Bush appointee Christie rips off Monty Python in NJ gov race

[rah]

I think the results show that the Obama love fest has peaked. The dems are going to have to fight hard in the mid-term elections. The party they left for dead still has some life in it.

[Ramo]

Eight years ago, there was a Democratic sweep; Jim McGreevy and Mark Warner replaced GOP Guvs. What followed were two very good elections for the GOP.

The lessons of the night were:
1. Being an incumbent while the unemployment inches up to 10% blows. Who expected Bloomberg to have a close race?

2. The Democratic base is depressed.

3. But there's a reasonably high floor. The Dems limited their net losses in the VA Assembly to five seats and NJ Assembly to one seat.

4. Candidates matter. If Codey or Booker were the NJ nominee, I doubt Christie would be the victor. While neither McAuliffe nor Moran had much of a chance of winning, they probably could've held the margin down to something a lot less ridiculous.

5. The best thing going for the Dems in 2010 are the preferences of the GOP base. Remember that neither McDonnell nor Christie faced a serious primary challenger.

6. Crist needs to pull a Specter if he wants to be Senator. And other GOP moderates need to watch their backs (Kirk, Castle, Simmons, etc.).

[rah]

The lessons of the night were:
1. Being an incumbent while the unemployment inches up to 10% blows. Who expected Bloomberg to have a close race?

Agreed, and also the main reason why I think the dems will have a hard fight next year.
Their internal bickering isn't helping either. It's going to take more than Obama showing up and spreading some pixie dust.

[Ramo]

The economy a year from now is likely to be significantly better. I see this year as a lower bound for Democratic performance.

It'll obviously be a hard fight, but I think the Dems can hold their losses in the House to something reasonable (less than 20), and have a not insignificant chance of keeping 60 Senate seats.

One of the big warning signs here is for Dodd (who looks very Corzine-esque right now). He has to be thrown under the bus if his numbers don't recover.

[rah]

While the economy is likely to be better, unemployment improvements usually lag.

[Ramo]

Sure, but most prognosticators think that unemployment will start coming down after Q1 2010, for what macro predictions are worth in this environment.

[rah]

I hope it does, to help all those in need, but as more and more people that I know lose their jobs I can only wonder when it will get better.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's disappointing, but it's way better than electing Scuzzyflava. Killing a RINO before the election is an accomplishment. I don't really understand what the GOP was thinking appointing her.

I think that you have NO CLUE what a Northeast Republican is like. You do realize that Governor-elect Christie is pro-civil unions, right?

Extra fun for Ben:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Christie

He has stated, with respect to his opposition to abortion, that he would not use the governor's office to "force that down people's throats", but does favor restrictions on abortion rights such as banning the procedure popularly known as partial-birth abortion, requiring parental notification, and imposing a 24-hour waiting period.[49] Christie's running mate, Kimberly Guadagno, is, however, pro-choice.[50]

Christie has said that he supports strict and aggressive enforcement of the state's current gun laws.[49]

While serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Christie stressed that simply "[b]eing in this country without proper documentation is not a crime," but rather a civil wrong; and that undocumented people are not criminals unless they have re-entered the country after being deported.

Christie has said that he favors New Jersey's current law allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions but would veto any bill legalizing same-sex marriage.[49]

So, under your standards (and those who were against Scozzofava [sp?]), Christie would be a BIG RINO, right?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Who expected Bloomberg to have a close race?

After his ramming through of the repeal of term limits? Plenty. A lot of people soured on what appeared to be Bloomberg's naked lust for power.

The best thing going for the Dems in 2010 are the preferences of the GOP base. Remember that neither McDonnell nor Christie faced a serious primary challenger.

With Christie it was mostly because he is in New Jersey. Steve Lonegon (a very conservative mayor) just had no traction against Christie, because NJ Republicans are very moderate.

[Ramo]

The polls were showing Bloomberg walking away with it. Thompson was basically written off by the Democratic establishment. I think he didn't get more than a shout-out from Obama at a fundraiser (granted, Bloomberg is probably a more useful ally).

Oh right, forgot about Lonegan.

[DinoDoc]

I think that you have NO CLUE what a Northeast Republican is like. You do realize that Governor-elect Christie is pro-civil unions, right?

You do realize that the bases main problem wasn't the fact she was socially liberal, right?

[Boris Godunov]

I'm curious as to the rationale as to why this election will negatively impact healthcare reform, considering the race touted as the "bellweather" by the GOP and Fox News was NY-23, and there a pro-public option Democrat won a seat that has been Republican for 120 years. The other congressional race was CA-10, where a moderate Democrat was replaced by a much more liberal one. So the House is now +2 on Democrats who will back a staunchly progressive healthcare bill.

The governor races were not referenda on Obama, as much as the GOP might like them to have been. Obama's latest approval numbers in VA stood at ~51%, and in NJ ~57%, pretty close in both to his election night numbers last year. People don't vote for their state governors based on who the President is--they are seen as local races. As Ramo noted, both elected Democratic governors the year before big GOP gains previously. Virginia in particular almost always happens to elect a governor from the opposing party of the current President. A large part of this is due to the state's peculiar 1-term limit for that office.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You do realize that the bases main problem wasn't the fact she was socially liberal, right?

And a gubenatorial candidate who is pro-civil unions and is personally pro-life, but doesn't want to force it down other people's throats is socially conservative?

Of course I think this means that the "base" has a main problem with the mainstream northeastern Republican. Sometimes I think they want them to form a 3rd party, making sure the Dems end up in power forever.

[snoopy369]

What!?

To repeat:

A copyright enfrigement lawsuit is a civil action between two PRIVATE parties. ALL laws are subject to constitutional scrutity, either the federal or state constitutions. That doesn't mean that private parties must abide by constitutional limits on the enfringement of speech.

You're an idiot.

Hypothetical federal statute: "a person may sue someone else if the other person says something mean."

This is obviously unconstitutional, and a suit based on this statute would be thrown out on constitutional grounds.

Hypothetical federal statute: "a person may sue someone else if the other person reproduces the first person's speech/artwork/etc."

Also obviously unconstitutional.

The First Amendment supersedes Article 1 Section 8, for the obvious reason that it is an amendment to the Constitution.

Fair use isn't just a thing Congress did to be nice to us, and is not the limit of exceptions to copyright. Even if Congress had never defined fair use, there would be copyright violations that would not be grounds for a suit because they counted as protected speech.

I can tell why you think you're right here Kuci, but you're not... the government can, and does, make laws prohibiting 'speech' when it violates other rights. Copyright law in and of itself is a law of that nature [and 'fair use' by the interpretation you're giving here would be "everything that does not yield a profit", for example showing a movie in a public auditorium. I can't take a copy of Transformers and show it in an auditorium without paying MGM or whomever, even if I don't profit from it].

The first amendment has been interpreted to prohibit the government from making laws that prohibit your OWN expression, ie, self-created artistic or creative works. Taking someone else's is not expression (it's not your original thought), and therefore not protected by the first amendment (although I do believe some of the fair-use exception was designed to permit expression whereby you express your own creative thoughts in part by using other peoples' creative works).

[-Jrabbit]

AI think this means that the "base" has a main problem with the mainstream northeastern Republican. Sometimes I think they want them to form a 3rd party, making sure the Dems end up in power forever.

Don't let your fears get the best of you, Imran. This is stupid enough to actually be something the Dems would be more likely to do.