancon
Minnick
Scott Murphy
Nye
Peterson
Ross
Shuler
Skelton
Tanner
Taylor
Teague
All the numbers, games and strategies detailed above mean nothing. It’s simply there to entertain and distract under the guise of our own feigned importance. When, in fact, we are no longer important at all – an inconvenient truth, perhaps; a pathetic afterthought to be suppressed and trampled under foot by a ruthless design that seeks to enslave us with the words of an egocentric elite. They too will ultimately implode but, in the process, they can be expected to drag us screaming through untold hells.
It’s like the Cinderella story in reverse when at midnight the pumpkin turns into a carriage. Midnight represents the next election cycle. The good people are left to argue about where their carriage will likely take them and how fast. In the meantime, teams have been instructed to reduce the pumpkin to pie. …and we all like pie, do we not?
Momentarily distracted by the lure of food, we fail to realize that this pie can never be reconstituted into a carriage. And we are left stranded by the side of the road. We find ourselves unable to proceed. Bushmen emerge from the swamps and cut off our limbs, gouge out our eyes, and slice off our tongues. As a final insult, they take our wallets.
Midnight comes and goes. We are still lying by the side of the road, bleeding our essence profusely into the run-off. There is no carriage. The king and queen are far off. We have no way of reaching them.
We remember back when we still had a Constitution that sought to protect us from the excesses of tyrants and dictators. We now regret that we said nothing while it was being shredded. We regret that we took our civic responsibilities so lightly. We regret our inattention to the warnings of history. We regret our drunken fits of mocking all that was holy. We regret our blame-shifting. We regret not holding scoundrels to account.
…for now, it’s too late. Let them do their worst. Their day of reckoning too will come. Unfortunately, it won’t be ‘till long after we will have passed from the scene, surviving only as a tragic footnote; a propaganda point, now to favor of the good guys.